MILWAUKEE — Rich Bickle has spent 45 years in racing, and this season, he's taking one last ride and wants to do it in style.
Lance Allan: "How much of an honor is it when people come up to you and say, 'Man, what a career, 45 years.' Pretty incredible?"
Rich Bickle: "Well it's, you know, you look back at it and then you go, 'Man, where did it go by so fast?' Yeah, it is what it is. I mean I grew up at the race track since a month old. So basically I've been there for 60 years. But to be on my 45th year of racing, it's just pretty amazing."
Lance Allan: "You started the victory tour or the farewell tour or whatever you want to call it off in grand style, by winning the Eagle River Snowmobile Derby. What was that like?"
Rich Bickle: "To start off on the ice is pretty cool, and then you end up [with] the last race of my life being at the Snowball Derby so, you know the start of the snow and the end of the snow tour, it's pretty cool."
Lance Allan: "What immediately comes to your mind over your career?"
Rich Bickle: "To be able to grow up in the area and era I grew up in, was probably the greatest accomplishment that I could have ever done because you know, I got taught by the best that ever was. And I've always said this: Out of the 50 greatest short track asphalt guys in the United States, at that time, 40 of them lived here. And I'll take that to my grave, knowing that's the truth."
Bickle has already won this year, and don't expect it will be the last.
