Motorsports Mourns and Remembers its Coach

Submitted by Larry Edsall on June 18, 2010 - 12:08pm

There was one thing that was clear to everyone, whether they drove racecars, wrenched on racecars, owned racecars, or even owned the speedways on which those cars raced: You did not cross the Coach.

Coach was what everyone called Les Richter, who was one of the most influential people in American motorsports in the second half of the 20th Century and the early years of the 21st. He also was one of the nicest, even though he wouldn’t have needed to, because he could have taken on everyone in the paddock and perhaps the grandstands as well and been the last man standing. But it was just Coach’s nature to be nice, though firm in a fatherly, a coach’s sort of way.

Coach was captain of the football team at the University of California, where he also was student body president and senior class valedictorian.

An offensive guard and defensive linebacker, Richter was the second person selected in the 1952 National Football League draft. The Los Angeles Rams didn’t draft him, but they wanted him so much they traded away 11 players – that’s right, the equivalent of an entire starting team – to get him. And the Rams made that trade even though they’d have to wait two years for Richter to play, until Richter finished his military service in Korea.

The wait was worth it. Once he came back and put on the pads, he played with the Rams for nine years, and eight times was an All-Pro linebacker.

One of the owners of the Rams also was one of the owners of Riverside International Raceway and offered Richter an off-season job at the racetrack (believe it or not, there was a time when professional athletes didn’t have multi-million-dollar contracts and needed off-season jobs to support their families).

Richter ended up running Riverside, and other tracks as well – I met him when he was promoting races at Michigan International Speedway, before and later as part of Roger Penske’s management team. He helped Penske build California Speedway not too far from the old Riverside location and later became a highly respected executive with NASCAR.

Though powerful of physical stature and in his position within the sport, what probably endeared everyone to Les Richter was his seeming lack of ego, his willingness to roll up his sleeves, to muddy his suit, to help out wherever help was needed. Or simply to put his arm around a shoulder, to listen and then to give advice, to help anyone who would ask to better use their skills, to become a better person.

Coach died the other day. He was 79. His sports mourn, and cherish his memory.