COPPER HILL, VA :: Dick Trickle was a racing legend who earned respect and admiration inside and outside the sports world. He won so many races in short tracks across America that there is no actual count of how many races he won – but it’s estimated to be well over 1,200 feature wins through his career which spanned over 50 years. He is believed to be the winningest driver in short track racing history. Trickle’s unique name also earned him a cult following in the mainstream sports world.
Dick Trickle is a former champion ASA champion, a former winner in the ARCA Racing Series and NASCAR Nationwide Series and even a former winner of the Winston Open (now referred to as the Sprint Showdown). In 1968, Trickle earned Rookie of the Year honors in USAC Stock Car Racing and earned Rookie of the Year honors in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in 1989. He would eventually earn the nickname “White Knight”, but it was his unique name that earned him a following.
The name of the main protagonist, Cole Trickle, in the 1990 blockbuster “Days of Thunder” was a nod to Dick Trickle. After the popularity of the movie, more and more people found themselves noticing Dick Trickle on the track. Eventually, Keith Olbermann, who was the anchor of ESPN’s popular sports highlights program “SportsCenter”, began to make it a point to mention Dick Trickle during their NASCAR highlights.
“I think it’s a plus,” Trickle told The Associated Press in 1995. “I think a lot of people get a pretty good kick out of it. It means I’m getting national attention every week. My daddy used to say, ‘As long as they’re talking about you, it ain’t too bad’.”
“Awful news, Dick Trickle is dead,” Olbermann tweeted on Thursday. “No sports figure Dan and I had fun with took it more graciously, in fact, gratefully. The late Dick Trickle helped mainstream NASCAR coverage on SportsCenter. We gave prominent attention to him, then his races, then all races.
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While many remember Trickle by his name, by the SportsCenter references or by an old YouTube clip of Trickle smoking in his car, Trickle will also be remembered as being one of the greatest drivers in the history of short track racing.
Trickle came from humble beginnings in Wisconsin. There wasn’t money in his family for him to go racing. He spent his summers working for area farmers. He began racing in 1958 in Wisconsin and continued to cut his teeth in the short tracks across the state. From there, it was history. It took him years to be able to compete with the higher budget teams but, once he did, all he did was win. Track championships, touring championships, championships in multiple states and more. Trickle was a racer’s racer. He was also a mentor to younger drivers, including former NASCAR champion Rusty Wallace.
It was the stories he told and the quotes he gave that also garnered respect.
“It was at least 50% my fault, I went out there with them idiots,” ESPN commentator Allen Bestwick remembered Trickle of saying.
After winning a NASCAR Busch Series race (now known as the NASCAR Nationwide Series) in 1997, Trickle asked in victory lane, “I get free beer, right?”
Trickle scored two career victories in the NASCAR Nationwide Series (Hickory, 1997 and Darlington, 1998), one career victory in the ARCA Racing Series in his first career start in 1990 at Atlanta and made 303 starts in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, scoring 15 top-five finishes and 36 top-10 finishes. He is the oldest driver in NASCAR history to earn Rookie of the Year honors, doing so at the age of 48
The number of starts he made in short track races across the Midwest is simply too many to count. Trickle is estimated to have won over 1,200 feature races and raced over 100 times a year. On the east coast, Trickle has won races at Lonesome Pine Raceway and is a former winner of the World Crown 300. He has won two ASA Championships and seven ARTGO Challenge Championships.
Trickle was an old school racer who is part of a generation of racing that is quickly fading. Trickle took his own life on Thursday. He was 71. While his life may have ended, the memories never will.
