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Here’s a shot of Danny Turners at Mid Ohio in 1980 and Massimo Contini’s works bike at the 1987 Steel City 125 USGP (Ross Maeda photo). Shame the 125 class never came to the US more than a few years.
The Shop
A few weeks ago, a nice guy from Ohio came by my shop to take a look at my O'mara ME125. He was at this race and told a story of his girlfriend after the final moto saying that she could get Johnny's jersey. She disappeared into the cab of the box van with JO's mechanic, and what do you know? She came out with a muddy jersey!
He actually brought the jersey and gave it to me to go with the bike. Here's where the story gets interesting... I figured that the jersey that I have was one that Johnny wore that day. Maybe practice, or either moto. I just watched all five of the videos posted above, and I noticed that at the end of video 5, Johnny's mechanic is running back to the pits and guess what he's wearing? A Johnny O Mugen number 101 jersey. Now I'm not sure if I have a race jersey, or that one. Either way, it's great story.
How many Mugen bikes do you have in there?? Damn, between you and Joe Newman you guys have some great bikes!
Good work fella
This area was filled with vans with their speakers on their roofs cranking out the popular albums of the era
People cooking on campfires, the thump of XR75's running about, it was a great party.
Pit bike riding/racing went on ALL night, there was a hill by the pits where everyone gathered with each rider trying to out do the other..fire was later added to the jump.
There was this one drunk guy who was being a complete jerk, so when he went to the potra potty some people stuck a stick in the door lock and proceeded to roll this cat down the hill...needless to say when the door swung open at the bottom of the hill he was covered in TP and all kinds of fluids......
The mechanics also had their own pit race.
One year it rained and the van guys decided to have a mud O cross.....funny seeing vans center punching each other...the ground was littered with fiberglass flares and spoilers.
The one thing about Mid Ohio is that there was always something going on at any given time of the day/night.
Oh yea we also had this little thing called the Smith Hannah battle...
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Pat should have won that day in 77, he was consistently faster throughout that day, practice, early, mid and late motos. Still top American ment a lot back then.
It still boggles my mind how important that class was in the world and locally....and then "poof!!" with the stroke of a fucking pen.
Pit Row
Yellow = current sports car course.
Black = USGP long gone the the music theater and lake are still there
My mom, dad, and I were camped there kind of away from things because my dad brought my 50 so I could ride when I got bored. I'm not for certain who all the riders were but they set up a couple of trash barrels to race around. It started raining and one of them slid right into the side of my dad's new van he just got lettered up for his shop. I can vividly remember it was the first time I had ever really seen my dad lose his shit. He was a Gunny in the USMC and a lot of that came out.
I remember reading in Dirt Bike or Motocross Action magazine that the sure-fire way to sneak into the pits at a race was to walk in backwards, because people watching the gates will see your face and equate it with walking out. If you are walking in they will see your back.
Yeah, that didn't work!
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