Cycle News

VOL. 55 ISSUE 45 NOVEMBER 13, 2018 P117 10 individuals made straw purchases, primarily of mega-expensive RVs, took the up-front bank money from these fake purchases and then simply made installment payments to the banks. The lending fraud was massive and eventually got into the tens of millions. The scheme finally blew up when one of the participants was burning through cash so fast, he could no longer make his share of the payments. The house of cards crumbled. Jim Rashid, who ran the very suc- cessful 4&6 Cycle Racing team where Owen once raced, said he had an idea of how Owen could be talked into such a scheme. Jim explained that Owen had a busi- ness selling exhaust systems from Ja- pan. The importer Owen worked with had tax issues and suddenly needed cash. He asked Owen to pay him all at once for the pipes he'd purchased, re- gardless if they were sold or not. Being the guy Owen was, he felt obligated to find a way to help his friend get out of the tax jam. You might begin to un- derstand Owen's subsequent actions as one plausible way a good person could make bad choices. Toronto-born Owen Weichel came up in the sport the hard way, club racing in the 1980s, under-funded, scratching and clawing his way to be- come one of Canada's up-and-coming road racers. According to longtime Canadian race organizer Colin Fraser, Weichel won races in all three Canadian Na- tional Pro classes during his lengthy career. Owen also became a leading AMA Pro road racer during the mid-1990s and also won Formula USA races. He was a consistent top-10 finisher in AMA Supersport, even breaking into the top five on occasion as a privateer during a peak time in the series when there were over a dozen factory or factory- supported riders. Rashid told the story of the time Owen had an AMA 750 Supersport podium in the bag, but slowed to let a rider who was in the championship hunt go by. It was St. Louis, 1995. Jim talked Owen into racing 750 Super- psort at Gateway on his Kawasaki ZX- 6R. In spite of his horsepower deficit, Owen passed six riders on the first lap and ran second to Yoshimura Suzuki's Fred Merkel. Another factory rider, Vance & Hines Yamaha's Tom Kipp, managed to get around Owen, but then he was on a clear path to third. "Then Owen realized Thomas Wil- son was behind him," Rashid remem- bers. "He liked Thomas and knew he was battling for the championship, so instead of thinking of himself and scor- ing his first AMA national podium, he allowed Thomas to go by so he could get the extra points. How many guys do you know that would do something that generous?" During his racing days no one in the paddock was closer to Owen than teammate Jon Cornwell. Cornwell said driving across Canada going to races they became almost as close as broth- ers. The two would go on to become one of the elite AMA teams of the 1990s, winning endurance nationals with 4&6 Cycle. "The adventures Owen would come up with were mind-boggling," Cornwell grinned. "You couldn't possibly make up the stories. With him, stuff just al- ways seemed to happen. We became teammates at 4&6 in the endurance series and that was a really good mix. I always enjoyed Owen's company and never had to worry about whether the guy was putting out full effort. He always went all in with everything he had. I never had a bad day with the guy and that's the best thing you can say about anybody." Rick Mitchell, who worked at Honda and ran Pro Honda Oils sponsorship program of AMA Supersport, became a sponsor and good friend of Owen's. "Later I found out that we were virtu- ally next-door neighbors and we took up power walking six nights a week and solved the problems of the world on a nightly basis," Mitchell laughed. "At one point he referred to me as his best friend, which was kind of touch- ing. He was a wonderful family man and his focus in the last years of his life was on his family, his wife Georgia, and his sons Owen Jr. and George. "When he was racing, Owen always believed he could beat the best. I think that's why I got behind him and supported his racing, because he tried to do just that every time he got on the track." SuperbikePlanet.com's Dean Ad- ams also spoke of Weichel's character. "He did some advertising on the site a number of years ago," Adams said. "He ran it a little into the red and his bill got pretty big. I told him to just forget it—his son had just been born. But he sold his surfboard and some bike parts and paid me. "I think Owen kind of lived the way he raced—he took that gap and made the pass. He wanted glory and to provide for his family the best he could. There are guys in NYC who stole bil- lions from banks and never did a night in a holding cell. "Owen paid his debt." CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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