Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Mike Harth, 1956-2004 ike Harth , a leading privateer road racer of the 19805 and 1990s, died of unknown causes wh ile sleep ing at his home in O klahoma C ity, Oklahoma, ea rly Monday morning, January 5. He was 47. Harth was a gritty and outspoken com - M ever watched his head?" Just then he went into a wildly exaggerated imitation of James' well-known head bobb ing. The ent ire room burst into laughte r. Even James cracked a smile as he shook his head in bemusement. Harth and James later became good friends pet itor w ho made his name in motorcycle and worked together on various racing pro j- racing the hard way, by working his way up the ladder in the club racing ranks, ea rning a ects. living in factory contingency racing that became popular in the mid-I 980s. Harth , who was born on May 28, 1956, in O klahoma City, came out of the rough-andtumb le O klahoma dirt tra ck circuit and began road racing in the early I980s. He qUickly moved up the ranks in club racing and made his AHA Superbike debut in 1983. He earn ed the National #88, which he would carry for most of his career. Harth was a leading Superb ike privateer during the 1980s and early '90s, scoring I7 career to p- I0 AMA Superb ike finishes, with his best result being fifth, which he accom plished four times. On e of those top -five resu lts came in the Daytona 200 in 1989, where he scored his highest finish ever in the March Classic, riding a privately entered Suzuki G5X-R750. Harth ea rned a reputation for telling it exactly as he saw it in postrace interviews. One of his more noto rious and humorous postrace interv iews included once openly carp ing on Jamie James' riding tact ics as James looked on. "No wo nder he can't hold a line through the turns ," Harth to ld the journali st in the press conference. "H ave you In addition to being a journeyman AHA 5upe rb ike campaigner, Harth was also a top WERA Nat ional Endurance Series rider for Team Suzuk i Endu rance (now called Valvoline EMGO Suzuki) and was a me mber of the champ ionship-winning AMA Super Team squad Dutch man Racing that won the AHA endurance road racing crown in 1989. Harth was also successful in Suzuki Cup and Formula USA competition. He earned the nickname "Iron Mike" after coming from a last-row start in the 1986 Suzuki GSX-R Cup final at Road Atlanta and charging all the way to second place in spite of riding with both hands broken. In 1988 he set a motorcycle track record at North Carolina Motor Speedway in Rockingham on a Jim laBine-tuned Suzuki.The record we nt unbroken for a number of years. "I knew it was going to be a long day when Mike Hart h showed up for a race," said fo rme r Daytona 200 winner David Sadowski. "I neve r saw a tougher ride r than Mi ke . I can re member him taking some pret- ty big lumps, and he'd somehow show up on the grid, and not just show up, but he 'd find a way to run up front. It's sad in a way to think that Mike never got the break in the sport he deserved that might have propelled him to the next level. As hard -nosed as he was as a rider, he was a co mpletely diffe re nt person without the helmet on. He was a gre at friend and a perso n you could trust." Harth was ranked seventh nationally in AHA Superbike in 1989. He twice finished the year ranked in the top five in AMA Supersport racing. Harth scored perhaps his most famous victory in 1992 , when he won the Daytona round of the AMA 750cc Supersport race aboard a Kawasa ki ZX-7. It would prove to be Kawasaki's last victo ry at the Daytona Supersport eve nt until Tommy Hayden finally bro ke through to give the co mpany another w in in the race some II years later. Less than two months after wi nning at Daytona , Harth suffered a catastrophic crash at Charlotte Motor Speedway in May of 1992. A tire blew out on his motorcycle, and he slammed into an outside retai ning wa ll at triple-digit speed. His suffe red nume rous bro ken bones and a ser ious head injury in the accide nt. After a yearlong re hab, Harth made a rema rkable comebac k and cont inued rac- ing professionallyon and off up until a couple was never able to regain the success he had prior to the Charlotte crash. Harth is survived by his brother Joe Harth II I, sister Monte Simmo ns, ste pm o the r, Marian Harth , wife, Jennife r, and sons Joey and Dustin. of years ago , but he Lor ry Lowr ence "I knew it was going to be a long day when Mike Harth showed up for a r~~~:::WSki Fujinami's First Takahisa Fujinami rode his Montesa- HRC RTL 250 to victory in the Koblenz Indoor Trial in Koblenz, Germany, on January 10 for his first-ever win in the World Indoor Trials Championship. Fujinami ended up in a 14-point tie with Gas Gas' Adam Raga but came out on top in the tie-breaker. Beta's Albert Cabestany finished third . "I'm really very happy," Fujinami said in a team release. "I've been after this first victo- ry in the world indoo r ser ies for a long time, and at last I've made it. I was already feeling good in the first lap, and when I started the seco nd lap with a failure , I concentrated on thinking that I ought to try to start again without any failures. My rivals' mistakes he lped me recover, and in the parallel run I did my abso lute best. I saw the great occasion there before me, and I couldn't pass it up. I ded icate this triumph to the whole Montesa-HRC MotoGP Changes Grid The FIM and the Grand Prix Commi ssion have announ ced several changes to the Road Racing World Championsh ip Gra nd Prix rules, with the most notable being the change in the grid for the MotoGP class. Beginning with the opening rou nd of the series in South Africa on April 18, the MotoGP grid will feature rows of three instead of four. The other change is w hat the FIM calls the "Ride Through Procedure." Instead of forcing penalized riders to undergo stop- and-go penalties, the guilty parties will now just have to re turn to Pit Lane and carry their "pit-lane speed" down Pit Lane and back onto the track. tea m ." Raga con tinues to lea d th e Wo rld Champ ionship after four rounds, 34-32 , ove r Dougie Lampkin, the Brit failing to qualify out of the first rou nd. Fujinami is third in the stand ings w ith 27 points. 8 JANUAR 21, 2004 • CYCLE NEWS Y Had to happen . German biking teen fanzine Mopped has run a poll for the sexiest motorcycle racer on the grid in 2003 - and the result willdismay the Valentino Rossifan club. Rossi came in at the bottom of the poll with zero points - that 's right. zip. zero, nada points, just like a particularly dire song from Norway or Croatia in the Eurovision Song Contest. Still, there's no shame in that - since MX god and ISDT champion Stefan Everts tied with Valentino down at the bottom of the ladder. The winner? Stand up French 250cc GP winner Randy de Puniet, with 2 I times as many votes as runner-up Carlos Checa! The Spanish MotoGP rider just sneaked home in second place a couple of votes ahead of Superbike racing's Captain America , Ben Bostrom. Another Superbike star, that matinee idol favorite of the older set , Frankie Chili, narrowly outpointed Britain's blond bombshell World Superb ike Champion Neil Hodgson for the next two places. Sounds like a casting call for the longawaited Hollywood bike racing movie. I hope Randy de Punier's got a good agent ... Alan Cathcart 40 t h Anniv ersary n -

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