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generation of riders from the Wolverine State that rode fast Harley-Davidsons in the foot- steps of the great Bart Markel. Early on, Boody rode for Markel. "When I was a Junior, I went to the big race they had at Northville Downs in Detroit," Boody said in a 1987 interview with Dave Despain. "Corky Keener had just gone factory and quit riding for Bart. I just went over and asked him if he'd let me ride his bike. He didn't really want a Junior on his stuff, but he said he'd give it a chance. I won the Junior main and got second, behind Corky, in the Michigan Challenge race they had for Experts and Ju- niors. From that point on, Bart was sold." Markel constantly talked up Boody to Harley-Davidson race manager Dick O'Brien, and after an impressive rookie season that included a National win on a short-track in the Pontiac Silverdome, Boody was hired by the Harley factory team for the 1977 season. It turned out to be an excellent sophomore cam- paign for Boody. He scored 18 top-10 finishes, including wins at the Harrington (Delaware) Half- Mile and Indy Mile, and he was runner-up in the championship to teammate Jay Springsteen. Boody didn't win a race in '78, and at the end of the year O'Brien called and told Ted he was thinking about not hav- ing him on the team. Perhaps O'Brien was simply trying to feel out Boody and gauge his reac- tion to that statement. Boody, being young and full of gumption, was defiant. "Fine with me," he told O'Brien. "I'll just go ahead and do it myself, and I'll go road racing and I'll do this and that and I'll just kick your ass." Boody later admitted his reac- tion was dumb, but he said that at the time he was just 19 and had a million people telling him that he'd have the world if he raced with them. He came back to prove a point in 1979 and started the season's opening weekend with a victory in the Houston Astro- dome's Short Track, riding a Yamaha. Unfortunately, Boody was forced to miss most of 1979 after suffering a hard crash at the Loudon (New Hampshire) road-race National in June. After battling injuries and working for a season helping Honda develop its flat-tracker in the early 1980s, Boody came back strong in 1985 earning second to Shobert in the AMA Grand National Championship. One of the ways he managed such a high finish was that he did a lot of road racing that sea- son, though that turned out to be a catch-22 for Boody. While he grossed more than $100,000 that season, he netted only $20,000 due in large part to the expense of running his road- race program. Nevertheless, Boody proved that he was one of the most multitalented racers of the 1980s with that perfor- mance. By 1986, Boody realized that battling the factories was a los- ing proposition for any privateer, and he began to make his transi- tion to car racing. When looking back on his career, Boody considered the 1984 Springfield Mile win as the high point. "When I won Springfield, it was the biggest purse ever," he said. "And beating the facto- ries was neat. I liked being the underdog." Eddie Mulder said he was proud to have Boody take over his National number after he retired. "I would see him at different races, and he would always say, 'Hi, 12!' and I would say, 'Hi, 12' back to him. Then he would smile and ask if he was making me proud, and I'd always say, 'Yes you are!''' CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the January 23, 2008, issue of Cycle News. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to pre- vent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still plan- ning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor CN III ARCHIVES P114 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives