Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/804174
VOL. 54 ISSUE 12 MARCH 28, 2017 P133 tape delay broadcast was shown about six weeks later. Being on TV back then was a big deal. I was surprised the following Monday morning to find out how many fellow high school students saw their classmate on the boob tube!" By 1970 the bugs were worked out and that year a standing-room-only crowd witnessed the smoothest Louisville race on record and it was Canadian Dave Sehl breaking Markel's strangle- hold on the race. Rains for days leading up to the national packed the fine limestone allowing riders to race full lock around the corners with their feet on the pegs. The only problem was the thick, sticky limestone shot up a powerful roost that would pulverize trailing riders. David Aldana took to keeping his right hand ffull-twist on the throttle through the turns, while his left hand was wiping dirt from his face shield! Sehl would go on to match Markel's record of three Louisville wins in 1973. It was 1975 when a young Jay Springsteen broke through to score his first national victory. He did it in spectacular fashion. "Springer" remem- bers it vividly. "Corky Keener had won it the year before riding up high in the cushion," Springer said. "I decided to ride the cushion that night and by the final there was just a small cushion way up by the hay bales. Everyone else rode low on the groove and somehow I found a way to make it work up high, clipping the bales in the corners and just sort of ran away with it." It was Springsteen who would finally break- through in 1979 to become the first four-time win- ner at Louisville. He would win it one more time in 1983 to end up with five; the most Louisville Half-Mile wins in the quarter-century history of the race. Everything was going great at Louisville through the 1960s and the '70s. But then came the tragic 1980 race. A spectator jumped a chest-high guardrail during a heat race and walked onto the racetrack, reportedly waving a whiskey bottle. Six riders swerved to avoid him, but David Jones had no place to go. He hit the spectator sending both horrifically tumbling down the track. Jones, who was just 18, died that night. The spectator never left the hospital and passed away a month later. Jimmy Filice won his first Grand National as a rookie on the Roberts/Lawwill team in 1981. Perhaps one of the most famous races in Lou- isville came in 1982. It was a historic win. Honda had won national road races, short tracks and TTs, but Scott Pearson's '82 Louisville victory marked Honda's first win on a big track in AMA Grand National competition. And Pearson did it on the underdog Honda NS750, the flat track machine based on the water-cooled Honda CX500 production machine. It was a highly un- likely victory on a machine that no one had been able to make work. "Louisville had a real wide straightaway, so everybody got a front row," Pearson said. "We lined up for the start and I looked and for what- ever reason nobody took the lowest line, and I thought 'Ooh perfect!' It was all cushiony and still wet down there and lots of traction. I got the holeshot and I rode my race and did a little blocking along the way and pulled it off." Nationals continued at Louisville Downs until 1991. They might have continued on, but the track closed and was bought by nearby Churchill Downs and was converted to a winter training facility for thoroughbreds. To this day there's a lot of mystery about the status of the track. Many believed the land was developed, but the fact is the track is still there. The grandstands are gone, but the track, which last hosted motor racing 26 years ago, sits there ever so inviting. When I visited, my dream would have been to have riding gear, a steel shoe and an XR—and oh yeah, a day pass. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives