update
John Ulrich
Just thinking about that wild ride in Kansas City makes me breathe hard, the crash so vivid in my mind that the only sure indicator that it didn’t happen last week is the fact that my then-toddler son Chris is now a 22-year-old roadracer who stands taller than I do and is faster than I ever was.
I still have the scars on my elbows (leathers didn’t come with armor in those days); after the crash, Ray Worth drove me to a drug store where I bought a toothbrush and hydrogen peroxide
and scrubbed black asphalt out of the deep, oozing abrasions.
And people still come up to me and talk about the original story, published almost 20 years ago.
Worth is now 64 years old and retired, and has sold two of the
three Harley-Davidson dealerships he once owned; his daughter and son-in-law run the third.
Worth abandoned the Harley-Davidson project after my crash. Instead, he fielded Joe Yeager on a Suzuki in NMRA Junior
(750cc) Pro Stock, and the pair held both ends of the class
(Worth’s memory says it was 9.60 @ 142 mph) ed up the next year and Worth and Yeager both ele I ever rode, a beast that looi the rear, with a skinny and way-too “It was too heavy and it kind of never wor recently. “Joe would tell me that the thing would sometimes, kind of nervous.”
I told Worth my theory of what went wrong, that the fact that I was a foot taller than Yeager meant my helmet was out in front
of the upper triple-clamp when I tucked in, and that change in
aerodynamics was enough to upset the bike, “Yeah,” Worth said. “I think that’s right. That bike was kind
of unbalanced, and that little change put it over the edge. We just never could make it work right.”
Now he tells me...
