Determination

DETERMINATION

Vincent Haskovec chased the American dream

JOHN ULRICH

“I love racing in A-mer-i-ca!” yelled Vincent Haskovec on the podium at Daytona International Speedway last March, after winning the AMA Superstock race and beating Yoshimura Suzuki’s Aaron Yates and Michael Jordan Motorsports Suzuki’s Jason Pridmore. Haskovec had made a late-race charge on his GSX-R1000, catching, passing and pulling away from the early leaders. He was so far ahead as he exited the infield for the last time that he didn’t even have to worry about a normal Daytona draft-and-pass to the finish line. Nobody could catch him, and he knew it.

No one would have bet on Haskovec winning at Daytona. He was riding a GSXR1000 prepped in Athens, Alabama, by my privately owned team that had made its name winning endurance races using Michelin tires for 12 years but had just switched to Pirelli rubber. “You’ll never win a race on Pirellis!” said one incredulous competitor when news of the team’s tire swap first came out. Yet here was Haskovec, boiling over with enthusiasm, standing on top of the box at the best-known motorcycle racetrack in the world, wearing an impossibly wide grin, rattling away into the microphone... Haskovec’s journey to that moment is an incredible story. He left his home in Prague, Czech Republic, in 1997, determined to

chase his dream of being a professional motorcycle racer in the U.S. He didn’t speak English, and didn’t know anybody in the States, but figured that California had mountains, mountains had twisty roads and somebody on those twisty roads would know about racing. So he stared at a Czech/ English dictionary on the plane, landed at LAX, climbed into a cab, and said, “Take me to mountains.” The driver dropped him off at a hotel in La Crescenta, the town at the base of the famed sportbike riding mountain road called the Angeles Crest Highway. A Russian friend of the Mexican hotel manager directed him to a nearby Czech hangout, and he soon had a new place to sleep (on the floor of a nearby house rented by other young Czechs, for $120 a month), and a construction job (with the Czechs). He found a newspaper ad for a nearby dealership, discovered that the owner had Polish ancestry, explained how he came here to race and got a slightly

used GSX-R750 for $5100. He met some more Czechs riding on Angeles Crest, who introduced him to some other Czechsincluding Willow Springs Motorcycle Club racer Bryan Kovarick. And four months after landing in a new country, Vincent Haskovec rode his GSX-R750 streetbike to the racetrack, took off the mirrors, passed his WSMC new-rider’s school and was on the starting grid.

I didn’t know who he was at the time but noticed a large, vocal group of people yelling in a foreign language and chanting “HAS-KO-VEC” every time he came past the Turn 1 grandstands.

It was the start of a phenomenon seen at every track Haskovec would visit-groups of local Czech immigrants cheering on their countryman.

When the race was over, Haskovec bolted on the mirrors and rode home.

Three months later he had won twice in the Novice class without ever changing the OEM tires, and became a provisional Expert. After that he progressed quickly through the club ranks, beating the fastest local experts including then-King of Willow Chuck Graves, heads up.

A sponsored ride in Formula USA followed during 1998, and he beat Nicky Hayden and Mark Junge at Willow Springs, but mostly struggled on new tracks on a

bike he never rode between rounds. In fact, he crashed so much his paddock nicknames included “Crashkovec,” “Medevac” and “The Bouncing Czech.” The team folded, and Haskovec was on his own again. He club raced at Willow Springs on Yamahas and then Carry Andrew of HyperCycle gave him Suzukis. Good results got him a guest ride on a Graves Motorsports YZF-R1 in Formula Xtreme for the final round of the 2000 season and he finished third, the first AMA podium finish for the team.

Haskovec thought he had finally made it. But Aaron Gobert got the Graves ride instead, so Haskovec rode Andrew-prepared Corona Suzukis in 2001, learning tracks in his first full AMA season and finishing second in the 750cc Supersport series behind teammate Jimmy Moore and ahead of Ben Spies. The next year, Haskovec found himself replaced by Steve Rapp on the Corona team, and it was decision time: Return to club racing and make money, or chase the AMA series as a privateer, borrowing money and running up credit card bills. Girlfriend Simona Gernay encouraged Haskovec to stay with the AMA, and he set out with a new GSX-R750 in a $2000 Dodge van. With engines built by Andrew and with Simona as his crew, Haskovec had a best finish of third in 750cc

Supersport...and spent $30,000 buying Dunlop tires.

He did what he could with what he had and got away with stuff nobody else could. Like the time he entered a practice day put on by my team. Halfway through the day, after the credit-card numbers had been run,

I found him and told him that the number he gave us was no good. “I know, man,” he told me in his heavily accented English, laughing. “What can I do? I have no money, and I have to practice. I made the number up!” Faced with his smiling face and honest answer, all I could do was laugh and figure that some day, somewhere, he’d pay me back.

Haskovec landed a ride with Hooters Suzuki in 2003, complete with free Pirelli tires, and earned his first AMA 750cc Supersport win, at Road Atlanta. By then, I had seen enough, and signed Haskovec to my team for 2004. It was his first paid ride and, free to concentrate on training and with plenty of testing and practice, Haskovec finished third in 2004 AMA Formula Xtreme points with a best finish of second despite season-long problems getting used to Michelin tires.

Haskovec had his own vision of what he needed for 2005, and that vision included Pirellis. He must have been on to something, seeing as he started out 2005 with that Daytona Superstock win. He was still

the class points leader four rounds into the season, when he crashed his FX bike at Infineon Raceway and slid into a steel barrier fronted by car tires, shattering a vertebra and damaging his spinal cord. He was flown by helicopter to a local hospital, where surgeons inserted titanium rods and screws to stabilize his spine.

Haskovec couldn’t feel or move anything below his chest, and hard times followed. The hospital bills overwhelmed his medical coverage, and a few months later a nasty infection required surgery to remove the hardware along with infected bone and tissue.

But good news came in the form of support from racing fans around the world, both in goodwill messages sent to getwellvincent@gmail.com and in the form of money raised and donated to the tax-exempt Wegman Benefit Fund (www. wegmanfund.org) to help the 31-year-old pay for rehab. Prior to surgery to remove the infection, Haskovec was in constant, excruciating pain. Now, he’s relatively comfortable, is working on making the best of his situation, and still has that mile-wide smile and infectious enthusiasm. □

John Ulrich, Editor of Roadracina World & Motorcycle Technology, is a former Cycle World staffer and owns Team MA EMGO Suzuki.