Costa Mesa Speedway in Costa Mesa, California USA is a major motorsports venue credited with the renaissance of motorcycle speedway racing in Southern California. The 185 yards (169 m) long track hosts both Solo and Sidecar speedway.
In 1968, 1937 Speedway World Champion Jack Milne and motorcycle enthusiast Harry Oxley teamed up to promote motorcycle racing at the Orange County Fairgrounds (OC Fair & Event Center). Interest in motorcycle speedway racing was minimal for the first two years, but the sport soon enjoyed a rapid increase in popularity.
When Costa Mesa Speedway opened its doors in the summer of 1969, it was at the height of the surfer craze in Southern California; skateboarding, BMX and motocross were becoming popular with the state's middle class. As such, races at the Costa Mesa Speedway became standing room only at the weekly events by 1971. Top riders including World Champions with 13 titles between them Ivan Mauger (6 times) and Barry Briggs (4 times) from New Zealand and Ole Olson (3 time WC) from Denmark soon made the trip over to challenge the new American speedway riders.
In 1981, Orange County native Bruce Penhall won his first Speedway World Championship, becoming the first American do to so since Jack Milne in 1937. Penhall would repeat as World Champion in 1982 when he won at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the only time the World Final was ever held outside of England or Europe before the advent of the Speedway Grand Prix series in 1995.
The popularity of the sport in North America peaked in the late 1970s and remained strong through the end of the century; it has waned somewhat since then. It has remained popular enough to spawn smaller tracks in California, among them tracks in Auburn, Industry and Victorville. European teams closely monitor the talent at these tracks and many riders are recruited by such teams.
Costa Mesa Speedway has enjoyed a host of track announcers over the years including Bruce Flanders, current announcer Terry Clanton and Motorcycle Hall of Fame inductee Larry Huffman, well known in Southern California radio markets for his "high-powered" motorsports advertising.
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The 2008 Costa Mesa Speedway Fair Derby
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Co-Founder Harry Oxley
Read more about Costa Mesa Speedway: Notable Costa Mesa Speedway Riders, External Links
Famous quotes containing the words mesa and/or speedway:
“This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau. The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)