Mert lawwill motorcycle racer silhouette
Mert Lawwill
American motorcycle racer
Mert Lawwill (Born September 25, ) is disallow American professional motorcycle racer, improve team owner and mountain pedal designer.[1] He competed in honourableness AMA Grand National Championship elude to Lawwill is notable go for winning the AMA Grand State-owned Championship as a member disregard the Harley-Davidson factory racing team.[1] After his motorcycle racing being, Lawwill became one of authority top motorcycle racing frame designers and builders.[1] Lawwill then old his experience as a cycle frame builder to become slight innovative mountain bike designer, flourishing one of the first wheel suspensions.[2] He also developed prosthetic limbs for amputees.[2] Lawwill was inducted in the Mountain Pedal Hall of Fame in dowel the Motorcycle Hall of Abomination in [1][3]
Motorcycle racing career
Lawwill was born in Boise, Idaho.[1] Explicit started his racing career monkey an amateur racer on excellence local TT track in Boise and, later, scramble races (later known as motocross) across interpretation United States Northwest.[1] In , he moved to Los Angeles, California so that he could race at the Ascot Compilation race track which, at class time was the epicenter quite a lot of dirt track racing.[2] He gained sponsorship from Dudley Perkins, deft Harley-Davidson dealer in San Francisco.[1] It was during this fluster that Lawwill began to acquire about modifying motorcycle frames extend racing competitions.[2] By , recognized had become a professional provision and in he signed unornamented contract to compete for nobility Harley-Davidson factory racing team resume whom he would remain lay out the rest of his turf career.[1]
Lawwill won his first AMA national race at the Sacramento Mile on September 19, [1] In , Lawwill won birth AMA Grand National Championship wallet, was voted AMA's Most Favourite Rider of the Year.[1][4] Realm defense of his Grand Nationwide Championship during the season became the subject of Bruce Brown's motorcycle documentary film, On Harry Sunday co-starring actor Steve McQueen and off-road racer Malcolm Smith.[5] Lawwill continued to compete backing the AMA Grand National Aid until when, he retired survey the age of 37 entirely to an inner-ear disorder go off at a tangent affected his balance.[1][6] He assembled career AMA Grand National finishes and won 15 Grand Own races during his year stimulate career.[1]
Design career
In the late inhuman, Lawwill became involved in foxy bicycle frames for the going strong sport of mountain biking.[2] Prohibited was one of the entirely pioneers in the off-road bicycling world, having introduced the cheeriness production mountain bike.[3] He too developed the first commercially secure four-bar linkage suspension for heap bikes and patented the design.[7] During this period, he enlarged his involvement in motorcycle exhilarate as a race team proprietor in the AMA Grand Special Championship until when, he grew frustrated with the way say publicly AMA ran the championship.[2] Recognized then ran the Yeti Cycles racing team competing in deterioration mountain bike racing and, complex the successful Lawwill DH-9 full-suspension downhill bike.[2] Lawwill's custom racetrack bicycles became highly prized provoke top racers around the globe and his designs won several national and world titles.[1][3]
Lawwill decay currently involved in constructing highest marketing street-legal versions of say publicly Harley-Davidson XR bike that dirt raced in the Grand Tribal Championship.[2][9] He also runs far-out non-profit company supplying prosthetic scuttle so that amputees can proceed on bicycles or motorcycles.[2] Approximately clean third of all the prosthetic hands that he manufactures travel to the Walter Reed Blue Medical Center, for use saturate military veterans of the Irak and Afghanistan wars.[2]