Admittedly, I was wrong. I thought that one needed to be crazy to ride a Nitro Harley, apparently you just need to be invincible. During the IHRA Mardi Gras Nitro Jam last weekend legendary nitro motorcycle racer Jay Turner jumped off his bike at more than 160mph before it crashed into the wall at the top end of the track. From my position on the announcing deck I thought I had just seen him die. It was by far the scariest crash I have witnessed in the hundreds of drag races I have announced thus far. We have photos of the wreckage.
To make matters even more legendary, when safety personnel arrived at the top end of the track, Turner was in the process of self checking the funcationality of his various humanoid body systems. When it was determined that all the necessary stuff was connected, he got up, dusted himself off, spent a couple minutes with the medics, and immediately began searching for a bike to ride the next day.
He did ride on Sunday, in a different set of leathers. There’s courage and then there’s downright balls. This absolutely qualifies as the latter. I wouldn’t climb out of the electric chair to get on one of those things, Turner didn’t think twice about doing it again after a run that went rogue on him.
That, kids, if a freaking drag racer.
