Throwback Thursday: Eddie Lawsons Wins “The Superbikers”
Larry Lawrence | January 10, 2019
Throwback Thursday: Eddie Lawsons Wins “The Superbikers”
In this week’s Throwback we go back 36 years to the 1983 ABC Wide World of Sports Superbikers competition. The Superbikers was an off-season made-for-TV race that brought together the best riders from all disciplines of motorcycle racing.
Being on the most popular sports program in the country during the era when there were maybe three or four channel choices on local television, meant that millions of viewers would witness the annual competition. That fact caused a number of manufacturers to take the race very seriously and would enter their best racers and also make purpose-built machines for the event.
In 1983 Eddie Lawson was coming off his rookie season in 500cc Grand Prix racing for Yamaha, where he finished a solid fourth in the world championship. Yamaha prepared a YZ490-based machine for Superbikers. Lawson rode the wheels off the bike and raced to victory over Danny “Magoo” Chandler and Broc Glover. It marked the first time a road racer took victory in The Superbikers’
Lawson, who’d finished third in the ‘81 edition of the Superbikers and didn’t race in ’82 because Kawasaki didn’t have a machine that would be competitive, was eager to give the race another shot. “I’ve been waiting for this race for a long time,” he told reporters afterwards. Lawson would come back and win again in 1985.
Photographer Mitch Friedman snapped a shot of Lawson being interviewed by Wide World of Sports pit reporter Sam Posey during the ’83 event.
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