Fast Freddie Spencer
3-Time World Grand Prix Champion and Road Racing Legend

PERHAPS NO SPORTSMAN in the history of motorcycle racing ever achieved as much, as quickly, and at such a tender age as the young man who, in the mid 1970's, rocketed to the attention of the American public as Fast Freddie Spencer.

Born in 1961 in Shreveport, Louisiana, Freddie Spencer began riding motorcycles as a toddler at the age of four. At five, he was competing in TT Scramble dirt track events in Dallas, Texas. By the age of eleven, when most young boys are thrilled just to hear the sound of playing cards in the spokes of a bicycle, Freddie Spencer had already won ten state motorcycle racing championships in Short Track and Dirt Track events.

In 1972, with those ten championships under his belt, he made his first foray into roadracing, fielding a 100cc Yamaha twin at Green Valley Raceway in Dallas, Texas in the 0-250cc stock production class. The dirt track experience paid off for Freddie: by 1977, he had won twelve national roadracing championships competing in both AMA- and WERA-sanctioned race events.



1978-1982
In 1978, Spencer began his professional roadracing career at the age of 18. That year, Freddie won every race in the AMA 250cc Grand Prix Road Race "Novice" Division while en route to winning the AMA National Championship. The following year, 1979, Freddie won the AMA 250cc Grand Prix Road Race "Expert" division National Championship, finishing first place in every race except for one, where he took second.

Spencer's achievements did not go unnoticed. In 1980, at nineteen years of age, he signed with American Honda Motor Company to race in the AMA Superbike National Championship Series. He also began racing overseas that year. In his first taste of European competition, Freddie won the first two legs of the Trans-Atlantic Match Races on a production based Yamaha TZ750. Incredibly, Freddie bested two former Grand Prix World Champions, Kenny Roberts and Barry Sheene, both of whom were supported by factory teams. He also signed with Yamaha Racing Europe to compete in selected Grand Prix World Championship Events.



In his first European Grand Prix, Freddie qualified 6th. This was just a single spot behind reigning 500cc World Champion Kenny Roberts, a man who, at the time, was considered the greatest motorcycle racer in the world. In 1981, Spencer inked an agreement with Honda to race selected Grand Prix World Championship events, and most importantly, to assist in the research and development of the new Honda NR500 four-stroke machine.

The following year, at the age of 20, Freddie finished third overall in his first full year of Grand Prix World Championship racing. He further stunned the racing world at the Belgian Grand Prix on July 4, 1982. Mounted on a Honda NS500, he become the youngest Grand Prix race winner in history. This was the beginning of the long-running domination of Grand Prix racing by the Americans, with Spencer and Yamaha-mounted Kenny Roberts setting the stage for the infamous 1983 racing season, which is considered by many as greatest World Championship Grand Prix contest of all time.

Freddie Spencer is considered by many to be the first professional road racer to use aggressive dirt track tactics on pavement. There is much discussion in the present era of AMA roadracing of the technique of "backing it in," where the racer deliberately applies the rear brake to drift the rear tire while entering a turn. Freddie Spencer was not only a pioneer and expert practitioner of this technique nearly twenty years ago -- he was also well-known for drifting the front tire into turns, using the contact patch to scrub off speed.

1983-1987
Spencer went on to win the World Championship in 1983 in the toughest competition on record: He and Kenny Roberts split 12 wins and 12 pole positions between them, with Spencer taking the win by a scant 2 points in the final race of the season.

At 21, Fast Freddie Spencer had become the youngest World Grand Prix Champion in history. 1984 was a hallmark year for Freddie Spencer. He played a major role in the research and development of a new two-stroke Grand Prix machine for Honda, considered the most radically designed bike in post-war Grand Prix racing. Due to various teething problems, Spencer started just five races on the new machine, but won four of those and still finished fourth in the World Championship point standings.

In 1985, the young man who had taken the championship from King Kenny Roberts in 1983 was soon to become the first person in history to win both the 250cc and 500cc World Championships in the same season. In the 250cc classification, Freddie competed in ten events, qualified on the pole six times, and won seven races. In the eleven 500cc races, Freddie qualified first nine times and won seven. This achievement stands alone in the history of modern Grand Prix racing; no competitor today would even attempt such a feat, yet Spencer accomplished it while setting nine new track records. Even more incredibly, in the same year, he won all three major divisions (250cc, 500cc and Superbike) at the AMA National at Daytona International Speedway. He is the first and only competitor ever to do so.

1988-1996
1988, with three World Championships under his belt, Spencer retired from Grand Prix racing. In the years that followed, he raced in selected events in the AMA Superbike Series. He won three major races during this period, including an amazing, rain-soaked victory at Laguna Seca in 1995. In 1996, over thirty years from the day a small boy entered his first dirt track race on an obscure Texas racecourse, Fast Freddie Spencer officially retired from professional motorcycle racing.

Freddie Today
Freddie Spencer's love of motorcycling has not abated since his retirement from competition. For the past few years, he has served as a color analyst on the Speedvision network for both World Championship and AMA Superbike racing, an occupation which kept him close to the sport to which he contributed so much.

But Spencer is not one to be content at ringside. In 1997, he opened Freddie Spencer's High Performance Riding School at the new Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The first class was held on March 26-27, 1997. Since that time, Spencer's institution has become regarded as perhaps the finest motorcycle riding school in the world.

Implementing modern technology with the kind of instruction that can come only from a man who has won three World Championships, and conducted at state-of-the-art facilities located at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Research and Development Center, Freddie Spencer's High Performance Riding School is one of the finest experiences in motorcycling, a fitting achievement for a man who is widely regarded as one of the greatest motorcycle racers and athletes of all time.



Source: Freddie Spencer Website, www.fastfreddie.com