Let me paint the scene.

American Motorcycle Racing Association’s (AMRA) Greg Baugh was in a good mood, and why shouldn’t he be? It had been a great day of qualifying at this annual celebration of Harley-Davidson drag racing and culture at Bowling Green, Kentucky’s beautiful Beech Bend Raceway. Saturday’s on-track action at this well-attended event was capping off with the third round of nitro qualifying and Baugh was expecting some great performances.

As a beautiful sunset waned off to the left of the track, lightning was moving in from the right. Sportsman racer John Shotts had just hit a squirrel at 100 feet, setting the stage for a larger collision to come.

The large 19-bike Hawaya Racing Pro Fuel field showed the performance that Baugh was looking for, with Bad Apple Mary Dangrow running 7.39 to slot in behind champion Sam White’s number one 7.36. Japanese Nitro Funnybike rider Tadashi “Reggie” Saito spectacularly torched a head just after launch. It was a good show for the starting line crowd, now in the dark of night.

Next up was Outlaw Bagger veteran and Top Fuel newbie Frank Velasco (pictured doing his burnout above). Frank made a nice clean pass and shut off at about half track. Good thing.

As builder/tuner Steve Vickers and I were talking about how straight Frank’s pass was and Frank’s progress to this point, someone shouted that there was a motorcycle coming the wrong way up the track. Driving through the starting line crowd was a ghostly pale, skeletal man with long white hair. He rode to the barriers that at the back of the tower and then collapsed in a heap with his motorcycle. Screaming in pain, he had a very badly broken leg, The lower leg bones were broken completely through, the lower half, ankle and foot hanging and twisting by skin, muscle and tendon alone.

Then a car came down the track toward the starting line. It was Velasco, who had commandeered the chaplain’s car to chase down his assailant. He jumped out and rushed towards the man in a lather of raging fury, and who could blame him? He had seen the headlight of the crazed biker coming towards him on the racetrack, his left knee striking and breaking the man’s right leg clean through and his fortunately heavily-gloved hand striking the man’s bike.

Frank was hell-bent on giving the man a good beating, but Baugh, Bad Apple Mary and others attempted to restrain him, explaining about the man’s broken leg. By the time Frank—a firefighter—reached the man, his emotions made a 180 degree turn from enraged victim to professional caregiver, helping to get the boot off the screaming old man.

Off to the side I saw Universal Fleet & Tire’s Michael “Big” Train videoing the scene. I couldn’t decide whether the look on Train’s face was a wince of empathy or a smirk of humor. It proved to be the second.

“The trouble all starts with that Jap bike,” laughed Train, pointing to the man’s V-Twin which I now realized was a Honda.

“I guess he fucked around and found out!” said Train’s buddy. “I bet at 67 or whatever the fuck age he is, he didn’t think he’d be lying on the ground at a biker event crying like a little girl.”

And that basically set the tone for how this thing was going to be handled. “Stop bleeding on me!” shouted Nitro Funnybike rider Rebel Glover—a medic in his other life—who was trying to straighten out the man’s leg. One has to imagine that one look at the man’s likely poor insurance would result in an amputation rather than a protracted save.

At the ready line, Top Fuel champion Ryan Peery removed his helmet. “I’m done, I’m not making a pass,” said Peery, with Jay Turner having made a similar decision. The tree came down followed by rain and the program was over for the night.

But today is another day, surely one back to good AMRA Harley drag racing competition and no shenanigans from apparently drunk interlopers on the wrong bike in the wrong place.

story and photos by Tim Hailey, video courtesy of Frank Velasco