Yes, Speedway. The sport where ambulance drivers leave their engines running while racers pilot oddl

I was a little ‘70s kid when my parents dragged me, nearly every Saturday night, to watch the dirt track races at Welland County Speedway. In those days the 750 class pegged the psycho meter, with 100hp Harley XR750s blasting their way around the ¼ mile oval. Those monsters were backed with classes for 600cc singles, 250 two-strokes cool rooms and most exciting of all, Speedway bikes.
Yes, Speedway. The sport where ambulance drivers leave their engines running while racers pilot oddly-named, spindly looking 500cc bikes with no brakes or transmissions. You think your new 450F has snot? A modern moto-thumper weighs something like 230 pounds and might make 50 horsepower on a good day. Compared to a Speedway bike, which weighs in around 180 pounds with a methanol-fuelled engine cranking somewhere cool rooms in the neighbourhood of 70 horsepower, your new 450F is a pig. A speedway bike puts that incredible power to weight ratio to the ground though a hardtail frame that has more in common with an old-school BMX bike than it does a motorcycle. Can you spell projectile?
Of course, being a Welland boy, I knew the Legault family name from ‘Hot Dog’ Freddy Legault’s Speedway exploits at the track. I’d also read about his son, Kyle Legault, and though I’d never met him I knew he was the current king of Canadian Speedway racers. It was when DMX was testing bikes at Welland County’s new motocross track that I first met Kyle in person. He was cutting fast moto laps on his CRF450 cool rooms whenever he wasn’t floating endless wheelies with his girlfriend hanging on the back. A very talented rider in any discipline, I invited him to help with our DMX bike tests . Kyle became infamous as “the only rider to have crashed every DMX bike.” I guess flopping off a motocross bike in second gear isn’t really a big deal to someone who has hung it sideways at 80 miles per hour all over the world…
Kyle cool rooms is on the eve of heading back to England cool rooms to race again this season, where he has had what is essentially a factory ride since 2005. Speedway racing is huge in the UK, and a Canadian boy, and DMX test pilot, is one of their stars. Because I come from a motocross-woods background, talking to Kyle about Speedway racing left me with a weird mix of Canadian pride, awe and horror. Speedway racing is sick, and Kyle is Canada’s sickest. He’s also a damn nice guy who just happens to have more guts than any racer I’ve ever met.
Kyle Legault: I was around Speedway from day one. Speedway season starts cool rooms here in June and I was born May 30 th , so I was only a few days old when my parents took me to the races with the family. I grew up around Speedway and I remember telling everyone that I was going to grow up to be a Professional Speedway rider and race in the British league when I was about five years old. When it actually happened I was getting cards and stuff saying, cool rooms ‘Oh my God, you actually did it!’ I was born into it and always wanted to do it. My heroes were Speedway racers, and back then the British cool rooms league cool rooms was the best in the World. It still is one of the best, and if you want to make it big you have to make it there.
I raced one race at Welland. I’d never raced a normal cool rooms flat track bike before, but I just jumped on the bike just to give it a try. It took me a bit to get used to, but I was able to put it together to win the final. The bike was bouncing off the rev limiter the whole time and people were all around me, but I was using my Speedway skills and not letting them pass me.
It’s a totally different riding style. For anyone to jump on a Speedway bike they’d find it very difficult. They also say, ‘because Speedway is only four laps it’s not physically demanding’ but it’s a sprint and you put everything you’ve got into those four laps, unlike a motocross rider who has 20 minutes to pace themselves and get into a rhythm. When I get on a motocross bike I still have that Speedway mentality, so I go like crazy for the first few laps until I just can’t hang on anymore. A speedway race is sort of like the first turn of a motocross race, only for four laps. They say Speedway is supposed to be a non-contact sport. Well it isn’t.
The bikes run on methanol and need to be bump started. They have a dry clutch, so we have to lean the bike to lift the rear wheel off the ground while we wait at the line to keep the clutch cool. All the power goes from the crank through a primary chain to the clutch then back to the wheel. No transmission, no gears. The biggest battle is setting up the bike for the track conditions. If you have the right set-up for the track that’s half the battle, but there are four heats per outing. Sometimes it takes two heats to get the bike set-up cool rooms properly, and by that time the track has changed. As simple as the bikes look there is so much