By Mitch Boehm
Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, the home of our spectacular AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days event each summer, has been around since 1962, but it’s not the only “Mid-Ohio” in motorsport lore.
Just a few miles southeast of the road course on Mill Run Road is a handful of acres of farmland upon which used to exist a racetrack called Mid-Ohio Moto Park, which hosted some of the most memorable and legendary professional races in motocross history during the 1970s and ’80s — 125cc USGP and Trans-AMA events featuring all the moto-stars, from DeCoster and Wolsink to Semics and Lackey to Hannah and Glover to O’Mara and Smith…and many others.
I attended a few of those races and was the proverbial 13-year-old hanging on the snow fences and climbing the scaffolding to watch the guys I’d read about all year long in Motocross Action and Popular Cycling. I even raced there a few times during ’75, ’76 and ’77, and to ride the same dirt as my heroes was like nothing else in the world…and it all left a very serious mark.
A decade or more ago, during some AHRMA vintage roadracing at VMD, I drove my rental car along Old Mill Road and to the scene of all those epic races I remembered as a kid. The entrance gate was open, and to my surprise, the road leading to the overgrown hillside where all the action happened — along with ex-owner Pete Weidner’s (1940–’18) house — was just as I remembered. I even snapped some photos of the starting gate with Weidner’s home in the background.
I returned a few times after that first visit to find the starting gate gone and the place a horse farm, but nothing could diminish the memories I — and many thousands of race fans, I’m sure — have of that very special place called Mid-Ohio.