‘King’ Gerrit’s a star turn

One of the guests at the Hagon sponsored Classic Dirt Bike Show at Telford on February 17/18 is Dutch dentist Gerrit Wolsink.

From dentistry to ‘King of Carlsbad’ and giving something back to the sport, the race life of Gerrit Wolsink is likely to be a major draw to the stage area of the Classic Dirt Bike Show at Telford International centre.

Wolsink was credited with being in at the start of the long travel suspension advances when he arrived at the Czech GP in the early 1970s. One of the team mechanics had sussed how to make twinshock rear suspension behave like monoshock, and so the revolution began. That was in his Maico days, as was his first win at the Carlsbad… a track he is quoted as saying he enjoyed a lot. Legend has it, in that peculiar American way, he owned Carlsbad… or to put it a slightly different way, he dominated the event for five years in a row, first with Maico, then with Suzuki.

He just seemed to gel with the event. Again Wolsink is quoted as saying “I liked the Californian people, weather and the track…”

In an almost effortless display of riding Wolsink would be deceptively fast and his fitness meant he was as fast at the end as he was at the beginning.

Gerrit will not only be on stage with Jack Burnicle each day but will have a chance to entertain the guests at the traditional dinner on Saturday evening.