KALEVI VEHKONEN

For such a small pool of people to draw from, Finland seems to have the knack of producing great off-road riders. The trials world has seen Yrjo Vesterinen and Tommi Ahvala scale great heights while the MX world had Heikki Mikkola leading the world. Before these riders though there was Kalevi Vehkonen who helped Montesa take its place on the MX world stage with a superb fourth place in the 1972 250 championships. Considering the Japanese factories were flinging money around like it was going out of fashion and Montesa was a much smaller concern, Vehkonen’s achievements were all the more remarkable and Montesa paid homage to them by christening their 250 MX model ‘ VR’ for Vehkonen Replica in 1973.