FAREWELL ITOH-SAN

It is with great sadness that I write this tribute to a long-time Japanese Suzuki Team icon who was one of Suzuki’s flagship riders and my friend of 59 years. When we first met each other at the 1960 TT, whilst sharing the same hotel, I was riding as a member of the Geoff Monty Team. His name (unknown way back then) was Mitsuo Itoh, a 22-year-old employee of the Suzuki Motorcycle Company in Japan. His lifelong career was spent with Suzuki, working up through the ranks as an engineer and then joining the factory racing team to ride alongside his world champion team-mate Hugh Anderson. He supported him in the 50cc, 125cc and occasionally the 250 class on board the rather frightening 250 four, which in those days was prone to rapid engine seizures and christened ‘Whispering Death’ by short time Suzuki Team rider, Australian Jack Ahearn. When I first met Itoh in 1960, not only did I share a hotel with him but that same year we also managed to share a hospital ward in Nobles Hospital. This was brought about due to the fact that for the first early morning practice that year we all set out at 5.15am, in thick fog, and this caused many, many crashes on the mist-shrouded mountain section. I ended up in hospital with a broken neck, with Mitsuo Itoh in the next bed with a broken leg, plus Eric Oliver world sidecar champion and his passenger, and Ernst Degner (MZ) all admitted with various assorted injuries. Little did I realise that within the next couple of years I would be competing against Mitsuo and his Suzuki as a member of the Honda

team. In 1963, Mitsuo Ito became the first and only Japanese rider to win a TT Race, when he took the 50cc Suzuki to the top of the rostrum. It was a wonderfully proud moment to have a Japanese rider and a Japanese machine on the top step of the TT podium for the first time in history. He was also involved in Ernst Degner’s induction into the Suzuki team when he defected from the MZ team to Suzuki in 1960, which led to a follow-up of numerous world championships, brought about by the increased reliability and horsepower that Degner had now added to Suzuki’s package. Mitsuo Itoh had a little known but important race car win under his belt, when in 1970 he won the Junior 7 Challenge Cup in a single-seater car at The Japanese Fuji Circuit at the very respectable average speed of 130.90mph. As one of Suzuki’s most loyal and longest serving racing employees, Ito was extremely popular with his fellow team-mates and fellow competitors. He helped pave the way over his 60-plus years with the company and proved to be a major part in that company’s outstanding success. So, Mitsuo, we will all miss your smile, your ability, your friendship and thank you, for giving us all those magical Suzuki moments in a career which brought the Japanese into our racing lives in such a rewarding and memorable manner. You will always be with us, Ito-san. Sayonara.