By The Commish

At first I thought it was a joke. It was summer 1986, I was watching ESPN's "Thursday Night Thunder" in my living room in New Jersey, and the driver being interviewed was an up-and-coming sprint car phenom from Indiana. He was 15 years old but he looked about eight, with dirty blond hair in a floppy bowl cut, and his voice hadn’t broken yet. He looked like Dennis the Menace, standing about 8 inches shorter than the roll cage of his sprint car at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Yet he handled the interview with aplomb, talking about racing Sammy Swindell and his past championships. His name was Jeff Gordon, and it was the first time I had seen the young racer. That night he'd sit on the pole and win the A-main over drivers three times his age and with 30 years more experience. Instantly, I was a fan.

Those mid-80s television broadcasts, first on Thursday nights and then on Saturdays, were where many of us first encountered Gordon's talent. The news that (weather and the stork willing) will return to his dirt roots in Tony Stewart's "Prelude to the Dream" charity race at Eldora only serves to remind us that Gordon was a well-established champion on dirt long before he came to stock cars.

Gordon started as a quarter-midget racer at age five, and won his first race in his second season in 1976. In 1977, he won the Western States quarter-midget championship, his first major title, and at age 8 won 35 races and the national quarter-midget championship racing against drivers in their 20's and 30's. Stepfather John Bickford financed his son's career by selling Gordon's winning cars to other competitors as a way of demonstrating that the cars were legal; already, Gordon's dominance led to whispers of cheating.

After he won his first national championship in quarter-midgets, Jeff began racing karts as well, winning his first 25 races in the 10 horsepower machines. After winning a second national quarter-midget title at age 10, he moved up to a class called superstock lights and a third quarter-midget championship at 11 before, at age 12, moving up to sprint cars.

Very few drivers his age had the strength, focus, or car control to handle these $25,000 beasts, and when John Bickford first approached legendary sprint car builder Lee Osbourne to build one for Jeff, the veteran at first refused. But Bickford and Gordon persisted, and in February 1984, Gordon drove his first sprint car races in Florida. His success there was limited, but Gordon persisted. Briefly in 1985 he flirted with a career change in competitive water skiing, but the driving bug was too strong, and by 1986 he was back in Florida during Speedweeks, where he scored several top five finishes and began to make a name for himself. That spring, commuting from California twice a month, he won a race at Chillicothe, Ohio, and his family realized they had to make a decision. In April of 1986, Gordon and Bickford moved to Indiana, where Gordon could race every weekend (his mother and sister followed after Kim's high-school graduation in June). In racing-mad Indiana, Gordon fit right in.

And that's where the legend of the Kid on Dirt began. Sprint cars run on a variety of surfaces and tracks, so car control becomes essential for success, and Gordon quickly improved his ability to handle the 700 hp beasts. From his home base at Bloomington Speedway, he began winning poles and scoring podium finishes, and attracted not only national but international attention. Over the 1987-88 Christmas vacation from Tri-West High School, Gordon traveled to Australia and New Zealand with Frank Kimmel and other sprint car stars under the sponsorship of Australian businessman John Rae. Gordon won 15 of 16 races Down Under, then returned home to finally move up to the big leagues of sprint car race-- USAC. Having turned 16, Gordon was finally able to enter major races, and again, he quickly established himself as a star, and TV discovered him as a natural talent.

In 1989 Gordon won five races in the USAC sprint car division, but switched in mid-season to the USAC midgets, the widely-accepted road to a seat in Indy cars. He was rookie of the year in the midgets even though he only ran half the season, and in 1990, he won the USAC Midget title. The following year, he moved up to the Silver Crown class and won that USAC championship as well. In his four years in four USAC divisions, Gordon made 93 starts, with a total of 66 top 10s, 55 top 5s, and 22 victories on legendary tracks like Winchester, Salem, IRP, and Eldora. The Dennis-the-Menace bowl cut was replaced with a mullet and a cheesy mustache, but that same polish and sparkle continued to shine every time we saw him on camera.

Of course, we know what happened next. No Indy car ride appeared, ESPN gave Gordon the opportunity to go to the Buck Baker driving school, the Baby Ruth ride came together, and the rest is history. It’s been 15 years since Gordon regularly ran dirt, and as far as I know, aside from his two Race of Champions appearances, he hasn’t run a competitive dirt race since 1992. He’s never driven a dirt late-model, the car type that will run at Eldora.

But some skills are never lost, and it's hard to tell who’s more excited to see him return to Eldora. Is it Gordon, the promoter Stewart, or his fellow competitors? Stewart's career arc in USAC was about two years behind Gordon, and the two only competed in the same event once—both crashing out in the lower mains and not meeting in the final. Stewart says it's an "honor" to have Gordon return to dirt at his track, and says he expects Gordon to pick up where he left off. Kasey Kahne, who dominated USAC a decade after Gordon left, says that racing Gordon on dirt is a "dream, because in USAC I always heard how good he was on dirt." I'm sure I’m not the only racing fan who can’t wait to see Gordon return to his racing roots. Hopefully, that old dirt magic will reappear one more time.

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