Paducah Raceway TT, Paducah, KY 2004

GNC TT Round 5
Jack Meadows Memorial Race
Paducah International Raceway
Paducah, KY
Sept 10, 2004

Meadows’ last race
It was twenty years ago when Jackie Meadows (Kawasaki, Jansen Racing, Factory Delty Racing, Yoshimura) started his incredible career. Along the way, with help from his father, Big Jack, he won an impressive eight national championships and became the first amateur to receive full-out factory backing. His family sacrificed nearly all of their time and money to Jackie’s talent. Pam, Jackie’s mom, took on a marketing role and pulled off another first. She successfully signed Jolly Rancher Candies as a major sponsor of Jackie’s. The team always had a wheel barrel full of Jolly Ranchers in their pit area. What’s more she later signed Budweiser as an even bigger sponsor, but had to surrender the sponsorship when Budweiser found out how young Jackie was. Fittingly, she recently lured Pepsi into a one last race sponsorship and supplied everyone in the pits with Pepsi products at Paducah International Raceway.

Big Jack went above and beyond with every detail you could possibly think of, and many most could not think of, in order to help his son win. It was ’85 when Kawasaki took note of Jackie and the Meadows family’s extraordinary commitment to the sport. Kawasaki quickly signed Jackie as a big part of their Team Green program. The deal, combined with how professional the Meadows’ program ran, had many top ranked pros extremely jealous. Kawasaki was pleased at how well their new investment represented their brand. They had planned for him to continue with his dominance in the pro ranks.

Just when Jackie was about to turn pro the sport changed. Manufacturers were forced to defend themselves from three wheeled lawsuits and quickly distanced themselves from three or four wheeled ATV racing all together. After traveling the country just about every single weekend for nearly six years, he decided rather than spend more of his family’s time and money, he would take a break from the sport. The Loretta Lynn’s GNC event in ’88 marked his young retirement from the sport.

The break ended up being a long one. Fourteen years to be exact. Always keeping an eye on his favorite past time, he decided it was time for a comeback. He showed up at the Fort Dodge, IA GNC with a quad he bought from Joe Byrd a few weeks earlier. Jackie, once again, had major help from his biggest fan – Big Jack, and financial backing from his entire family (including his sister, Lisa, who sold her prize winning show horse to help finance Jackie’s racing). He would continue right where he left off. He won his heat that day and pulled the fastest qualifying time of the day on Fast-Trak Promo’s unique and innovative Iowa style TT course. Unfortunately a tangle up with Jimmy “Superfly” Elza stopped hopes of a good finish on that day.

Last year, Jackie was serious as ever to claim the one thing he didn’t in all of his racing days, – a pro level national championship. Thanks to his dad, Reid Nordin, Doug Douchette and other key players at Kawasaki, Jackie chased ’03 points in the GNC TT Pro Production class and came close to doing just that. In the end, he won last year’s Paducah TT and finished the TT season just five points shy of champion, Mike Walsh.

Five months later, Big Jack had a heart attack and passed on. The final years of his life were wonderful ones. Thanks to Jackie’s comeback, Big Jack was once again in his glory, – tinkering with a race quad, traveling with his family and cheering his son on in his favorable-lovable-way.

With the loss, Jackie said it just isn’t the same without his dad. Combining that with all the responsibilities of taking over Big Jack’s cable installation business, sacrifices were made. Jackie thought it was best to hang it up for good and announced this Paducah, KY GNC TT as his last race.

Hitt’s comeback
The stage was set. Meadows won this race last year and looked to have winning speed in practice this year. Most of the faces in the crowd were not present in Jackie’s heroic-hard-charging days of the eighties, but out of respect and admiration – they cheered him on nonetheless. While this race was dedicated to the life of Big Jack Meadows, who touched so many people at race tracks throughout the country, and the career of Jackie “Holeshot” Meadows, it also marked another comeback if you will. The comeback of Shane Hitt (Yamaha, Sparks, Hinson, PEP).

Heats
In his heat race Jackie slipped to the rear of the pack with an improper set up, but kept his head up. Jackie would have to work his way through the pack with a second row main event start. Not Honda’s Tim Farr however. Farr (Honda, Baldwin, DG, Sparks) easily passed his way to the front and went on to take the heat win.

Earlier in the year Hitt broke his ankle so bad that his heel was upside down! The injury was ugly enough that it had doctors wondering if he would be able to even walk again. After steel pins, plates, screws, rods, months in a bed and massive therapy – Hitt is back! He proved that without question in what he later called his best race ever. Currently he doesn’t walk very well, but he sure rides just like he used to. Like Farr, Hitt passed his way to a heat race win as well.

Main Event
It was all Yamaha to the first turn as Keith Little (LSR, Sparks, Ronnie’s) pulled the holeshot followed by Hitt and Harold “The Bee” Goodman (Nichols, Sparks, PEP). Meadows, sporting a new Doug Gust replica Yoshimura motor, impressively swerved his way past nine riders and tucked into a respectable mid pack spot by the time the pack arrived at the entrance to the Paducah infield. All for not though, Zac Willett (Media All stars, Sparks, JB) crashed in turn one, causing a restart. Meadows rode directly to Willett and made sure he was alright.”Get up! Let’s go. Shake that shit off”, he said to young Willett. He did just that. Unfortunately for Meadows the re-start wasn’t very good to him. He would end up second to last as they entered the same spot on lap one.

 

 

A Sparks Racing Yamaha YFZ assault of Little, Hitt and Goodman once again made their way to the infield first. Honda’s Tim Farr was right in their faces with an early fourth place position. Hitt studied Little’s moves and found room to pass for the lead. Later Farr found opportunity to pass Goodman and disposed of Little as well. From then on he studied Hitt’s every move trying to find a weakness. Lap after lap Farr haunted Hitt’s comeback ride. Meanwhile Little and Goodman didn’t surrender and kept the Hitt/Farr charge at bay. As the race went on any of these four could have wound up with a win. Close racing indeed

“Everyone had high expectations of me”, said Hitt. “To be honest I didn’t know what to expect. My leg’s pretty bad, it’s no where near healed. At first I thought I would wait until I started walking on it better but I thought to myself – I believe I can ride, it doesn’t matter if I can walk or not. It was a really good race. I kept wanting the white, but it seemed like they were never going to show it. This was probably my greatest race ever. To comeback after this and do it at this special event is really great. You know I wanted to win bad for more reasons than not. I would have felt horrible to get between Timmy and Keith and disrupt their points. So this worked out really well if you ask me”, added the “Hittman”.

The white flag did come for Hitt, but he would have to carry Farr all the way to the checkers. Farr tried everything he had but could not find a way past the perfect Shane Hitt. “”It wasn’t easy to make a pass out there. This is a great facility, the track surface is outstanding but I would like to see a few more obstacles to make for some passing. Regardless, I could tell Shane was tired. I know him better than anyone. I could see he wasn’t pulling the clutch in at times and rode a little sluggish in some of the turns, but tired or not, he didn’t make a single mistake”, said Farr after the race. That’s how it went, Hitt pulled off a hard earned win and proved he could overcome the nastiest of injuries and continue his career as the greatest TT racer of all time. And Meadows gracefully bowed out even though inside he wanted to do better on his last race and even though he knew he has more good years in him.

Podium
Multi time champion, Shane Hitt had this to say from the podium, “This is definitely a special event. To be honest I never got to know Jackie and his dad until about two years ago at the Iowa race. He was a big ole’ grizzly guy. Says what he thinks, tells you what he’s going to do and pretty much does it. When I was 14-15 years old and wanted to go race four wheelers I got all the magazines and I picked out the guys that really liked. I would say Jackie Meadows and probably Jimmy White were my biggest heroes. They both rode Kawasakies and that’s what I had, a Mojave. I grew up following his career and really looked up to him. You know I never met him until we went to Iowa a few years ago. And I didn’t dare tell him he was my hero until now. (Laughing) I didn’t want to swell up his head or anything! He already has plenty of confidence, Jackie does! Anyway, he’s a good guy and I love him and his whole family to death, so I want to give this trophy to him, his mom and his sister. I know they’ll cherish this thing and take care of it.”

Honda’s Tim Farr spoke next, “Jack was a great guy we had a lot of good times with him, and you know what – we had some bad ones too. We had some close races and sometimes the heat was really on. We’re going to miss him a lot. That’s for sure. He was one of the happiest guys to be at the track and I’ll never forget him”.

Third on the podium was Keith Little who confidently said this, “I’m proud to have one of only three of these Jack Meadows Memorial trophies. I wont ever forget that man. Now I’ll have this up on my mantle. I can look up at this trophy and remember him with it”.

Kawasaki’s ATV Field Tech, Doug Douchette, who skipped the make up GNCC race in Sparta to help Jackie, told us this before closing the doors on his beautiful Kawasaki support trailer, “This is a sad weekend for me, I just got involved with Jackie’s program last year, but after getting to know Jackie and his family, I dont want it to end. I just wish a few years from now was now, so we could take Jackie to the front with our new unit. I have big aspirations for the future and how Kawasaki fits into it. If I had a say in the matter, I would give him an offer that he couldn’t refuse and stop his retirement in its tracks. He shares some of his father’s traits, he’s hard headed like his dad was, but I hope there’s some sort of way for us to continue Jackie’s career. Like I said, I dont want it to be over.

Lastly, a special award of appreciation was presented to Jackie. After accepting it he closed the special event with this, “I started riding when I was 3! I love this sport. It’s my favorite thing in the world, at one time or another a few of us might have fought like hell, but when it all comes down to it – we all race four wheelers together and everyone here is like family to me. Just getting to ride with guys like Farr, Hitt, Little and all of them is an honor in itself. I just want to thank everyone for this tribute to my dad. It really wasn’t about me this weekend. It was about my dad. I’m very appreciative that you all got to know him. Thank you all for all the great years!”

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