Lawn mower racing
The earliest record of an organized race involving lawnmowers in the United Kingdom is in 1968 when the Ashton on Mersey Cricket Club organized a sporting event by the name "Lawn Mower Grand Prix" for the benefit fund of Lancashire cricketer Ken Higgs.
Savile reportedly prayed before competing and remarked that he has never driven a lawn mower before, "How can you mow in a council flat?
"[1] The British Lawn Mower Racing Association (BLMRA) was formed in 1973 by Rally co-driver Jim Gavin.
Jim and a bunch of fellow sporting enthusiasts were bemoaning the prohibitive costs of getting involved in any kind of motorsport whilst enjoying a pint at The Cricketers Arms in Wisborough Green, West Sussex.
[2] There are several Lawn Mower Racing clubs in the UK with slightly differing construction rules but a similar ethos that events should be professionally run and costs kept to a minimum.
Racing tends to take place in bare fields, with the track marked in a temporary fashion typically using bales or plastic blocks.
The first such event was won by Sir Stirling Moss, Derek Bell and Tony Hazlewood (designer and builder of the Westwood Lawnbug).
The event attracts participants from other British clubs and from all over the world, including competitors from France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Finland and the United States.
The Twelve Mile 500 consists of a 15-mile, 60-lap course run on a quarter-mile track in the park, with a maximum of 33 entrants per race.
Each participating team consists of a driver, a two-person pit crew, and a lap judge, and must meet a speed of approximately 30 mph to qualify just like in NASCAR racing.
The sport was taken to the United States by the makers of a petrol stabilizer called Sta-bil, who had visited the UK and witnessed a race meeting.
Since the summer of 1984, the North Wilkesboro Rotary Club has played host to lawnmower racing at its Wilkes County Agricultural Fairground facility.
All racers are expected to wear full-face helmets, gloves, boots, a long-sleeve racing shirt, and a neck restraint.
Mowers must be equipped with back bumpers (no front bumpers), leg protectors where the feet would be on the mower, a kill switch to turn off the engine in case of an accident, working brakes, cupholders, and a plate on the right-hand side of the hood to keep starters from blowing out of the sides if an engine were to blow up.
They chugged up the steep slopes belching smoke from their unmodified Briggs & Strattons (popular lawnmower brands), rounded a nominated gum tree, then flew down in "Angel Gear" – Australian outback slang for neutral – to the finish line.
"Half the town's 100 people, 300 sheep, and 150 dogs were there," according to Brian Ross, six-time president of the Australian Ride-On Lawn Mower Racing Association (AROLMRA)
