World Championship Ice Racing

World Championship Ice Racing
Although the concept of ice racing was conceived time ago, but the first official indoor ice race was organized and held in Huntsville, AL. The race was organized by a local motorcycle dealer in 1975.

This followed by another indoor ice racing event that was held in the state of New York, and another one followed in 1976 in Kent, Ohio at Kent State University Hockey Field House.

Gary Densford also took part in this event, who was at that time a speedway rider. Another one of his close friends Bob Hetrick was the one who invited Densford to take part in the event.

As the matter of fact, the first two positions were taken by the two, however; Hetrick finished first while Densford stood second. It won?t be wrong to cite that event the origin of World Championship Ice Racing.

That racing experience drew Densford?s attention and interest towards that sport and he start circling different states in search for suitable arena?s to organize a world championship.

Initially Densford was faced with rather predictable comments regarding this idea of riding motorcycles on ice, by the owners of the different arenas, and even few cited him out of his mind. But that entire search finally paid Densford off as he got lucky in finding four arena owners who were willing to take the risk.

With the passage of time several technical and mechanical innovations have further improved the sport. Now a day?s tires and studs are much better than as compared to what was used in the early days of sport.

The eligibility criteria of the stud that was meant to be used was laid down in 1982, and according to that a special kind of stud known as ?Ice Getter? was to be installed in all the motorcycles that were to be used in ice or any kind of sport of such sort.

The main reason why that stud was made mandatory was that it provided that motorcycles with better traction and in addition to that there was no increased ice wear.

About three years later in 1985, as new innovations were made in the stud making industry, a new kind of stud was introduce that could provide the racers with even better traction than that of Ice Getter.

This stud was called ?Kold Kutter? and this was the new stud the replaced Ice Getter on the rule book. Previous stud was about ? to ? second quicker per lap, but Kold Kutter was another 1 ? seconds quicker per lap than Ice Getter.

There was one flaw that Kold Kutter carried and it was that ice wear was increased, but it was easily hid under the advantages that it provided in form of better traction.

This new kind of stud made the sport even faster and added more adrenaline rush to the racing action, which is why racers who were used to a bit slower version of the sport said goodbye to Ice Racing, as more speed means even more reflexes racers had to employ, which most of the old racers failed to do so.