Sport - Tuesday 20

1973-2003: Saarinen's flame still burns

Finnish road racing star now probably better known abroad than at home

By William Moore

May 20th marks the 30th anniversary of a terrible waste of life and limb. A horrendous and apparently quite avoidable motorbike racing accident at the Monza circuit in Italy left two riders dead and as many as a dozen others injured, several seriously.

One of the victims of the pile-up was the Italian Renzo Pasolini, and the other was the then reigning Road Racing World Champion at 250 cc, the Finnish rider Jarno "The Baron" Saarinen (1945-1973).

The incident, which has widely been blamed on the marshals' refusal to heed the warnings of many riders about oil on the track, caused shock and outrage at the time and led eventually to more stringent controls on race conditions.

Saarinen remains Finland's first and only World Champion in this discipline. Motorcycle road racing was once a major attraction in these parts, with a well-attended annual Grand Prix at Imatra, but the heyday of the sport was in the sixties and early seventies.

Although three decades have passed, Jarno Saarinen's legendary reputation nevertheless shows no signs of becoming dimmed.

Ironically, it is outside Finland - where the absence of a real home-grown star means the sport of road racing has been eclipsed by the exploits of Formula One drivers and World Rally Championship aces - that one finds the torch burning most strongly.

There are web-sites and motorcycle clubs proudly bearing his name in Italy and Holland, and a good many Italian men and other non-Finnish males in their early thirties carry the unusual forename "Jarno". Probably the best-known is Jarno Trulli, one of the current crop of Formula One drivers.

The Baron was clearly a rider out of the very top drawer, winning his 1972 World Championship title as a "privateer" rather than with a manufacturer's team, and a truly glittering future was predicted for him when he joined the Yamaha stable in 1973.

He was already leading the 1973 championship tables in both the 250cc and the 500cc categories at the time of his death. Saarinen, who won a total of just fifteen GP races, was also a racing pioneer through his flat-out "balls to the wall" riding style and the new "knee-down" posture on curves, a technique that was copied to great effect by numerous leading riders who came after him.

Some idea of the esteem in which this young man was held, and of the loss his death brought to the sport, can be had from a terse comment in an interview with Phil Read.

British rider Read is himself an eight-time RR World Champion and the winner of 52 Grands Prix. When asked who was the best rider he had ever raced against, Read's options included legends like Mike Hailwood (9 World Championships, 76 GP wins), Giacomo Agostini (15 World Championships, 122 GP wins), Kenny Roberts, Sr. (3 World Championships, 24 GP wins), and a galaxy of other stars.

However, the interviewer states: "Read mulled the question over for a nanosecond. 'Jarno Saarinen, no question', he replied. 'Different class'."

At the precise time of the accident (15.17 CET), flowers are to be laid today, Tuesday, at the site in a small ceremony attended by the riders' widows.

R.I.P.