I'm The

The Welcome to the Racer X Illustrated podcast.

I'm your host, Steve Mathis, and I'm all by myself when I do this.

This week on the show, we got none other than four-time national champion, Mark

the Bomber Barnett. Barnett came so close to having, let's see now, maybe three more titles.

I think I calculated it one time. He missed three titles by a combined total of seven points.

He could have been seven-time national champion, if only for a few points here and there.

Bomber was truly a legend of the sport, and when he retired, he was all-time, one of the greatest

riders. He definitely was one of my heroes growing up. There's no doubt about it. I love

Bomber. I wrote a Suzuki 80 and looked up to Bomber with everything that I had. He was my hero, him and

Rollerball. Actually, it's funny how this podcast came about because I wrote a column on Pulp MX

about how my heroes and other people's heroes just go away. They don't have a retirement

ceremony. Nobody really knows they're done and they just end up going away,

like Balmer, like Larry Ward, like Ezra Lusk. And there's fans of these guys out there like myself

in 86 wondering where their favorite heroes went. And anyway, so I just kind of wrote a little column

about that. I was contacted by Mark's wife who read the column and was pretty touched by it and thought

that it would be cool to get Mark in touch with me and then one thing led to another and we got

him on this podcast show.

So pretty cool deal.

I think I finally get a chance to talk to, Bomber, and ask him some of those long, long

questions that I've had in my mind forever.

So I want to thank you guys for listening.

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