From long long ago: Dutch Motorsports heroes

When I lived in Utrecht (nieuwegein) With my parents.( I was about 8 years old), my father had his own garage. At this garage one of his employees was Johan van Eijk and Johan racet motorcycles for his hobby but at a very high level.

My brother and I really loved this guy, he was a real dude with a real dangerous hobby :). After a while Johan climbed in the National moto GP, he drove a 500 CC Suzuki. At that time my father interferred with his public relations and marketing, he needed some more sponsors to be able to race and compete to the bigger teams.

Johan in his glory days

Johan changed his racing name into "Bobo" because it sounded better ;) So his name on the track was "Bobo van Eijk" and his team was named "Bobo Racingteam". He was well known in Utrecht and surroundings.

We went to a lot of races with Bobo and we always went to the Driversspace because of my father helping Bobo with his motor. SO we always had a great time on the terrain. a lot of kids owned those little dirtbikes and ride on the fields, we unfortunate didn't :).

On the picture above it's Bobo together with Jack Middelburg, Holland's most succesfull motoracer. Unfortunate he died in a crash during a race.

Source

Back in the days (late 70's begin 80's) there were a lot of streetcircuits in the Netherlands so there was almost every weekend a race. Safety rules were present but not as tight as they are now. A lot of crashes happened but almost allways with a good ending.

Bobo didn't had the oppertunity to test his bike when they tuned it of used new parts so he racet around Utrecht on the local highway with a license plate of his off the road bike. Untill the police got him, when he told the reason of his testing he did get fined but they offered him a solution to his problem by giving him access to a road they still were building. So it was safe (no traffic) and permitted :). The local government in Utrecht was very polite giving him that option :) and they were proud on the achievement of Bobo.

When we moved to Zutphen we lost contact with Bobo, he did race for some years more but we weren't in the position anymore to follow him. I always was currios on how things went with him but never made any contact after.

I did found this picture of him on a Dutch motor forum once

He did got some older, but I could recognize him right away.

Looking back at those times, they were gold.

Have a great day,

Cheers !! Peter