Gary Nixon: 1941-2011

By Richard Backus
Published on August 10, 2011
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Gary Nixon riding the Steel Breeze Trident to an AHRMA championship at the Barber Motorsports Park in 2005.

Gary Nixon, 1967 and 1968 AMA Grand National Champion, passed away on Friday, August 5, after suffering a heart attack. He was 70 years old. Over a decades-long career that started with his first professional race in 1958 at the age of 17, the seemingly indefatigable Nixon rode his way to the top. From flat track to road racing, Nixon did it all, and always excelled.

Nixon really vaulted to fame in 1967, when he started his championship-winning season riding a Triumph to first place at the Daytona 200. A fierce competitor, Nixon built a reputation for toughness, riding, for instance, for three seasons with a stainless steel rod holding his left leg together after stuffing a Triumph dirt tracker into a post in 1969.

Nixon in his earlier days. Nice tongue!

During his career, Nixon won 19 AMA National wins and more than 150 Grand National finishes. Although he officially retired in 1979, in the mid-1990s, Nixon, then in his mid-50s, raced in the Legend series, which he won twice. A long hiatus from the track ended in 2005, when he got into AHRMA vintage racing. Riding for Jerry Liggett of Steel Breeze Racing, Nixon took the Formula Vintage National Championship aboard Liggett’s 1972 Triumph Trident that year; he was 65, and clearly hadn’t lost his competitive edge.

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