Mert Lawwill

Lawwill was born in Boise, Idaho.^[2] He started his racing career as an amateur racer on the local TT track in Boise and, later, scramble races (later known as motocross) across the United States Northwest.^[2] In 1961, he moved to Los Angeles, California so that he could race at the Ascot Park race track which, at the time was the epicenter of dirt track racing.^[3] He gained sponsorship from Dudley Perkins, a Harley-Davidson dealer in San Francisco.^[2] It was during this time that Lawwill began to learn about modifying motorcycle frames for racing competitions.^[3] By 1963, he had become a professional rider and in 1964 he signed a contract to compete for the Harley-Davidson factory racing team with whom he would remain for the rest of his racing career.^[2]

Lawwill won his first AMA national race at the Sacramento Mile on September 19, 1965.^[2] In 1969, Lawwill won the AMA Grand National Championship and, was voted AMA's Most Popular Rider of the Year.^[2][5] His defense of his Grand National Championship during the 1970 season became the subject of Bruce Brown's 1971 motorcycle documentary film, On Any Sunday co-starring actor Steve McQueen and off-road racer Malcolm Smith.^[6] Lawwill continued to compete for the AMA Grand National Championship until 1977 when, he retired at the age of 37 due to an inner-ear disorder that affected his balance.^[2][7] He accumulated 161 career AMA Grand National finishes and won 15 Grand National races during his 15-year racing career.^[2]

In the late 1970s, Lawwill became involved in designing bicycle frames for the burgeoning sport of mountain biking.^[3] He was one of the early pioneers in the off-road bicycling world, having introduced the first production mountain bike.^[4] He also developed the first commercially produced four-bar linkage suspension for mountain bikes and patented the design.^[8] During this period, he continued his involvement in motorcycle racing as a race team owner in the AMA Grand National Championship until 1990 when, he grew frustrated with the way the AMA ran the championship.^[3] He then ran the Yeti Cycles racing team competing in downhill mountain bike racing and, developed the successful Lawwill DH-9 full-suspension downhill bike.^[3][9] Lawwill's custom racing bicycles became highly prized by top racers around the world and his designs won numerous national and world titles.^[2][4][9]

In his later years, Lawwill was involved in constructing and marketing street-legal versions of the Harley-Davidson XR-750 bike that he raced in the Grand National Championship.^[3][10] He also operated a non-profit company supplying prosthetic hands enabling amputees to ride bicycles or motorcycles.^[3] Approximately a third of all the prosthetic hands that he manufactured went to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, for use by military veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.^[3]