Larry Lawrence | November 13, 2018
Archives: A Good Man, A Bad Decision
Have you ever done a bad thing, even though you knew it was wrong at the time? You don’t have to answer, because, if we’re honest, we all know the answer. It’s obvious that even good people make bad decisions on occasion. Norwegian philosopher Einar Øverenget explained in a TED Talk that honorable human beings are capable of acting against their own principles by way of moral dissonance and he cites an example of finding a $20 bill on the sidewalk with no one around. Øverenget points out that even the most honest in that moment can begin to rationalize keeping the bill, thus neutralizing their virtues.
Archives: A Good Man, A Bad Decision
Owen Weichel celebrating a Formula USA Sportbike class victory at Daytona in October of 2000. (Henny Ray Abrams photo)
Owen Weichel is a prime example of this theory. A well-known motorcycle road racer from the 1990s and early 2000s, Weichel was by all accounts one of those good guys who happened to make one bad decision and it cost him, cost him dearly. Not only was he sentenced to 38 months in federal prison for his transgression – but for the rest of his life, whenever you did a Google search on Owen Weichel, instead of exciting stories of his life in racing popping up, the first thing you’d see was a story about him being held liable for bank fraud.
It was for this very reason I agonized over how to present a story on Owen Weichel. You see Owen died from a heart attack in his sleep at his home in California a little over a month ago. He was just 50 years old.
I was asked to write an obituary for Owen, but I wasn’t able to since I was covering a cross-country motorcycle event at the time, mostly out of cell coverage and no time to do anything but travel, write, sleep. I wanted to do right by Owen, an underdog privateer most of his racing career, who by sheer grit and determination, scored much better results than his equipment should have allowed. That meant I would need to interview at least a few of his friends and fellow competitors to get a feel for the man.
Even though I attended dozens of races Owen participated in during the ‘90s in my work as AMA Pro Racing’s communications manager, our interactions were only in passing, at most perhaps asking him a question or two in a post-race press conference.
And I’d read about his post-racing legal issues and jail time. How would I handle that in writing about Owen? Would I, as some suggested, ignore it altogether and just talk about his racing accomplishments?
Owen Weichel leads fellow Canadians Miguel Duhamel (117) and Steve Crevier (4) in an AMA Pro Honda Oils 600 Supersport race at Gateway International Raceway near St. Louis in 1995. (Henny Ray Abrams photo)
I wanted to talk with people who knew him. When I finally had that chance, the account I was given time and again of Owen was an image of the most fun-loving, crazy, loyal, stand-up, charismatic, flamboyant, faithful, passionate, enthusiastic and trusted friend you could ever hope to have.
The dichotomy was perplexing. How could a person so universally loved, make a decision that landed him in prison? It led me to this telling.
Firstly, I’d like to clear up a misinformation about Owen that unfortunately seems to be the stock in trade of social media these days. Owen never ripped off any individuals. He got recruited into a big scheme, devised by others, whereby a group of 10 individuals made straw purchases, primarily of mega-expensive RVs, took the up-front bank money from these fake purchases and then simply made installment payments to the banks. The lending fraud was massive and eventually got into the tens of millions. The scheme finally blew up when one of the participants was burning through cash so fast, he could no longer made his share of the payments. The house of cards crumbled.
Jim Rashid, who ran the very successful 4&6 Cycle Racing team where Owen once raced, said he had an idea of how Owen could be talked into such a scheme.
Jim explained that Owen had a business selling exhaust systems from Japan. The importer Owen worked with had tax issues and suddenly needed cash. He asked Owen to pay him all at once for the pipes he’d purchased, regardless if they were sold or not. Being the guy Owen was, he felt obligated to find a way to help his friend get out of the tax jam. You might begin to understand Owen’s subsequent actions as one plausible way a good person could make bad choices.
Toronto-born Owen Weichel came up in the sport the hard way, club racing in the 1980s, under-funded, scratching and clawing his way to become one of Canada’s up-and-coming road racers.
According to longtime Canadian race organizer Colin Fraser, Weichel won races in all three Canadian National Pro classes during his lengthy career.
Owen also became a leading AMA Pro road racer during the mid-1990s and also won Formula USA races. He was a consistent top-10 finisher in AMA Supersport, even breaking into the top five on occasion as a privateer during a peak time in the series when there were over a dozen factory or factory-supported riders.
Rashid told the story of the time Owen had an AMA 750 Supersport podium in the bag, but slowed to let a rider who was in the championship hunt go by. It was St. Louis, 1995. Jim talked Owen into racing 750 Superpsort at Gateway on his Kawasaki ZX-6R. In spite of his horsepower deficit, Owen passed six riders on the first lap and ran second to Yoshimura Suzuki’s Fred Merkel. Another factory rider, Vance & Hines Yamaha’s Tom Kipp, managed to get around Owen, but then he was on a clear path to third.
“Then Owen realized Thomas Wilson was behind him,” Rashid remembers. “He liked Thomas and knew he was battling for the championship, so instead of thinking of himself and scoring his first AMA national podium, he allowed Thomas to go by so he could get the extra points. How many guys do you know that would do something that generous?”
Friend and endurance racing teammates Jon Cornwell and Owen Weichel on the podium at Brainerd. (Dean Adams/SuperbikePlanet.com)
During his racing days no one in the paddock was closer to Owen than teammate Jon Cornwell. Cornwell said driving across Canada going to races they became almost as close as brothers. The two would go on to become one of the elite AMA teams of the 1990s, winning endurance nationals with 4&6 Cycle.
“The adventures Owen would come up with were mind-boggling,” Cornwell grinned. “You couldn’t possibly make up the stories. With him stuff just always seemed to happen. We became teammates at 4&6 in the endurance series and that was a really good mix. I always enjoyed Owen’s company and never had to worry about whether the guy was putting out full effort. He always went all in with everything he had. I never had a bad day with the guy and that’s the best thing you can say about anybody.”
Multi-time AMA Road Racing Champion Miguel Duhamel became a golfing buddy of Owen’s and according to Miguel some of their golfing exploits were epic.
“We would show up at golf course at 4:30 in the morning waiting for them to open so we could be the first on the course,” Miguel said. “We’d get out there so early so we could get in a round before Owen went to work and so I could beat the traffic.
“Once this golf course was offering all the golf you could play for one price, so we figured we’d get our money’s worth. We showed up before sunrise. The groundskeepers were looking at us trying to figure out what we were doing. Of course, we were the first ones on the course and we finished our first round and the shop people were asking if we wanted our clubs cleaned and we told them ‘No, we’re going back out.’
‘So, this went on like this all day, we did another round and another, finally we’d come by the clubhouse and the people would just wave at us. We played until it was getting so dark we couldn’t see the ball anymore. We definitely got our money’s worth.”
“We had a golf outing in Las Vegas once and that night we were at Treasure Island. Owen was really good at impressions, so we were playing in the casino and Owen started doing an impression of Early Hayden and I was doing it right back to him and people around us were cracking up. And then we were playing roulette and every time the number landed, we’d try to do an impression of that racer. So, it would land 19 and we both started doing our best Freddie [Spencer]. We were lighting up the place. The only reason we didn’t get kicked out is because I was living there at the time and the security guys knew me.
“The next day we got up late and were going to meet for a buffet breakfast. I was walking down the hall and this guy I’d never met before walks up to me and shakes my hand and tells me, ‘Man, you and your partner were so funny last night. We love you guys!’ I think the guy thought we were some comedy team or something. A crowd of people would just follow us from table to table. It was crazy.
“Owen would just light up the place anywhere we went. He was a blast to hang out with. I’m really going to miss him.”
Owen Weichel leading the Formula USA Sportbike race en route to victory at Daytona in October of 2000. (Henny Ray Abrams photo)
Rick Mitchell, who worked at Honda and ran Pro Honda Oils sponsorship program of AMA Supersport, became a sponsor and good friend of Owen’s.
“Later I found out that we were virtually next-door neighbors and we took up power walking six nights a week and solved the problems of the world on a nightly basis,” Mitchell laughed. “At one point he referred to me as his best friend, which was kind of touching. He was a wonderful family man and his focus in the last years of his life was on his family, his wife Georgia and his sons Owen Jr. and George.
“When he was racing Owen always believed he could beat the best. I think that’s why I got behind him and supported his racing, because he tried to do just that every time he got on the track.”
SuperbikePlanet.com’s Dean Adams also spoke of Weichel’s character.
“He did some advertising on the site a number of years ago,” Adams said. “He ran it a little into the red and his bill got pretty big. I told him to just forget it – his son had just been born. But he sold his surfboard and some bike parts and paid me.
“I think Owen kind of lived the way he raced–he took that gap and made the pass. He wanted glory and to provide for his family the best he could. There are guys in NYC who stole billions from banks and never did a night in a holding cell.
“Owen paid his debt.”
