Larry Lawrence | January 30, 2022
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The End of an Unbreakable Legend
Tough, durable, rugged, resilient, indestructible, powerful, gritty and head strong. All of those adjectives have been used to describe David Sadowski. “Ski,” as his friends and fans liked to call him, had a reputation as an unstoppable force. He would crash—bruised and battered—but he’d somehow find a way to the starting line come race time. Ski was wide open all the time. He came to racing later than many of his peers, and he made up for it in sheer determination. For all of these reasons it was an especially harsh shock to the system upon receiving the news of Ski’s passing. Many of us are still having a tough time processing the thought that we’ll never see Ski again.
David Sadowski celebrates on the podium at Loudon in 1988, the weekend he won his first two AMA National Road Races. Photo: Henny Ray Abrams
Ski was just 58, and the last time I saw him in person, just a year or two back, he looked as healthy and vibrant as ever. In fact, he kept himself in great physical shape, at least outwardly. He appeared he could throw on leathers and still turn in some hot laps.
Sadowski’s determination was legendary. Nearly his entire racing career he had back problems. If you looked carefully, you could see him grimace as he saddled up to go race. Once the adrenaline kicked in and he was in the thick of the battle, he could mostly put the back pain out of mind.
Al Ludington, who went on to become one of factory Honda’s legendary crew chiefs, came up through the ranks wrenching for Ski. Some of the stuff he witnessed was cringeworthy.
“I caught him one time at the GNF trying to straighten a bent plate on his collar bone with a dead blow hammer,” Ludington recalls. “With Ski his attitude was always, ‘it’s merely a flesh wound.’”
Sadowski was the son of a military aviator and moved around a lot as a kid. One of his most vivid childhood memories was when he was about nine and living in Santa Ana, California, his dad arranged for little Dave to go on a ride in the Goodyear blimp, and the pilot allowed Ski to briefly take control and fly the blimp. As a teenager in the early 1980s, Sadowski attended American Motorcycle Institute (AMI) in Daytona Beach and used to climb a tree outside of banking at the neighboring Speedway to watch motorcycle testing. He once boldly told AMI classmates that he’d win the Daytona 200 one day.
After AMI, Sadowski moved to Southern California and got a job as a mechanic at Champion Motorcycles in Costa Mesa and began club racing. Money was tight, but Sadowski did whatever it took to get track time. Once at a club race at Riverside International Raceway, Ski didn’t have enough money to enter a race, so he snuck his bike on the grid and was battling up front before officials realized he wasn’t signed up and black flagged him.
Sadowski on his Vance & Hines Yamaha Superbike on his way to victory in the Daytona 200. Photo: Larry Lawrence
After cutting his teeth on production bikes, Ski got a well-used Yamaha TZ250. When he beat local 250 ace John Glover in his first ride on the TZ, Sadowski knew it was time to turn pro.
In his first pro race at Laguna Seca in ’84, he was following his buddy Steve Biganski around in practice to get familiar with the track. Biganski high-sided coming out of the corkscrew, right in front of Ski, and Ski went down, too, after running over Biganski. The crash put Biganski in the hospital and Ski’s bike out of commission with a bent swingarm. Then Ski reasoned that if Biganski wouldn’t have told him to follow him around the track he wouldn’t be in this predicament, so he went over to Biganski’s now abandoned pit and took the swingarm off his bike so he could race. Despite being beat up from the crash and riding with “stolen” parts on his bike, Ski finished in the top-10 (ninth) in his pro debut. A couple of weeks later Ski turned some heads by finishing a very credible sixth in the AMA 250 Grand Prix race at Sears Point.
Sadowski suddenly realized he might have the talent to give pro racing a serious go but not the budget. At one point out of desperation he showed up unannounced at Kenny Roberts’ ranch to see if KR could offer some assistance. No one was home so Ski waited in his vehicle for hours before Roberts finally showed up.
“Kenny was the nicest guy,” Sadowski recalled. “He didn’t know who I was and by all rights he should have kicked me off his property, but instead he invited me in, fed me and talked racing, but he told me straight up that he was focusing his efforts on helping Wayne Rainey at that point. But he encouraged me to keep pursuing my dream.”
And follow the dream he did. Early in 1985, Sadowski sold his car and every other possession he had and bought a new Honda RS250. On the Honda, Sadowski scored his best pro finishes to that point, taking fourth in the AMA 250 Grand Prix races at Willow Spring and Elkhart Lake. He had a handful of other solid finishes, but injuries hampered him, and he finished the season ranked ninth.
Despite a promising ’85 campaign, the year had totally drained his already meager resources and continuing to pursue pro racing didn’t seem possible. But then came an offer to race in the WERA National Endurance Championship with Team Hammer in 1986. The deal also allowed him to race the Team Hammer bike for club contingency money. It was the lifeline he needed to keep him in the game.
In ’87, Sadowski scored his first national podium when he took second to Doug Polen in the AMA 600cc Supersport race at Loudon. Ski ended the year sixth in Supersport.
1988 was a breakthrough year, as Sadowski scored his first and second AMA National wins, back-to-back at Loudon in 750cc and 600cc Supersport. Suddenly Ski was a hot property, unfortunately there were not many paying seats in AMA road racing in the late 1980s. After some more great performances in ’89, including a 750 Supersport win at Road Atlanta and his first Superbike podium that same weekend, Sadowski finally scored that much-coveted factory ride in 1990 with Vance & Hines Yamaha.
His 1990 Daytona 200 victory was the biggest win in Sadowski’s racing career. Photo: Henny Ray Abrams
Fans remember the intense Ben Spies/Mat Mladin intrateam rivalry of the mid-2000s, but that intensity paled in comparison to the V&H Yamaha rivalry between Ski and teammate Thomas Stevens. Sometimes the battle between the two boiled over off the track.
After the Daytona Supersport race in 1990, Sadowski (with helmet on) head butted Stevens (with no helmet) and yelled “You’re a dead man!” after Stevens swerved on the banking heading for the finish trying to draft leader Jeff Farmer and, in the process, hit Sadowski hard enough that it knocked Ski off the bike at top speed. Somehow, holding on to his bike with one arm, Ski managed not to crash. Team owner Terry Vance had to grab Sadowski and take him back to the team transporter to calm him down. Ski and Stevens clashed again at Brainerd when they crashed together on the last lap, last turn of the 600 Supersport race while battling for the lead.
Fortunately for Ski, he came back just a few hours after the Daytona Supersport altercation and won the Daytona 200. It would prove to be the biggest victory of his career and it resulted in one of the most jubilant victory lane celebrations of the race’s history. Sadowski would also win the AMA 600 Supersport title in 1990. It was the zenith of his career.
After finding his Daytona 200 purse was less than what winners made there 15 years earlier, Sadowski tried to form a riders’ union to battle for higher purses, but when only 30 riders in the paddock sent him the $10 membership fee, he knew the effort was doomed.
After his factory Yamaha ride, Ski bounced around and could never quite land a full-time factory ride again. In ’92 he raced a limited AMA Superbike schedule with greatly scaled back Yoshimura Suzuki squad. He occasionally found a fill-in ride, once for the factory Honda team, but mostly ran his own programs. He found success in the Formula USA Series, becoming the first two-time champ of that series in ’97.
Then after breaking his leg in ’95, the company producing TV for the AMA Superbike Championship asked him to fill in and do some expert commentary. Turns out Ski was very good in the broadcast booth, and it launched a new career in the sport that lasted a decade. Interestingly, after TV he landed in China conducting riding schools. Both of his sons, Matt and Davey, raced professionally.
“Dave was a great racer, and super aggressive on the track,” said former Cycle World and Motorcyclist Editor Brian Catterson. “He definitely got everything out of every bike he ever rode. He was a smart guy, too, always interesting to talk to, which made him an excellent race commentator.”
One thing is for certain, they broke the mold after making David Sadowski. CN
