Malcolm Smith to be honored at the Hall of FameThe Motorcycle Hall of Fame will honor off-roading legend Malcolm Smith on June 26. There are a few moments in film that will stay with me until I die: Cary Grant ducking the cropduster in North by Northwest, Jimmy Durante kicking the bucket in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, to name just two. But the one that will forever send chills up my spine is watching Malcolm Smith outrun all of his competitors through a hole in a barbed-wire fence during the Elsinore 500 in Bruce Brown's documentary, On Any Sunday.
Apparently, I'm not the only one. Malcolm Smith is a legend in off-road motorcycling, transcending the sport and becoming a cultural icon of the 1960s. In an era of steroid-addicted sports stars, you could do worse than making this soft-spoken entrepreneur and superhuman motorcyclist your hero.
The Motorcycle Hall of Fame is honoring Smith this year, kicking off an event at the museum on Thursday, June 26, at 6 p.m. We've tentatively scheduled ourselves to be there, since that weekend is also the annual Vintage Days at Mid-Ohio. For more information,
http://www.motorcyclemuseum.org/halloffame/hofbiopage.asp?id=91 .
- By Craig Fitzgerald