It was a sight us Brits instantly fell in love with back in 1976: the pint-sized, 5ft 3in American jockey hustling the awesome red and black TZ750 OW31 Yamaha around Mallory Park.
With its tubular frame and rudimentary Monocross rear suspension, slick tyres in their infancy and nearly 140bhp on tap, the screaming, tyre-spinning OW31 was more than a handful, but American Steve Baker just put his dirt-track experience to good use, took the beast by its clip-ons and rode the wheels off it. There were plenty of really top-class riders racing 750cc two-strokes back in the mid-to-late 1970s, but in 1976 and 77, Baker, the little American with the big heart from Bellingham, Washington State, who rode for Yamaha Motor Canada, was the man to beat.
Ah, but what about Kenny Roberts, who at that time was also racing an OW31? Well, he would later become known as King Kenny, three-time 500cc World Champion, but in 1976 and 77, it was Steve Baker who had the measure of him.
As a teenager who spent time trail riding the local area, Baker’s early racing focussed a lot on dirt-track, his first bike being a DT Yamaha two-stroke in a dirt-track frame – a bike that took him to the AMA Novice dirt-track title. But when it came to road racing, because Baker lived in the Pacific North West, he did much of learning his craft up in Canada. He excelled at local track Westwood, near Vancouver, a gnarly little eight-turn, 1.8-mile course very similar to British tracks, and in 1971, when Yvon du Hamel quit Trevor Deeley’s Yamaha
