El Rollo, San Sebastián, E
Birthday Cake with Icing of a Different Kind.
Imagine it’s your birthday, instead of a cake dusted with icing sugar you get a mouthful of flat track dust, and for the usual "Happy Birthday to You" you hear the snorts of your muffler-less flathead – it’s a slightly different anniversary for Japanese customizer Toshiyuki "Cheetah“ Osawa and his award-winning machine, a craftily created flat tracker version of a 1946 WL flathead Harley-Davidson with the fitting name of "Meteor".
You may have spotted the bike before,
if you’re an avid bike show tourist, know the scene inside out or have been busy surfing Instagram: in 2023 it won the Wheels&Waves x Hot Rod Custom award, and was on display at Born Free, naturally. This is different though, here on the Franco-Spanish Atlantic coast it has to prove it’s more than just a show queen. Cheetah shows no mercy to his creation: first "Meteor" gets a warm up at the "Punk’s Peak" race and is then entered in the "El Rollo" flat track race on the 250 m oval of „Hippodrome Lasarte Oria“ in San Sebastián, some 50 kilometers South of Biarritz.
Without further ado, let’s get dusty:
thanks to her good connections our photographer Minako got into the infield for the best camera position to catch #77 "Meteor" battling the competition. Wild race action in the scorching June heat! Making it to the finals is no mean feat here, but Cheetah does it, fights his way to the front in the final and keeps the lead to cross the line in first place. What a race, what a birthday present! Congratulations, Cheetah! "Meteor" proves it’s a true racer, bringing the special icing to the birthday cake.