THE BRITISH LAWN MOWER RACING ASSOCIATION
MEDIA COVERAGE
As a sport that doesn’t quite fit the norm we do attract a lot of interest from various areas of the media. This is what some of them have said about us and where we have featured
The Times Online July 2006
San Diego Dispatch
Kentish Times
Racing Car News, Australia
The West Australian
Playboy magazine
The Arizona Republic
Kurrier Austria
The Observer
The Enquirer, Kalamazoo
The Guardian
San Francisco Chronicle
Chicago Tribune
British Airways ‘Highlife’
Miami Sun
The Los Angeles Times
Majorca Daily Bulletin
The Daily Telegraph
Motor Sport News
Autosport
Sports Illustrated
Motoring News
Teknikens Varld, Stockholm
Toronto Star
Stirling Moss
Maxim magazine
Car and Driver
Dallas Morning News
Redaktion Sports, Hamburg
The Wall Street Journal
At 8pm on Saturday, the race began in old Le Mans style, with drivers sprinting across the track to their mowers. It was off precisely to time, synchronised and slick. What followed was organised chaos.
There is something going on in England that defies all stories about the staid and conforming English
Enjoyable insanity
The greatest atmosphere in motor-racing north of the Equator
English lawns present an annual challenge to these eccentric lawn mower racers
Stirling Moss lead-footing his power lawn mower
The folks running behind the mowers are the real heroes
Kampf bis aufs messer.. 12-stunden-rennen fur rasenmaher
Miracles are worked in the Pits during the night at a pace that would make any normal garage mechanics hair turn grey
Wearing shirts that read “The Empire Strikes Back” a team of British lawn mower racers crossed the Atlantic, to race in the ‘Rider Cup’ series of races against members of the US Lawn Mower Racing Association, at Lisle, just outside Chicago
I borrowed my Auntie’s mower…trouble is my Auntie wants it back
Britain’s bookies are keeping a close eye on the cult of lawn mower racing
Their racing rivals in the US have such names as (are you ready for this?) - Turfinator, Geronimow, Weedy Gonzales, Lawn Ranger, Sodzilla, Lawnsome Dove, Yankee Clipper, Bat Mowbile, Mowron, Mowna Lisa, Bat Mowbile, and even Precious Mowments!
They zoom around the lawn at speeds of up to 100 miles an hour
A new style of motor racing - including such classics as cross-country races, National and World Championships, the British Grand Prix and the annual over-night 12 hour race - has caught the fancy of hitherto unrecognised grass-cutters in England. Sponsorship and commercialism are discouraged; competition and fun is everything
While most people are content to use their lawn mowers to cut grass, a small band of adrenalin junkies are preparing their machines for something far more exciting – lawnmower racing
No less a driver than Stirling Moss - probably the greatest ever all round racing driver– joined with 5 times Le Mans 24 hour sports car race winner, Derek Bell, to win the Wisborough Green 12 hour lawn mower race. The race has also been fiercely contested by a clutch of Formula 1 teams including Ferrari, Beneton, McLaren and Tyrrell
The cheapest form of motorsport
Ron Dennis was forced to admit that McLaren were planning to race outside Formula 1. “Yes, you’ve caught me out. It’s quite true, we are entering another formula – lawn mower racing, but unlike the normal cloak of secrecy, facts and details are flowing freely on this one – with a view to frightening the pants off the opposition. We figure that with their pants around their ankles, they can’t go that fast!”
‘Sic biscuitis disintegrat’ (that’s the way the cookie crumbles) was their first thought as a motto, but it didn’t convey the right image, so the barflies eventually settled on ‘Per Herbam Ad Astra’ (through grass to the stars), as it “invoked everything spiritual in lawns.”
It is my duty to report that a bunch of nutters in deepest Sussex have just spent 25 hours attached to mowing machines. Not only that, they were racing them. Why? They were celebrating their 25th anniversary, so instead of racing for their ‘normal’ annual 12 hours, they decided on 25 hours!
Talk about barking mad; but having said that, if you can’t enjoy yourself at a BLMRA event, you might as well stay at home and cut the grass!
Det Stora Klippet. Topphastigheten 96 kilometer I timmen
Their 12 hour – girls, fellas, young ones, old ones, all sorts of people; mowers back-firing like canons, smoke rolling across the countryside, dirt and derision and all sorts of abuse. Very, very dramatic and everyone having enormous fun
9am on that Sunday morning, way back in July 1978, it was all over and we’d won.”
The 12 hour race is the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the mower racing calender
When the 12 hour race for lawn mowers is added to the 24 hour Le Mans race for sports cars, you have the most exciting motor racing on the international calendar
This takes the lawn mower from the wimp category and takes it up to “Hey, these things can be fun.”
Die Rasenden Maher von Wisborough Green
Thick billows of smoke and dust roll across a 20 acre pasture as nearly 60 lawn mowers , geared-up and de-muffled, scream around the track at speeds approaching 60 miles an hour. If hell has a suburb, it looks like this
Television
The Big Breakfast Show
The Gadget Show
Game for a Laugh
Question of Sport
Transworld Sport
BBC Breakfast
Reuters
ITN News
BBC Inside Out
Channel 4 Ride On
Radio
BBC Radio 2 Chris Evans
Spirit FM
Three Counties
Southern FM
Eagle 96.4
Southern Counties
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 1 Saturday Show
Papers/Magazine
Motor Sport News
Autospsort
Daily Telegraph
Sunday Telegraph
The Times
Wall Street Journal
Daily Mail
The Sun
Evening Argus
Midhurst and Petworth Obsever
West Sussex County Times
West Sussex Gazette
Sussex Life
Playboy Magazine
Maxim
San Fransisco Chronicle
Chicago Tribune
Sports Illustrated