The Daytona News Journal’s Godwin Kelly is one of the few newspaper writers in the country who really gets motorcycle racing. Godwin’s been covering Daytona most of his adult life and he’s won numerous journalism awards for his articles.

Godwin Kelly and U2 drummer Larry Mullen at Daytona in 1989. (Photo by Larry Lawrence)

Being from Daytona Beach, naturally Godwin is primarily a NASCAR guy, but he has a genuine interest in motorcycle racing and has been covering Bike Week long enough to have a pretty deep knowledge of the sport.

In media relations I often find that newspapers send their least senior writers to cover motorcycle racing and it’s rare when someone of Godwin’s stature is assigned to the two-wheeled events. He’s gotten to be pretty good friends with a number of riders in the AMA paddock. Even the guarded AMA Superbike champ Mat Mladin seems to open up to the friendly natured reporter. He frequently comes up with insights that most of our own moto-journalist somehow overlook.

One of my favorite features by Godwin appeared in the News Journal a few years ago. It was on former BMW and Honda racing manager Udo Gietl. I thought I knew a fair amount about Udo, but I learned that he actually attended high school in Daytona Beach through Godwin’s article. Udo, like most interviewees of Godwin’s, hit it off with the scribe and the two talked about 1960s Daytona for over an hour.

If you can’t attend the races at Bike Week the coverage in the News Journal http://www.news-journalonline.com is the next best thing to being there and Godwin’s a major reason for that.