Larry Wilburn and Skip Van Leeuwen battle at a West Coast TT sometime in the in the mid-to-late 1960s. Wilburn learned to ride trying to hang with his neighbor and friend Bill Hannah (Bob Hannah’s dad) on the trails of the San Gabriel Mountains. When Van Leeuwen came to his first race he thought every rider had a bum leg before he realized they were walking around with a heavy steel shoe over their left boot. By the late 1960s Wilburn and Van Leeuwen were two of the best TT riders the West Coast ever produced. Van Leeuwen traveled and did more nationals than Wilburn. Skip won four national TT races so was better known, but when the two got together at the Ascot TT or a regional race up in Bakersfield they had some epic battles.

Larry Wilburn and Skip Van Leeuwen battle at a West Coast TT sometime in the in the mid-to-late 1960s. (Larry Wilburn Collection)