Dr. Dave Kieffer (91) and Donald Jacks (59) racing wheel to wheel in an AMA Superbike race, possibly Topeka around 1990. Dr. Kieffer not only raced Superbikes for the better part of 15 years, he also helped many racers stay on the track after injury, either by surgery or by rigging up special braces to allow them to ride without doing further damage to an injury. (Larry Lawrence photo)

There was a time in the early 1990s when I tried to get ever tighter shots of the racing action. This photo illustrates the zenith of that experimentation. It got to the point that all you could see was the torso of the rider I was shooting. Thankfully that experimentation didn’t last long and I got back to actually showing the bikes as well.

This photo shows Dr. Dave Kieffer and Donald Jacks racing wheel to wheel in an AMA Superbike race, possibly Topeka around 1990. Dr. Kieffer not only raced Superbikes for the better part of 15 years, he also helped many racers stay on the track after injury, either by surgery or by rigging up special braces to allow them to ride without doing further damage to an injury.

Kieffer raced AMA Superbike from 1982 to 1997. He started on a Kawasaki, primarily raced Hondas in the 1980s and ended his career riding Fast by Ferracci Ducatis. Dr. Kieffer scored a slew of top-20 results with his best career Superbike finish coming at Brainerd International Raceway in 1993 when he scored 11th – this at a time when there were a lot of factory bikes on the grid.

Today Dr. Kieffer is a professor at the University of St. Louis.