Lou Snedden races what I think is a Ducati 250 in a Vintage class during a WERA sprint weekend at Indianapolis Raceway Park in September of 1985. Lou owned Lou’s Leathers, which at the time was based in Kentucky. A lot of riders in WERA’s North Central region wore leathers made by Lou, including for a time the Hayden brothers. Lou was also excellent at racing leathers repair. After a crash I sent my Dainese leathers in to be repaired and when I got them back they looked as good as new. I ran into Lou at Vintage Motorcycle Days a few years back and he was racing vintage motocross.
Lou Snedden races what I think is a Ducati 250 in a Vintage class during a WERA sprint weekend at Indianapolis Raceway Park in September of 1985. Lou owned Lou’s Leathers. (Larry Lawrence photo)
Rider Files 
My first pair of leathers were LLs. I bought them used from a guy with a last name something like Schmidnick. I am pretty sure I got that wrong because I have a strong memory that I had to cut 13 letters off the back. He told me he was selling them because he was quitting racing.
I bought them through an ad in CN in the fall of ’83, when I was living in Maryland. T moved back to Wisconsin to endurance race with a friend based out of Beloit. My first race back was at RA. As I was coming in from my first practice a guy came by me on a VFR1000 with identical leathers right down to the looong name on the back. I parked my GS and went on a walk to find him. Turned out quitting wasn’t as easy as he expected.
The sad part of the story is that the top of the leathers were stolen out of my car in ’92 along with a full set of custom Vansons’ and three helmets. I still have the pants in a box in the attic, with all kinds of crap taped and glued to the knees.
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Cool story Ed. Sorry to hear the stuff got ripped off.
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Hi Larry,
Yes, it IS a 250 Ducati!…I was a friend of Lou & I wore his leathers as well. He was racing this bike in ’85 & ’86. He was proud of the cachet of the Ducati name.
My first leathers was also a Lou’s. I liked the idea of leathers made in the U.S. by a small custom maker. I wore them through most of the time I was racing. I was impressed enough with his ideas to buy the business from him in 1991. We produce leathers as Advanced Design Leathers, and have since 1991. While we are no longer involved with road racing, we did enjoy working with many top riders during the mid-1990’s, including Randy Renfrow, David Sadowski, Tom Kipp, Mike Smith and others.
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