A champion motorcycle racer with ties to the Manitowoc community is returning to his “home track” this weekend.
Australia native Troy Herfoss was crowned the King of the Baggers champion last season, and will be racing at Road America as a part of the MotoAmerica Superbikes & Vintage MotoFest event.
He started riding dirt bikes as a child and began competing against adults at the age of 16.
Then, at 19 years old, Herfoss made his way to our neck of the woods.
“Back then, I was racing a different discipline,” he recalled. “I was racing a discipline called Supermoto, which was a combination of riding on the road and in the dirt. And we actually raced it, right? America put on the go-kart track, done a lot of riding in this area.”
While he enjoyed competing on dirt bikes, Herfoss had his eyes on bigger goals.
“Always my dream was to go road racing,” he noted. “So I’d always be out at Road America watching, and actually done my first ever track day on a road bike at Road America.”
Since then, Herfoss has applied his trade on tracks all over the world, but he calls Road America his home course.
“It’s very special in a way that it’s really fast, really high speed, and hard braking,” he said. “But what makes it, I guess, exhilarating and scary at the same time is that it’s quite a closed-in track. The fences are quite close when you’re going down the streets.”
Herfoss and the rest of the KOTB competitors, which features racers representing Harley-Davidson and Indian Motorcycles, will hit the track for practice sessions today (May 30th) ahead of their races on Saturday and Sunday.
MotoAmerica Superbikes & Vintage MotoFest will also feature a performance by Valders natives Shannon and Sawyer Schmidtman, better known as Twin Stunts.
The full event schedule can be found at RoadAmerica.com.
