Wes Cooley

Wester Steven Cooley, known as Wes, was an American motorcycle road racer in the AMA Superbike class, born in Los Angeles on 28 June 1956. He came up through the Southern California club racing scene, where his father ran a club racing organization, and was hired by Pops Yoshimura to race a Kawasaki KZ1000 in the new AMA production class. He won his first AMA superbike race in 1977 and, once Yoshimura switched to Suzuki, won regularly on the Yoshimura Suzuki GS1000s. He took the 1979 and 1980 AMA Superbike Championships, beating future Hall of Famers Eddie Lawson and Freddie Spencer in the second year, and won the Suzuka 8 Hours in Japan with Mike Baldwin and again in 1980 with Graeme Crosby. A life-threatening crash at Sears Point Raceway in 1985 stopped him recapturing his form. He later worked as an instructor at a riding school and then in the medical profession, was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2004 and died at his home in Twin Falls, Idaho, on 16 October 2021 at the age of 65.