INDIANAPOLIS — It’s been nearly a month since racing lost Kevin Olson and still the sport hasn’t settled on the right way to mourn.
In one moment, there’s a heavy, silencing grief at the idea that a guy like him—father of five, champion, National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame inductee, so full of life—could be taken in the blink of an eye in a Wisconsin highway crash.
In the next moment, there are smiles and unplanned laughs as someone brings up another story among the hundreds that made Olson one of racing’s merry pranksters. You mourn people, I suppose, according to the way you want to remember them. So far, just getting used to things, we seem to be remembering Olson as half racer, half joker.
JOKER: Half of the motorsports world has seen, through photos or in person, the wacky T-shirts Olson peddled each year at the Chili Bowl. He’d hang one on a display rack, along with some nonsense scrawled on an advertising sign. One year, it read: “Kevin Olson Shirts: Plain, $10. Autographed, $5.” This year’s edition was a lofty $15, because, according to the sign, each shirt was not only “COVID-Proof,” but also “Touched by Kyle Larson.”
RACER: Throughout the 1980s, USAC’s midget roster was thick with talent, as reflected by that decade’s national champs. Rich Vogler, hardest of the hard chargers, won four titles; MelKenyon and Tom Bigelow, steady, cerebral veterans, had two and one, respectively; Russ Gamester, in his early 20s and thus bouncing between controlled and courageous, got one, too.
The ’82 and ’87 championships went to Olson, who, depending on circumstances, could adopt any of those styles. Although he didn’t run many full-time seasons with USAC, Olson scored 23 national midget wins, level with Bigelow, Pancho Carter and Bill Vukovich II. His 1983 score in USAC’s TurkeyNight Grand Prix meant the world to him because it put his name on a list that included, “Parnelli Jones, A.J. Foyt, Tony and Gary Bettenhausen, all the heroes.”
JOKER: Wherever he went, Olson could keep the mood light. That’s how car owner Junior Kurtz wanted things in 2015 when he returned to Silver Crown racing after a long layoff. He appointed Olson “team D.O.F.”—Director of Fun—and signboard signal man. The team had radios, but Kurtz liked the nostalgic look of a signboard. Olson asked Kurtz if he had to play it straight, or if goofing around was allowed.
“It’s your deal,” Kurtz replied. And so, as the field completed its final pace lap, there stood Olson at the edge of the track, his advice to driver Brian Tyler visible to all, in bold chalk letters: “JUMP THE START!”
RACER: Olson’s five titles with the Wisconsin-based Badger Midget Auto Racing Ass’n came during a golden period for that group, and especially for Angell Park Speedway, its anchor track. There, Olson faced a revolving-door list of regional and national stars: Stan Fox, Kevin Doty, Page Jones, Dan Boorse, Scott Hatton, Jeff Gordon, Dean Erfurth, Dave and Davey Ray, Randy Koch, Jerry Coons Jr., Brad Kuhn and Aaron Fike.
Five times, Olson won Angell Park’s prestigious Pepsi Nationals.
JOKER: The birth of social media gave Olson an unexpected outlet for unloading whatever was on his mind, from old racing tales to his latest escapade. One of his final posts was classic. “Be careful shoveling snow when it is heavy,” he warned. Photos showed him clutching his chest and falling over, half-buried in the deep snow. His message went on to say that he’d “suffered a fatal heart attack again.” The pictures were funny, but the subtle laugh was in the wording: “a fatal heart attack again.”
Racer? Joker? On Olson’s best days, he was both. Folks still chuckle over the time at Terre Haute back in ’96 when Olson, reacting to an interviewer’s playful barb about getting old, dropped and did push ups in the front stretch dirt.
But it’s important to remember that this happened in victory lane, after KO, at age 45, had just won the Hut Hundred over Jason Leffler and Tracy Hines, whose combined ages added up to 44. Behind the wheel, Olson was the genuine article, the real deal. It’s just that his skills got overshadowed by the sitcom-style laugh track that followed him around.
One afternoon not long ago, over burgers at a joint in Rockford, Ill., his hometown, we got talking about those two sides of him. He was straight-faced and serious, as if he hadn’t yet figured it all out himself.
“When I first started racing,” he said, “the race itself was only part of it. After the feature, well, here came the second part of the program, which was having fun. Don’t get me wrong, driving race cars was everything to me. But without the fun part, it would’ve almost been too much pressure. You put everything you had into the effort to go racing, but once that was over for the night, it was over. Now it was about the people you knew and the friends you had.”
Maybe it’s not worth figuring out how to remember Kevin Olson. It might be best to play it right down the middle, just the way he did. Racing first, laughter later. Tears at intermission.