The definition of a fan is “enthusiastic follower, admirer of someone that has delivered a special performance or achievement, idolising a person”. I admit to being like that during the seventies. The first time I saw Mikkola, was with my parents during a motorcycling competition of De Witte Mannekes in Lummen, Belgium. It was 1970. A few weeks later we learned how to pronunciate the name of the illuster racer which sounded like a song : Heikki Mikkola.
It appeared he was a Fin, not very well known yet, but he was racing well due to his perseverance. The first town he lived in Belgium was Paal, then Beringen, only 10 km from my hometown. In the early seventies, my father was asked to print stickers for Heikki, which would cover the price of spare parts. My enthusiasm once again grew, and to this day it remains a mystery to me why I didn’t prefer racers like Roger DeCoster, Jaak Vanvelthoven or Joel Robert. Especially since my home town more or less is the epicentre in the world of motorcycling. Top racers like Jaak Vanvelthoven, Jacky Montens, Eric Geboers, Stefan Everts and Joel Smets all live in the neighbourhood.
I never practised the sport of motor cycling myself, but i did dress in the right manner: harnas, shoes and gloves to Sinisalo attributes. Heikki made a big impression on me, his supporters knew he had a strong perseverance, his stamina made him a true champion. Some of the other champions were less approachable. I only managed to get an autograph from Ake Johnson and Adolf Weill, even my own nationals were unavailable.
Scrapbooks full of newspaper articles I collected, bought t-shirts, asked for autographs and even set up a club: HMS or Heikki Mikkola Superstar! I went to watch a lot of competitions and followed the foreign GP’s on the radio. I was allowed to be a guest at Heikki’s thirty second birthday party! In 1974, 1976, 1977 and 1978 we celebrated his world titles, but then in 1979 we saw the last active cross season for Mikkola. When he returned to his family in Finland in 1980, it became quiet. The competitions would never be as exciting as before.
My enthusiasm grew less and as I got older. All that remained were happy memories…

Website
The making of the Heikki Mikkola website started a bit strange: I discovered that there were sites of Roger DeCoster, Brad Lackey and many lists of former GP winners and world champions. Maybe two or three photo’s and a few lists of winners was all I could find about Mikkola. That couldn’t stay like that. I decided to make a photostrip that everyone could look at via the net, it was quite straight foward. I saw it as a professional exercise. But I became quite nostalgic and went looking for my scrap books again. I scanned the best photo’s in and added them to the strip. Then, encouraged by other fans, the site kept on expanding. I received messages from over the whole world and answered them all. I was very motivated and started to spend some spare time expanding the site. In Holland a Mikkola site was developed about the same time by Jan-Willem van Essen. I have added and adjusted a few things and the site keeps on expanding; One photostrip became three: photographs from the Husqvarna period, the Yamaha period and one with pictures of his life after motorcycling.
An important condition I have is that nothing is commercially exploited, photo’s are exchanged, never bought or sold. The making of the site has been a reconstruction of Mikkola’s career, a very interesting story. I would like to thank Juha Monto in the first place for his translations and help. The book “Heikki Mikkola Maailmanmestari” by Juhani Melart was a big help too.