Mickey Thompson Introduces The World To Stadium Racing
Mickey startled the off-road racing community by announcing that he would produce an off‑road race in a stadium. That’s exactly what he did at the Los Angeles Coliseum before 40,000 cheering spectators in 1979.
The story goes that Mickey met with coliseum officials to lay out his plans for the first off-road race. Mickey told them he planned to build part of the racecourse to go up and down the peristyle steps of the coliseum. (These are the same steps Rafer Johnson climbed to light the Olympic torch in 1984.)
The officials told Mickey he was crazy, that driving a racing car up a seven storey incline and back down again was impossible. So, Mickey climbed into his car and did it to prove his point and the now famous peristyle space shot is still one of the most celebrated thrills of off-road racing.