After Mikkola had won the 250cc world title in 1976, he made the shock decision to quit Husqvarna as the Swedish factory cut back its racing programme. He was quickly snapped up by the Yamaha factory to spearhead their assault against the Japanese Suzuki team in the 1977 500cc world championship.
It wasn’t a dream debut. In his first race in Hechtel, Holland *5, he was thrown over the handlebars and dislocated his left shoulder. “I must have been trying too hard,” he explained, but the stocky, bearded Mikkola stormed back bravely – as he has done after several spectacular crashes during his career.

Some years earlier he broke a foot at the opening Grand Prix in Barcelona, but rode on to finish fourth in the 250cc series. Two years later he rode all year with that same foot heavily bandaged after twisting his ankle in a crash during practice.
It takes more than injury and discomfort to stop Mikkola. Even when a flying stone hit him in the face, during a West German Grand Prix, he carried on with blood streaming down his face and finished in second place; he was immediately rushed to hospital to have the wound stitched. Such rugged determination and his resourceful, if sometimes ragged style, have hoisted him to the top of his profession and won him a place in history as only the second Finn to take a world title on two wheels, road racer Jarno Saarinen gaining the initial distinction in 1972.
Like so many budding racers, Heikki Mikkola started his working life as an auto mechanic, studying hard for two years, before being attracted to

THE MEN / Mikkola

motocross; after that there was no other career for him. An enforced break came when he was called up to do National Service for a year. In the Panzers, he found himself working as a mechanic on tanks, but he was impatient for a return to Husqvarna and motocross.
Said Mikkola: “I like the long races best, and when the grand prix is over I could always ride again. It is a test of man and machine, it is hard and that is what I like. I like the difficult tracks too; but I like the tracks where it is wide and I can choose a different way. And I like grass, so Payerne in Switzerland is one of my favourites.”
Motocross is his big love and he has always been prepared to work hard at it, spending much of the winter months training hard to stay fit, with a tough schedule of running and weight-lifting. It builds stamina to keep him going through the long, hard season that punishes the rider almost as much as pounds his machine.
In 1977 Mikkola returned to 500cc motocross on the Yamahas and, after his disastrous debut in Holland *6, thundered from one success to another, crushing almost all opposition on the way. It was an outstanding season and in August he took top points in the Belgian GP to take the 500cc world motocross title for the second time. In his first season for Yamaha he had brought them their first ever 500cc World Motocross Championship with a commanding record of eight*7 GP wins out of the first ten rounds. For the second time he had deprived Belgian champion Roger DeCoster of a world title which would have enabled him to equal the record six wins of Joël Robert.
Heikki Mikkola moved with his wife and two children from Finland to Belgium, to be at the heart of his motocross world, he bought 250 acres of woods near his home town of Hyvinkaa (near Finland’s most important motocross circuit, just north of Helsinki), where he could lose himself in his hobby of hunting.
His great passion for the open air and hunting once prompted him to say: “Perhaps when I retired I will settle down back home with my family. I would live off the land and no-one would bother me.” With a new World Championship under his belt in 1977 it seemed likely that motocross would continue to claim the attentions of the 32-year-old Finn for some time to come.

PC