Passion for alligators, motorcycles molds NHRA's Jerry Savoie
Jerry Savoie is quietly counting his blessings.
Earlier this week, Savoie, who’s chasing Andrew Hines for the NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle championship as the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series heads to Pomona Raceway for the season finale this weekend, got the results of a biopsy of lesions found in his throat. They were negative, and Savoie was able to rest easy.
“I had a little scare there,” Savoie told Paste BN Sports by phone Friday. “I’d been losing my voice over the last few weeks. The doctor took some pictures and said, ‘Man, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but there’s a 50-50 chance you have cancer.' They scoped it out and did a biopsy, and it came back negative. That’s a good thing.”
Resting easily isn’t part of Savoie’s modus operandi — or his unusual life story. A motorcycle enthusiast as a teen, he didn’t ride for decades while he built a successful alligator farm in Louisiana. Then, at the age of 52 in 2011, he revisited his passion for motorcycles, bought the equipment and set out to become a professional racer.
“I hadn’t been on a motorcycle in 32 years,” Savoie said. “At 52, I decided to take a chance at Pro Stock Motorcycle. I went to George Bryce’s drag racing school, and George told me after the weekend, ‘If you ride like that, you’ll definitely win a race.’”
Not long afterward, Savoie ran into Antron Brown, who recently clinched his second Top Fuel championship, after Brown had made the transition from Pro Stock Motorcycle to Top Fuel in 2008. Brown told Savoie than Don Schumacher Racing was selling its motorcycle team, so Savoie bought the equipment and set out to race.
“The rest is history,” Savoie said. “It took awhile and a lot of heartache, but it’s paid off.”
What started as a teenage hobby of street racing — something he doesn’t recommend now — took a strange turn when Savoie attained a loan to build an alligator farm in Cut Off, La. He was so broke in the early days, he couldn’t afford the $175 daily rental for a Bobcat tractor to build a drainage line. Instead, he grabbed a shovel and built it the hard way.
“I was a one-man operation,” Savoie said. “When I started, I didn’t have enough money to even rent a Bobcat for two days. I definitely did it the hard way.”
Now, Savoie’s Alligator Farm is a large operation, complete with helicopters and airboats, producing alligator skin and meat for a variety of customers. Every part of the alligators is used, Savoie says, and conservation methods rigorously applied.
“Everything is used — the meat, the skin, the feet, the heads, the intestines,” Savoie said. “Nothing is wasted. Everything on the alligator is used for some type of product. It’s really interesting. A lot of industries don’t use 100 percent of the animal. We use everything. We also return 12 percent of what we hatch to the wild. … Every year we’re not just replenishing the population; we’re multiplying it.”
This weekend Savoie and his White Alligator Racing Suzuki will battle Hines and another Harley-Davidson rider, Eddie Krawiec, who’s 37 points behind Savoie in the standings, for the Pro Stock Motorcycle championship. If he wins, Savoie says, he’ll celebrate quietly. If not, he’ll go back to work.
“There are no secrets in racing, but good luck trying to figure it out,” he said. “It’s been a long road with a lot of sleepless nights. I feel like I’m a rookie, believe it or not. There’s a lot I still have to learn, but It’s been a good ride.”
But first, he’ll take time to be grateful. Win or lose, he has his health.
“It’s all positive,” Savoie said. “I’m fine. I’m just having a little trouble talking, but it’s all good.”
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