Seasoned motocross riders — led by Torsten Hallman, who had won the 250cc World Championship in the two previous years — were left speechless at the start of a Grand Prix round in France in the summer of 1964.
Hallman was already warming up his machine on the starting line when a young Finnish Husqvarna rider, Pentti Kalteva, rolled into the adjacent grid slot. The Swedish star had been told that Kalteva had risen like a comet to the top of the national scene in Finland and that he had all the makings of an international-calibre rider.
It was not Kalteva’s presence on the starting line that surprised Hallman. Like everyone else, he was stunned by the reaction Kalteva triggered in one of the French riders waiting for the starting signal.
When the Frenchman recognised Kalteva gliding onto the grid, he killed his own bike’s engine and dropped it where it stood. Then he strode briskly up to the Finn and, without a word, punched him square in the face.
Kalteva toppled onto his back — more from sheer astonishment than the force of the blow. But the local gendarmes were alert. They grabbed both Kalteva and the French puncher by the scruff of the neck and marched them toward the stewards’ office.
The other riders, among them Belgium’s young superstar-in-the-making Joel Robert, stood idle on the starting line. A minute passed, then another. Before long the schedule was a quarter of an hour behind. The stewards did not care about the delay — they sat stubbornly in their office, questioning Kalteva and the Frenchman who had demonstrated his right hook.
“We came here to race motocross, not to hold some kangaroo court in the middle of nowhere.”
Finally Hallman lost his patience. He marched to the stewards’ cabin and shouted that this circus had to stop. We came here to race motocross, not to hold some kangaroo court in the middle of nowhere. It worked. Moments later the riders — Finland’s Pentti Kalteva among them — were back on their bikes on the starting line, preparing for the second moto of the French Grand Prix.
Memories from Hyvinkää
More than 40 years later, in May 2006, Pentti Kalteva reflects on the causes and consequences of the incident from his apartment in Hyvinkää.
— It was a really stupid affair. In the first moto I tangled with that French guy and he went down. But obviously I didn’t do it on purpose. It was a perfectly normal racing incident. The fellow saw it differently, though, so he clocked me in the face at the start of the second moto.
Kalteva still does not know to this day what the group of French officials was shouting at him in the stewards’ office. — But I do know that if Torsten Hallman hadn’t shown up, anything could have happened. With a bit of bad luck I would have ended up in a jail cell.
Early career and Finnish Championship success
Pentti Kalteva, who turned 64 in December 2005, is one of the strangest shooting stars in Finnish motocross history. He burst onto the national scene out of nowhere, and he ended his promising international career before it ever truly got going.
Kalteva comes from a large family — he has two brothers and seven sisters. He was born and raised on a farm in Hyvinkää and has been a sportsman his entire life. As a boy his favourite sports were cross-country skiing and ski jumping; later it was motocross.
Kalteva was promoted to the A class as a flowing-haired 19-year-old in 1961 and immediately won the Finnish Championship. It was a feat never before seen on Finnish motocross tracks — and such performances have been rare since. The next time it happened was in 1982, when Pekka Vehkonen was crowned champion of the small class in his very first A-class season.
International arenas
In 1961 Kalteva secured a starting place in the European Championship round held at Ruskeasanta. The result was an excellent seventh place. In the following year’s European Championship race at Ruskeasanta, Kalteva might have finished even higher, but he was disqualified on somewhat questionable grounds for passing on the wrong side of a course marker.
Kalteva claimed his second Finnish Championship in 1963. The same year also produced his finest international result: he finished third in the Polish Grand Prix — despite being black-flagged once during the race for a jump start and sent through the pits.
A leap from the ski jump
In April 1964, Kalteva decided to dust off his ski-jumping skills from the saddle of his motorcycle. Half the county was left gasping when the motocross rider launched a 17-metre jump off the Hyvinkää Sveitsi ski-jumping hill on his 250cc Husqvarna.
Around that time Kalteva received an intriguing offer from a British journalist specialising in motorcycle sport. — He said I should move to England with my mechanic Matti Suokas. But we didn’t dare take up the opportunity without knowing the language. In hindsight, maybe we should have.
Kalteva’s trophy cabinet holds two individual Finnish Championship golds and two silvers. It also contains a gold medal won under the banner of Hyvinkää Motor Club in Finland’s very first inter-club team championship in 1964.
Kalteva ended his career in the saddle of a CZ in the autumn of 1967. The decision was unexpected: the recently married man had to choose between putting his limited funds into the household or into motocross. Kalteva believes that under more favourable circumstances he could have gone far.
“If I had been able to get my hands on new equipment every year and if I had been able to race in all the Grand Prix rounds, the possibilities could have been limitless. I just should have gone out into the world as soon as results started to come.”
Text: A.C Keller — Originally published in Bike magazine 6/2010
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