PHOTO: Bildbyrån + TT Nyhetsbyrån
He is one of our biggest motoring icons ever.
Ove Fundin wrote Swedish sports history with 12 WC gold medals.
Then he left the country and this is how it went for the 91-year-old icon.
There are few who can measure up Ove Fundins incredible track record. Tranåssonen wrote Swedish sports history with incredible success and is one of our top speedway racers of all time.
Fundin’s greatness
Already at a young age, Fundin discovered the fun of motocross and built his own track with his friends back home in Tranås. Just a few years later, he was persuaded to start with speedway and then the success story would take off.
In 1956, Ove Fundin became the very first from a non-Anglican country to win World Cup gold in front of 65,000 fanatical spectators in the stands, and thereafter the Swede lined up successes every year. He reached the World Cup podium every single year until 1965 and collected an incredible five individual World Cup golds, six World Cup team golds, one World Cup pair gold and as many as nine World Championship golds during that impressive career.
Left Sweden
Ove became known as “The Flying Fox”, for his red hair at the time, and with a total of 12 World Championship golds, he is truly one of the great legends of Swedish motorsport. Since 2012, there is also a sculpture by Fundin in the hometown of Tranås.
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Today he is 91 years old and has left Sweden many years ago to settle on the French Riviera, but the speed freak has never left his interest in motoring behind. When Ove celebrated 80 years in 2013, he rode a motorcycle across the entire USA from Florida to Alaska.
– There is always a new challenge. Like when he turned 65 and cycled to Tranås from the Riviera. And so it was in Asia in 2006; motorcycle from South Korea, through Mongolia and Russia to Sweden. It was made into a TV film by the motoring journalist Christer Gerlach, says the son Niclas Fundin to Dagens Nyheter.
Celebrated 90th birthday
He recently celebrated his 90th birthday by riding a motorcycle all the way from France to Tranås, a distance of 200 miles. And of course the speedway icon admits that it can get stiff in the saddle after so many hours of riding.
– But it’s just a matter of speeding up a bit, and it will pass. Then it’s just a matter of driving again. It’s a matter of habit, Ove tells the local newspaper Tranåsposten.
READ MORE: Total goosebumps from the tribute to Tony Rickardsson in the Master of Masters – and now the giant brat is revealed in the TV box: “Being touched”
Fundin still travels a lot and tries every year to see the sport he loves so much.
– I usually go around and see one or two GP competitions on site. I live mostly in France, there is speedway there, but it’s on the other coast, he says to the site speedwayfans.se and admits what he thinks of motorsport in Sweden today.
– I don’t see it as black as many others do, but I think it is possible for us to get a guiding light again. You might have thought that Lindgren would fill in after Rickardsson, but he hasn’t really been enough in my opinion. Someone is needed that the young people can look up to. For example, when Ingemar Stenmark started winning in downhill skiing, it became a big sport in Sweden. Before, it had hardly been heard of. It has happened again before in Sweden, so why wouldn’t it do it again.
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