By Al Robinson

Today, a date on the World of Outlaws sprint car schedule is a coveted asset, and the contract to promote one of those prestigious events includes a lot of dollar signs and zeroes.

It wasn’t always that way. When the World of Outlaws was launched in 1978, and for many years thereafter, its corporate headquarters was wherever Ted Johnson sat down his briefcase. One characterization of the early WoO was “six race cars and a tee shirt trailer.” The minimum purse was $2,000 to win and if your check cleared, you could be a World of Outlaws promoter.

Roy Sova, known to race fans for more than 40 years as the voice of Oswego (N.Y.) Speedway, was selling advertising for a Binghamton radio station and Jack Crawford owned a motorcycle shop while racing a sprint car in Pennsylvania. They liked what they heard about the WoO and took the promotional plunge relying on their own far-from-deep pockets, leasing Five Mile Point Speedway for the night of Wednesday, July 25, 1979, at a flat $1,000.

“They were supposed to run the night before at Rolling Wheels but they got rained out,” Sova recalled. “Jack and I had signed the first contract for a World of Outlaws show in New York State. When Glenn Donnelly got wind of it, he signed a contract for a race the night before, so technically he would have had the first race (in New York) but they got rained out. So the first race was at Five Mile Point.”

Eighteen cars were in the pits, but they included the names that counted. “Jack called in a lot of his chips from the Pennsylvania guys. Back then the WoO didn’t have a big group traveling with them. They depended mostly on local guys joining them from the local tracks to put on the show. We had Smokey Snellbaker and Lynn Paxton to go along with (Steve) Kinser and (Sammy) Swindell,” Sova recounted.

It was Swindell who made the biggest impression. “When Swindell went on the track for time trials, they pushed him off and for four laps he never lifted,” Sova remembers. Swindell led until blowing an engine after 38 of the 50 laps. Paxton led the rest of the way over Pennsylvanians Bobby Allen and Van May. Kinser was fourth.

General admission was $10, double the weekly price. “We had a pretty good night in terms of bodies in the seats. The little back grandstand that holds about 500 people was darn near full. I said to Jack, ‘We’ve had a good night. The back grandstand is full.’ He said, ‘There are 23 paid admissions back there.’” It turned out the regular management let their friends in free. They were operating under the principle that if they are there, they’ll buy a hot dog and a drink. It mattered to us because we didn’t have the concession stands. Almost everybody in the back grandstand was a freebie,” Sova explained.

The bottom line for the first WoO visit to the Empire State? “When everything was said and done, after we paid for the advertising and paid the purse, and a couple of guys like Jimmy Horton we paid appearance money to, we made just under 10 dollars.”