Two things make the world of Tom Lathrop go around. Racing his IMCA sport mod and Minnesota Vikings football.
“I’ll race until the snow flies,” said Lathrop, 61, of Ottumwa, Iowa. “I’ll be at every fall special. I live for the fall. Football and racing are what I do. I love this time of year.”
When Lathrop won his heat race during the IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals at Boone Speedway in Iowa, you would have thought he won the “Big Dance” or the Vikings won a Super Bowl.
He carries the purple and yellow of the Vikings as an homage to his favorite NFL team. All the captains and quarterbacks for the team during Lathrop’s lifetime are on the hood and roof.
Lathrop dedicated one side of the car to present-day quarterback Kirk Cousins. Legendary Jim Marshall is on the other side. Marshall played 289 consecutive games, a record for a defensive lineman and second only to Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre (another former Viking).
“Jim Marshall went to work every day,” Lathrop said. “When he was hospitalized, he even came to the field in an ambulance, played the game, and returned to the hospital in an ambulance. He is my hero. He has the heart and soul of a true warrior.”
Tom Lathrop draws inspiration from Marshall, among other Vikings.
“I am a one-man warrior — no pit crew, no sponsors for more than 20 years,” said Lathrop. “People come up to me and ask how I got the Vikings to sponsor me. I tell them they sponsor me mentally.”
The heat race win during the Super Nationals caps off Lathrop’s “best year ever.”
“No one knows how hard I worked to get here,” Lathrop said. “Yes, I struggled. Yes, winning a heat race is a very big deal. Nothing is equivalent to the Super Nationals. There are 174 sport mods here and the top 30 will make the A-main.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
