Joe Bornhorst featured in Ohio newspaper story

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By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

From the Times Reporter:
www.timesreporter.com

Injured motocross rider rises to become top RC racer

By Stacey Carmany
Times-Reporter correspondent

Click here to read the article on the Times Reporter website

At just 22 years old, Joe Bornhorst of New Philadelphia is living his childhood dream of traveling the globe racing against the world's top competitors, except in a very different way than he ever could have imagined.

After a devastating leg injury in 2010 cut his promising motocross career tragically short, the then 17-year-old dove head-first into the world of remote-control car racing where he's quickly becoming one of the top professional drivers in the world.

“Something I try to live by is when one door closes another one opens,” Bornhorst said. “Whenever I got hurt, motocross was my life, and it was all I knew my entire life. Whenever I got hurt, I didn't know what I was going to do. I was just lost. I didn't even know about any of the RC car stuff, and then I found that, and now I still get to live my dream, granted it's a little bit different than I thought it would be.”

Following three top-10 finishes at the Silver State Nitro Challenge in Las Vegas last month, the Tekno factory-sponsored driver debuted at number 22 among the top 25 remote-controlled buggy drivers in the world as ranked by the website Top25RC.com.

Prior to his injury, Bornhorst said he had no clue that competitive remote-controlled racing even existed. He was introduced to the sport by several friends about six months after the accident while he was confined to a wheelchair. He took to it immediately.

Soon after, Bornhorst’s father, John Bornhorst, bought him his first remote-controlled car, a Team Associated SC10 electric offroad truck from Magic Hobbies in Strasburg, and Bornhost soon began entering local races, taking on veteran drivers and winning.

Bornhorst said Magic Hobbies and its owners have been huge supporters of his racing career, helping him out from the very beginning.

After about a year-and-a-half of competing in events across the country at the amateur level, the industry began to take notice of this up-and-comer.

Bornhorst signed on as a professional driver for Serpent America, one of the leading manufacturers of radio controlled model-cars for competitive racing, in 2013, and then left Serpent to join Tekno’s racing team at the end of 2014.

John Bornhorst gets emotional when he talks about his son's success.

“I'm really incredibly proud of him,” he said. “From as low as he was for the three years he was down to where he is now is just something else.”

When he's not competing or practicing, Bornhorst is studying mechanical engineering through online courses offered by Kent State University.

“Back a couple of years ago, it was really tough, because I was trying to actually go to classes and schedule for being away at the races,” Bornhorst said. “Here the last year-and-a-half or so, I've been doing online school just so I can do it on the road or in a hotel or at the airport or wherever. That's helped out a lot.”

As for the future, Bornhost said he hopes to eventually become a product designer or developer for a major remote-controlled car manufacturer, but for now he's focusing on his studies and making his racing career the best it can be.

“I don't know where he's headed but he hasn't peaked yet,” John Bornhorst said of his son, who is in White Pine, Tennessee, this weekend racing in the eighth annual Psycho Nitro Blast.

Joe Bornhorst will continue to compete in races across the U.S. this summer and fall leading up to the International Federation of Model Auto Racing’s Nitro Off-Road World Championships in Las Vegas this October where he will take on the top drivers in the world.