When American Honda gave Ben Bostrom his Superbike try-out, they assigned him to Merlyn Plumlee. Together they won the US Superbike championship. image by dean adams

Vast sadness greets the news that Honda crewchief Merlyn Plumlee passed away late last night. Plumlee courageously battled cancer for the last two years and was just 55 years old. He is survived by his wife, Marta.

A man renowned throughout the world for his integrity, humor and clear-thinking, Plumlee engineered race wins and championships for a variety of top level riders including Fred Merkel, Freddie Spencer, Mike Hale, Steve Crevier, Ben and Eric Bostrom, Nick Hayden, Jake Zemke and many more. Other crewchiefs openly stated that Plumlee was the best they had ever seen.

Plumlee's renown for his race prep was always actually overshadowed by the immense respect he had throughout the racing world as a gentleman and simply a good man.

Like many others I was privileged to call Merlyn my friend. We struck up a friendship in the early 1990s and he became someone who I could seek out to help sift through difficult situations and questions. From racing politics to confounding chassis geometry questions or simply trying to understand racing and riders, Merlyn offered clear and concise suggestions, all of them laced with a wicked sense of humor.

I last saw Merlyn at the Fall Laguna Seca US Superbike round. Of course, his first words to me were about my new son and asking about my family, not anything about his current health status or his long and arduous treatment for cancer.

I hadn't actually seen him in a few months and greeted him with a big bear hug, forgetting that he'd recently broken his shoulder. Always in phenomenal physical shape, Merlyn felt so strong.

That is how I will remember him, strong and with a great concern for others first and foremost on his mind.

Like the racing world, I will dearly miss Merlyn Plumlee. Yet, at the same time, I am grateful that I was privileged to know him.