J.N. Roberts

James Nelson "J. N." Roberts is an American former professional off-road and enduro motorcycle racer and a film industry stuntman. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he was a dominant motorcycle competitor in American desert racing centered in the Mojave Desert of Southern California. At one point in his desert racing career, Roberts won 27 consecutive desert races, earning him the unofficial nickname of King of the Desert. Roberts was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999 and, into the Off-road Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2009.

Originally from rural Indiana, Roberts moved to Southern California in the 1960s after serving in Okinawa with the United States Marine Corps. He worked as a carpenter on film sets at Universal Studios and, began competing in off-road desert motorcycle races during his spare time.

When Roberts began his desert racing career in the early 1960s, most desert racers preferred heavy, ungainly, British parallel twin cylinder motorcycles. He was among the first desert racers to adopt lighter motorcycles with single cylinder, two-stroke engines. Despite the horsepower advantage of the larger motorcycles, Roberts' Husqvarna motorcycle weighed only 245 pounds making it more nimble and agile than the larger motorcycles. Where riders of larger motorcycles tended to use speed and momentum to plough through desert obstacles, Roberts appeared to be dancing away from obstacles, standing upright on the foot pegs, rarely sitting down. He began recording victories in the huge AMA District 37 events against as many as 1,000 competitors.

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