Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1009427
VOL. 55 ISSUE 30 JULY 31, 2018 P125 Carlsbad. It was largely thanks to a Brit living in America named Gavin Trippe who was mainly responsible for that pivotal moto- cross event coming to America. At that point Trippe, who passed away earlier this month, was in America publishing a weekly motorcycle newspaper called Motor Cycle Weekly. He teamed with countrymen Bruce Cox and Gerard McCaffrey to promote the inaugural motocross grand prix in America. The race launched a new era in motocross in this country and the U.S. would go on to host dozens of MXGPs in the following decades. At Carlsbad, West German Willi Bauer, riding a Maico, won America's first MXGP. Americans Brad Lackey (seventh) and John DeSoto (10th) both managed top- 10 finishes. The newfound Ameri- can love affair with this sport was on full display at Carlsbad. The race also was broadcast on ABC's Wide World of Sports, the most highly rated sports program of the time. Far lesser known than the all- important USGP at Carlsbad was what was dubbed the 125cc Mo- tocross World Cup race held in August in St. Charles, Missouri. The 125cc class had not yet been given official world championship status, but the precursor was the World Cup 125cc Motocross Championship and believe it or not, the race in Missouri was part of that series in 1973. Only four of the European 125 MX regulars showed up in Missouri, mainly because the rounds at that point were essentially qualifying races for a season-ending, winner-take- all championship—that season held in Yugoslavia. Sweden's Nils-Arne Nilsson, riding a Husqvarna, won the overall with a 1-4 at St. Charles, but American Bob Grossi, also Husky mounted, took the vic- tory in the second moto. The American round in St. Charles was part of the Group B section. Group A rider Andre Malherbe went on to claim the 125cc World Cup MX Cham- pionship riding, of all things, a Zundapp. Incidentally, Grossi and Mickey Boone (the North Car- olinian who finished third overall on a Suzuki in St. Charles), by virtue of the points they scored at the American round of the World Cup, were eligible to compete in the year-end 125cc World Cup Finale race in Yugoslavia, but neither attended. In August of '73, on a rainy No- vember day in Houston, Texas, Jim Weinert and his Kawasaki overcame foot-deep mud and defeated all the leading European riders on hand. The muscular rider from Middletown, New York, hammered out his own little piece of motocross history when he became the first American to take an overall victory at a Trans-Am race (German Adolf Weil went on to win that year's championship). While the years 1981, with Team USA's first win in the pres- tigious Motocross des Nations, and 1982, when both Brad Lack- ey (500cc) and Danny LaPorte (250cc) won motocross world titles, are most often pointed to as the year American motocross racing hit the big time, a good argument can be made that with so many significant races on American soil and breakthrough victories for American riders, that 1973 just might be the year America had its coming out party in the motocross world. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives Jim Pomeroy's victory in the opening round of the FIM 250cc Motocross Grand Prix in Spain in 1973, made him the first American to win a MXGP. That win landed him on the cover of the AMA's racing press book in 1974.