Cycle News

VOL. 55 ISSUE 37 SEPTEMBER 18, 2018 P123 grabbed his breakthrough win in Phoenix, and he did it after battling the entire main event with Ryan Dungey, Broc Hepler, Brett Metcalfe and eventual champ Jason Lawrence. His first win came after a race-long battle with top-tier talent. The rest of his 2008 season wasn't great, but Weimer had decided that if he wanted to contend for titles, he wanted to race for Pro Circuit. He took less money to sign with Mitch Pay- ton's Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki squad the following year and almost took the title from Ryan Dungey. Weimer won three main events while Dungey won four, and Weimer ended up five points behind Dungey at the end of the series. Then, outdoors, Weimer had another breakthrough, winning his first AMA National in Colorado, and then his second at Budds Creek, before being chosen to race MX2 for Team USA at the Motocross of Nations with Ryan Dungey (MX1) and Ivan Tedesco (Open). They won. And after all of that, as we headed into the 2010 season, it seemed like absolutely nobody was talking about Jake Weimer. Everyone was talking about Trey Canard or Weimer's teammate Josh Hansen. I was working at another magazine at the time and nobody there seemed to take him seriously either. I basically had to beg to do an internet story on him at the Kawasaki track. This is after he won three supercrosses in 2009, along with two nation- als, was on the Motocross of Nations team, and his main rival from 2009, Ryan Dungey, was moving up to the 450cc class! That's how Weimer was treated throughout his career. He rarely, I felt, got the respect he de- served. Of course, he dominated the 250cc West in 2010, with his only hiccup coming when he crashed at Anaheim III while trying to pass Wil Hahn and couldn't get his bike started. He got going last and still finished eighth. He won four of the eight rounds, then won his fifth race at the East/West Shootout, leading home a historic Pro Circuit 1-2-3- 4 of Weimer, Hansen, Christophe Pourcel, and Dean Wilson. The next year, Weimer moved up to the 450cc class as a teammate to Ryan Villopoto, but missed almost the entire 450cc SX season with a broken arm. The next year, Weimer grabbed a podium at round two. It was his first of five podium finishes, and Weimer ended up fifth in points. Over the ensuing years at Kawasaki, Weimer suffered from some injuries, as well as not being afforded the ability to set up his motorcycles the way he wanted and other things like that, and when it came contract time after he lost his ride at Kawasaki, he always seemed to be signed as an afterthought or a replace- ment rider for injured racers whom I always felt Weimer was better than anyway. And then, prior to the 2018 season, Weimer finally got a deal signed early in the off-season with the MotoCon- cepts Honda team. He was very, very fast at the test track, and things were looking really good for him with months yet to pre- pare for the 2018 season when the unthinkable happened—he had a rear hub break. It's a part that rarely breaks. Nobody on the team had seen it happen on a Honda before. Yet, in the middle of a supercross practice ses- sion, the rear hub broke, sending Weimer over the bars. It took him months to recover, only to get back to the track early in the AMA Supercross Series and get injured again. And that was it. Weimer an- nounced his retirement from racing this past week. We all kind of knew it was coming. He's 30 years old now, and he has a family. His wife Nicole and his daughter Kennedy are his world now. Weimer is a champion. And he became a champion the hard way. And regardless of whatever else happened in his career, that's something not a lot of other racers can say. But as a friend, and a fan of his, I can't help but wonder what would've happened if he'd have been shown the kind of respect he deserved during his racing career. CN

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