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III EMPIRE OF DIRT
BY STEVE COX
O
ver the years in columns
I've written here in Cycle
News (the first one
coming in 2000), and in myriad
other publications, I've probably
dedicated more space to the
subject of contact in motocross
and supercross racing than to
any other single subject. It's a
passion of mine, not because I
think it's cool when people run
into each other, but because it's
the essence of the sport itself.
When people talk about the
greatest our sport has seen,
most of the time they use words
like "grit," "determination" and
"tenacity." The greatest moto-
cross and supercross racers in
history didn't often sit around
behind somebody for very long.
If there was someone in their
way, they either found a way by
cleanly, or found a way by not so
cleanly, but they found a way by.
Finding a way by is the point. It's
not a gentleman's sport.
One of the greatest stories I
remember about this way was in
a Trans-AMA event in the late-
'70s (I believe at Unadilla, but I
could be wrong, as this is from
memory), where Bob Hannah
and Roger DeCoster slammed
each other so many times that
eventually Hannah dropped out
of the race because his exhaust
pipe was smashed so bad that
his engine quit. That's extreme,
but it's our sport.
After the 2017 Las Vegas Su-
percross, where Zach Osborne
took out Joey Savatgy with one
turn left in the race to win his
first-ever professional title, I
wrote a column talking about
how amazing that was to watch.
At Hangtown a couple weeks
later, a Kawasaki partisan found
me out on the track and pled
his team's case, saying that he
CONTACT SPORTS
Rick Johnson agrees that
MX is a contact sport.
