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/1134532
IN THE WIND P34 Golden, Hodges Gear Up For Evel Live 2 Record Attempts F ollowing up on the success of Travis Pastrana's record- setting "Evel Live" jumps last year on live television from Las Vegas, preparations for History Chan- nel's "Evel Live 2" kicked off with Vicki Golden and Axell Hodges meeting the press and making their first public practice runs for the three-hour show that will air live on July 7 beginning at 8:00 P.M. EDT. Golden will ride a lightly modi- fied Indian FTR 1200 S in her quest to become the first female even to attempt to break the re- cord for blasting through flaming wooden boards. While the cur- rent record of 12 burning barriers was set in 2006, Golden will not only try to ride through 13 sets, but those boards will also be set much farther apart—50 feet, to be exact—which makes the stunt immensely more difficult. The former arenacross racer and four-time X Games medalist will need to go fast enough to break through each set of inch-thick boards and keep the biggest and most powerful bike she's ever ridden on course because those boards will be set between alumi- num stands eight feet apart. And let's not forget about the blazing boards obscuring her vision with some flaming embers no doubt landing in her lap! As for freestyle icon Hodges, he'll be relying on his Graeme Brough- prepared KX450 for two stunts. In the first, he'll try to sail over 24 bever- age trucks, which would break the 1971 attempt by Evel Knievel and the current record, set by Evel's son Robbie in 2003. The final stunt of the live event will see Hodges hit the custom- designed ramp at over 100 miles per hour in a pure distance jump to exceed the current ramp-to-ramp record of 378 feet, nine inches, set by Robbie Maddison in 2011. "[My freestyle jump back- ground] kind of gives me the confidence," he said. "When I'm hitting jumps, usually it's in the freestyle aspect of things, and they're a lot steeper and more technical, I'd say, than this. "This …it's more of a speed kind of traveling through the air fast thing so it'll take some adjusting to get used to, but I've been doing some testing and figuring out how the bike works, what it does in the air and how to glide through. The test jumps I've done so far were just on a stock 450, and we put a 47-tooth [rear sprocket] on it, and we were go- ing about 92 miles per hour, and I went 325 feet just doing that, dirt to dirt. I think the dirt kind of robs a little bit of the speed, too. "Now we've got a bike that's built up by Twisted Development. We got it going on the speed test so far going 111 miles per hour. "We know we've got the speed. Now we've just got to make the final tweaks and get everything like the tires [final- ized] because I don't know if I'm running knobbies or slicks, [what] bars and see if we have to cut the fenders at all." For those interested in witness- ing the show in person at the San Bernardino International Airport (formerly the Norton Air Force base) and not just sitting at home in front of the TV, tickets are avail- able at https://nitrocircus.com/ evel-live-2/. Mark Kariya For press day, Axell Hodges (left) and Vicki Golden did a few passes on one or two wheels for the cameras, but the real testing will take place out of public view. PHOTOS: MARK KARIYA