CN
III ARCHIVES
BY SCOTT ROUSSEAU
B
e prepared, that's Jeff Ward's
motto. After winning four AMA
Supercross Series rounds in 1984
and finishing fourth, Jeff Ward
won only one round of the AMA
Supercross Series in 1985, but
he ended up with the number-one
plate on his motorcycle. How's
that for numerology? Win four, fin-
ish fourth. Win one, finish first.
The beauty of Ward's '85
title—his first of two in AMA
Supercross—was that it came
in the most competitive season
the sport has yet seen, in an era
when there were so many top-tier
factory stars capable of winning
that a multi-victory run of the kind
that modern-day warriors Jeremy
McGrath, Ricky Carmichael and
Chad Reed have enjoyed was
simply unfathomable.
"Yeah, either we were all very
bad, or we were all very good,"
Ward, now 43, says with a laugh.
"There were eight different win-
ners, and it was all about getting
the start. If you got a 10th-place
start, or even a fifth-place start,
you were screwed. You needed
to be first, second or third off the
start, because you weren't going
to get by guys every corner and
every lap to catch up to the lead-
P100
the rider with the best two moto
scores being declared the winner
of the event. Ward recalls that he
placed extra-heavy emphasis on
his training regimen that year in
anticipation of a war with a num-
ber of equally prepared rivals.
"There were a few of them, like
Johnny O'Mara, David Bailey, Ricky
ers. If you did get up to second,
the leader was usually gone."
And you had to get good starts
twice each night, because 1985
was the year that the AMA, in its
infinite wisdom, elected to utilize
a two-moto format for AMA Super-
cross. Rather than one 20-lap main
event, there were two 10-lappers,
ONE WAS ENOUGH
JEFF WARD'S 1985
SUPERCROSS CHAMPIONSHIP
In 1985, Jeff Ward
won just one
race but took the
AMA Supercross
Championship by
just one point.
