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VOLUME 57 ISSUE 25 JUNE 23, 2020 P123 third at Houston. Stanton was look- ing to get back on track at round three in Anaheim. "How you start the season is not so important," Stanton said in a TV interview before Anaheim. "It's how you finish the season that counts." McGrath, meanwhile, admitted to a bad case of rookie nerves in the first two rounds where he scored fourth and fifth. A total of 55,817 fans were on hand for the AMA Camel Super- cross at Anaheim that night. Rain had plagued Southern California for days prior, but it cleared on race day and the dirt had been kept un- der tarps so fans and racers were greeted with picture-perfect condi- tions. In the first heat, McGrath was running a solid fourth, but then Jeff Emig and Steve Lamson got into a bar-banging battle allowing MC to slip past to take second behind Mike Kiedrowski. In the second heat, Stanton got off line and hit a haybale (in the days be- fore Tuff Blocks), fell back, worked his way to the front again only to be passed by Guy Cooper and fellow Michigander Brian Swink late to finish third. In the main, Stanton looked like he'd been saving his best for last. He quickly took over the lead coming out of the first turn when holeshotter Erik Kehoe came up short on a small exit jump. Mc- Grath got a great start and tucked in behind his teammate in second and the Honda factory boys ran one and two. On the second lap, Stanton nailed everything perfectly and put a little daylight between himself and McGrath, but a lap later MC rallied and was back on Stanton's tail. On the third lap, the pass that would become iconic happened. It was early in the lap. A mid-sized jump led im- mediately to a 90-degree left-hand turn. Stanton approached it wide and McGrath simply stayed on the gas, shot inside, hit the jump passing the leader mid-air and flicked it into the turn. For the first time in his career, he was leading an AMA Supercross main. "That's a pass I'll never forget," McGrath said a decade later of his seminal encounter with Stanton. "In fact, I'd say there isn't a day goes by that I don't think about it. People ask me a lot what was my most memorable race and I always go back to '93 Anaheim. That was my breakthrough, the one where for the first time I could see myself being a Supercross Champion." The crowd cheered loudly when their own hometown hero (MC lived about 50 miles south in Murrieta, California) took over the lead. It was a surprise to see the rookie put it on the veteran champ, a surprise that is, to everyone but Stanton. "I knew what kind of speed Jer- emy had," Stanton said. "We rode together quite often. Back then Honda's test track was in Simi Valley, and we spent a lot of time riding together. Even when he was on Mitch's [Payton] team on the Peak bike, a couple of days a week we'd either test or ride. You always had your eye on new guys coming in, so I wasn't surprised with the speed Jeremy had." Almost everyone in Anaheim that night expected the relentless Stanton to come back and show the rookie a thing or two, but it never happened. McGrath pulled away and built up to about a six- second lead on the final lap. "I tried to come back on him, but he was pumped up in front of his home crowd and wasn't going to be denied," Stanton said. "Jeremy brought in a new style of riding that came from BMX, like manual [a BMX technique of keeping the front wheel lofted over obstacles even when the bike is not under power] and staying low off of jumps and carrying speed from point to point better. He's the one who brought that in, and it's been finely retuned since then." McGrath went on to win 10 out of 14 races in 1993 en route to winning his first championship. He would, of course, go on to become the King of Supercross, with seven championships and 72 wins—records that will likely never be broken. And it all started 20 years ago on a night in Anaheim that would forever change the world of Supercross. CN This Archives edition is reprinted from issue #3, February 3, 2013. CN has hundreds of past Archives edi- tions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives