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/126349
The SoCalMX mutiny. • • The charge is rip-off the question is where? By Bobi Scott About 12 years ago club racing was the only show in town for southern California based motorcycle racers. Entry fees were next to nothing because club,members got a kick out of throwing races "for the love of the sport." It was a hobby for them, not an occupation. Gate fees were unheard of because 24 there were no parks to maintain. No . one complained about dry, unpre· pared track, that was just a part of racing in southern California. If it rained the day before the race, scorekeepers thanked their lucky stars that they might be able to tell who was behind the leader for a change. Nobody ever screamed rip-off. There wasn 't much sense in screaming about something that "did n't exist in the first place. Over the course of a decade club racing nearly vanished in southern California . As a matter Of fact, club racing started going away when rnotocross racing came along to take the place of scrambles and class C type , races . As soon as Japan started unloading their sleek , lightweigb motocross machinery _ on America, racers got rid of their leaky British tanks. The new equipment was inex pensive, fairly easy to maintain and replacement parts were relatively easy to get hold of. Club members grew tired of sitting around with a yellow flag in their hand all day watching the other guys have all the fun. More and more riders wanted to try this exciting new type of motorcycle racing; and as entries to motocross races all over southern California increased, the demand for more events started outnumbering the supply. Under the circumstances. it was predictable that racing in southern California was about to become big business. In 1967 Saddleback Park. located in the heart of Orange County. opened its gates to riders who welcomed the opportunity to trail ride legally without having to drive moore than 100 miles to open desert . Race promoters and newly formed organizations started placing ads and calendar listings in Cycle News, touting their Sunday events and urging racers 10 join their newly formed associations. After Saddleback came more parks and new race tracks in various areas, more promoters and a veritable alphabet soup of racing organizations. When the smoke began to clear. and the boom leveled off, of the many or ganizations that sunk before they ever learned to float . southern California ended up with a handful of fairly professional, successful racing organi zations that promote races as a business, not a hobby. CMC, AME, CRC and SRA are the biggest moneymaking racing organizations around and have actually produced more national caliber motocross riders than any other organization . could ever hope to lay claim .10 . If it hadn't been for them, would Bob Hannah; Marty Smith, Mike Bell , Rex Staten, Warren Reid or Marty Tripes (to name only a few) be superstars today? Maybe. maybe not . They had to start some. where. But what about the local weekendwarrior who doesn 't care about ever graduating out of the ranks of sportsman competition. Cycle News fre quently receives letters from unhappy competitors complaining about high gate fees, expensive entry fees and deplorable track conditions. Are promOlers and parks taking advantage of the weekend-only type racer? Here's an example of bow one family feels about thi situation - this letter appeared in Cycle News , Issue 43, November 8, 1978 . . . We pay our hard earned money each week to race and Jar what? Two lousy ]5 -)0 minute motos on dry tracks, high entry fees, and outrageous gate [ees. The promoters are yelling insurance, the riders np·oJf, but nothing is being done about the problem. If the motorcycle parks were not making money they would not be remaining open. Don 't the f>o:rks see that they are losing more and more good riders and racers each week because oj their pricest It has become a ricn man's sport . Slowly more and more devoted racers ' are being squeezed out because we can no longer afford the lwcury oj racing. Don't the parks see that by their ridiculous prices, soon no one will be able to afford to go riding, and they will have to shut down' Saddleback, Racing World, Indian Dunes, and Carlsbad, they are all doing it, and we're just taking it. Carlsbad is the worst oj all oj them. The track is never prepared except Jar the USCP, there is no lunch truck, no overnight camping, and what's worse, no park riding! The park is oJJ limits. Only the track is to be used. And this we get Jar our I' a day, 112 to 117 entry feest In the desert they can go racing locallyJor 16 to 110 all day, no restrictions and we are supposed to go two usually shortened motos and be content? My husband and 1 are just about ready to throw in the towel on what used to be a great Jamily sport, that was always Jun and at an affordable price. We are being ripped oJJandjust sitting back and letting it happen, instead oj doing something about the problem. By taking care of this problem we can insure that in the future we will still be able to enjoy the sport we all love. DEBBIE MA TTHEWS Tustin, cA We went straight to the source for answers to Mrs. Mathews questions. Stu Peters, who originated and still runs the CMC. and Vic Wilson, owner/operator of Saddleback Park, graciously consented to give us their input on how they felt about being "raked over the coals" so to speak. After reading the MX rip-off letter. what's your opinion and how can you justify the present situation? PETERS : I don't feel it's a rip -off For example: CMC has not raised their entry fees since 1972, to a Junior or Pro rider , but many of our expenses have tripled . or more . since that time. Yes, insurance is a major factor . We can not run without it. But we also have had other increases, such as postage, which has gone up drastically in the last few years, office staff, race personnel, ambulance services (you could get an ambulance three or four years ago for about $60 to $75 a day but it's now from $120 to $170 per day). It's just a combination of a lot of things. 1 think the rider feels he's been put into a box because all of a sudden .wha t he used to buy , his favorite motorcycle whatever the brand, for X number of dollars is now in some cases almost double and the cost of parts has doubled in price. Riden also complain about gate fees. Vic, what in particular can you tell us about Saddleback Park? Why are the gate fees so high, are they going to go up even more? WILSON: As you know, Saddleback Park was the grandfather of all motorcycle parks. It was the first one and we started out charging $2 a day, in 1967. It was only a month after we opened that we realized $2 wasn't enough and we upped the fee to $2.50 per bike per day. Now remember, this was a very, very primitive type of operation. We had little equipment and very few employees. We basically, at that time, were a trail riding park. We didn't have the costs we do today. We're more of a racing plant now where we have tremendous equipment costs, employee costs, maintenance costs, fencing , starting gates, and so on. But the biggest problem we've had and the biggest increase we've experienced is insurance. Insurance today runs 22 percent of my gross annual revenue. In other words, 22~ out of every dollar or five times 22~ out of every five dollars is insurance. That problem has come from the participants - the people who are using our facility. They don't realize it , but they're complaining about our high gate fees and they've brought it on themselves. Saddleback Park, as all the parks again, as of December I, this year, stands to lose all of its liability insurance. It is now being examined . by the insurance companies. We did lose our insurance last year and we had to shut down. Another company came in and offered to re -write the policy at a much higher premium . They practically tripled our premium. And the reason for that increase is d ue to cl aims that the riders have brought against the park? WILSON: That's right and I can show you, of the claims that we've had , probably 99 percent of them are instigated by rider negligence on the part of the rider seeking the claim - riding too fast in areas he shouldn't be riding fast, not preparing himself or not abiding by the rules we've set up within the park. It 's not a situation where the park is negligent; meaning, we dug a trench across a road and then didn't mark it; or we ran over someone with our bulldozer, or something like that where we would be directly responsible for negligence. It's not that. It's strictly rider negligence. The second key area is just the cost "of living. The salaries we have , and we have to keep a pretty good crew out there, involves six to eight people, depending on what we are doing or what time of year it is. In the summer months we have to have a double crew. The most expensive man I have on my payroll is my manager and he's only making $1,500 a month, but he works his butt off. I don't consider him overpaid, is what I'm trying to say. He can probably go out and get another job at any other place and make equal or more money for less hours. Now that Saddleback Park is more of a racing facility than a trailriding park are there a lot of expenses involved in the purchase and u pkeep of equipment to maintain the track. WILSON: A lot of complaints are about dry tracks and so on and so