Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Hangin' out with 1987 12Scc National Motocross Champion: Micky~ymond "The weirder you play, the more fun it is" By Kit Palmer Photos by Bernadette Phillips Who is .Micky Dymon d? To Team Honda he's their 1987 125cc Motocross National Champion and former employee. To Team Yamaha he's th eir biggest h ope. To his for mer co m peti to rs in the I25cc class he's good riddance. But when you ask . Micky Dymond who h e is , his 14 it's lik e pl ayin g, but you can p lay in weird ways, a nd th e weir der you pl ay, th e more fun it is." response is, " I don't exactly know." " I gu ess I'm many people inside ," said Dymond " and I like to be all of them. Maybe not all at th e same time, th ough. In different moods I ca n go o u t and act in different ways. I ca n be quiet, and I can be loud; I can be aggressive, or unpredictable, or whatever I want to be. I just go a nd be myself, and if I'm feeling a certain way, I won't try to discourage myself from feeling that way. I just let it happen. "Maybe I'm weird; that's what everyone calls me. Maybe it's because half the tim e I don't know what I'm going to say or what I'm going to do ; not that I'm going to do anything weird or a nything. Like if I was to describe Johnny O 'Mara, I'd say he's weird. But I like , him because he 's that way. He screws around, kind of gets gooney for fun, which is wh at I like to do , too . It's not really weird, Micky Martin Dymond was born J anuary 21, 1965, in Gar den Grove, Ca lifornia, th e so n of Ray a nd Beth . Dymond. Micky has three bro th ers and one sister. The sister is th e oldest of th e group at age 25. Micky is the second oldest, followed by his brothers Rick (20), David (10) and Don (8). Micky and his family mov ed to Yorba Linda, California, wh en he was two years old. It wasn 't until he was in high school that he showed any interest in motorcycles. "Before high school, I was really into football and did real well. I pl ayed for five years, and I al so played baseball. My dad was big in sports wh en he was in high school and coll ege. H e was like the hot guy; he was a quarterback in football, and he got me involved in football. There was no way I wasn't going to play. There were times I wanted to qui t, • • • • bu t he wou ld say, 'There are no q uitters in this famil y, son.' So I never cou ld ge t out of it. Once I go t in to it, I loved doin g it. " I got hooked on bi kes. At first I was too young when my dad tried to get me started. In my min d I had ot her things I wa nted to do. But I got hooked. My first bike was a Yamaha MX80, and my firs t race was at Escape Country (i n so uthern California) and I got beat rea l bad. " By the time Dymond' ente red hi gh school, foo tba ll was behind him. H e had become mor e and more inter, ested in riding motorcycles, and less and less in terested in school , whi ch he was never fond of in th e first place. ' Micky attended Troy High School i n Full erton , Cal if ornia , but dropped out during his Junior year. "Schoo l wasn 't it for me," said Dymond. " I didn 't care to learn about much. I just wanted to get through. Most of my classes were industri al arts like wood shop, a uto shop, meta l shop. I remember in my auto shop class you'd get points for driving in a car, so I would driv e , in my tru ck, sit there and listen to th e radio the wh ol e period, th en drive it o ut. " One da y a guy rod e in on his motorcycle, and there was this littl e rise in th e drivewa y, and I was o u t there doing jumps. We were having j ump ing contests wi th his motorcycle during class. We were ju m ping th e bike rig ht where the garage was open, and th e teach er wouldn 't co me o ut and say any thing. We didn't get along too well. He thought I was a jerk. I ca n 't imagine wh y. " I spent a lo t of tim e o ut in smo ker's field smoking down some ciga rettes , drink in g beer in th e parking lot. I guess I was a real rebel; I didn 't have a lot of frie nds. I was just a lon er. " I actuall y ditched my firs t da y of high school. I went and played voll eyball o n th e beach. Sometimes I ditched a co up le of tim es a week to go riding. My first period class en de d u p bein g a t Win chell ' s Donuts." , After he dropped out of high school, Dymond found himself with a lot of spar e tim e and used it riding motorcycles. It was then he decided to take racing serio usly. :'1 believed I was going to make it in racing, " said Dymond. And he did. In 1983 Dymond signed his first factory co nt rac t with Husqvarna. Although he n ever claimed a National Championship with the Swedish marque, he did perform well eno ugh to be a threat on the National circuit, despite riding equipment that was inferior to the -

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