Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

. ,,).lJ'l h o se of us who are fa ns of American motocross have.a job to do. It is up to us to select three riders from the ranks of the American motocross elite to represent this country at the 1994 Motocross des Nations in September. The" AMA Motocross de Nations Team USA Rider VOTE!" will soon be appearing in racing publications everywhere. The ballot is meant to give fans a chance to select the three riders who will represent this huge nation in Roggenburg, Switzerland at the 1994 MX des Nations. What it may end up doing - if we're not careful - is give another country a better chance to win. The MX des Nations is a team competition between motocrossin' countries from all over the planet. Since 1981, Team USA is 13-0. That's the longest singular record in the history of this sport, which creates a problem for American riders at the Motocross des Nations: It's not about winning ' anym ore, it's about not losing. No one .wants to be on the team that finally loses this race. To put the length of this streak in perspective, consider what our current heroes were doing when the streak started in 1981: Ezra Lusk was a few-year-old Pee Wee racer; Jeremy McGrath was just another third-grader jumping milk crates on a bicycle; Doug Henry was still three years away from even seeing his first motocross race ; Robbie Reynard was in diapers. Now they're about to get votes to be on Team USA '94. Although the race is not until the end of the summer, we should turn ' pa r t of our aUe_ion to it now because there's really nothing else worth bench racing about in the States right now. The 250cc supercross series is a 15th-place finish away from being decided. The . National "Mike" Championship, oth- T ,25 YEARS AGO... •May 20, 1969 ars Larsson rode his Husqvamas to victory in the 250cc and Open Expert classes at Dehesa MX... Al Rogers topped the Cherry Creek Hare Scrambles aboard an ex-Evel Knievel Triumph... Dusty Coppage muscled his way past Jim adom for the San Jose Mile win. Coppage's handlebar JI!~". Pliu.shed Odom ' s L .. erwise known as the 250cc outdoor series, has been a two-Kawasaki (Kiedrowski and LaRocco) race . Only the 125cc outdoor Nationals are currently providing American motocross fans with anything to talk about. So let's start thinking of some winning possibilities for Team USA. For instance, even if we limit our candidates for the three Team USA riders to the four Team Honda riders, we'dstill have the best team going in. The same goes with Team Kawasaki. Team Yamaha would do fine if they added Doug Dubach as the big-bike rider, or maybe give Damon Bradshaw a day's wages for missing work back at the ranch. America could probably win sending three Jeffs: Stanton, Emig and Matiasevich, even though two of those three guys may very well be in retirement mode by September. We could send Team Noleen's two Larrys - Brooks and Ward - and Lewis, as in Kyle, and still win, even though one of them would have to ride a Yamaha 490 air-hammer. Suzuki's three teenaged 125cc riders - Ezra Lusk, Damon Huffman and Jimmy Button could win if the FIM requirement for a 500cc motorcycle was somehow skirted . That, or they could get one of Roger DeCoster's old RH370s out of storage. We could also vote for an allAmerican expatriate team of Bob Moore, Donny Schmit and Trampas Parker, or Billy Liles. Come to think of it, that would be one hell of a tough team for this particular race. By making liberal use of the WriteIn line of the ballot we could send any of the aforementioned teams, but if any of these groups lost, we couldn't blame the riders. The vote is in our hands, so we can only blame ourselves if the Noleen/Sizzler /USA team was to somehow lose. (Write-In voters must remember that Team USA could never send over an all- Splitfire/Hot Wheels team because Ryan Hughes and Jimmy Gaddis are the only two Americans on that squad. In fact, Jam es Dobb and Pedro . Gonzalez are said to be riding from their native countries of England and Mexico, respectively). Last year the pressure almost got to Team USA. The three riders elected to represent this nation in Austria were Jeff Emig on a 125, supercross champion Jeremy McGrath on a 250 and Mike Kiedrowski on a 500. That may sound like a murderers' row of mo tocrossers, but we almost shot ourselves in the boot. Before the race, our guys took turns saying that it was the mo st p res sure-packed event of their young lives - which it probably was. Emig ended up losing a moto to some Italian missile named Bartolini while an out-of-sync McGrath got beat by a bunch of people. It was up to a crashpron e Kiedrowski to get up and carry the flag, but we came within two laps of losing. So what w en t wrong in AustriaL.Or rather, almost wrong? Pressure, of course. And the possibility that we ma y ha ve picked the wrong team for the wrong track. Schwansenstadt was a fast, crowded freeway of a race track. British rid er Kurt Nicoll couldn't do a "Nac Nac" on an Excitobike video game, .but the Motocross des Nations wasn't held in Anaheim Stadium, and Nicoll won the 250cc class . There was no place out there for someone like McGrath to use his profound technical skills, which ad d ed to the pressure that he was already facing. Our r id ers will be faced with a s im ilar track this time around . Roggenburg is a track unlike any you ' ve seen in the United States in recent years. There are no doubles or triples, no washboard whoop sections or stee p , banked turns. There are rocks and hills and true fifth-gear 15 YEARS AGO... May 23, 1979 G m l.;'--.~. ::-: : ::::;.:: :::.: .:.:: ~-: : : ::;'~~i : When he's not telling you how to vote, Davey Coombs is the editor of Racer Illustrated, a monthly newspaper dedicated to th e sport of motocross . Coombs also helps his parents, Dave Sr. and Rita, promote motorcycle races, such as the Blackwater 100 and the Mt . Morr is Nat ional MX . He's also promised to get us a nicer portrait of himself. .. Editor. Yoshimura Suzuki... Larry Roeseler won the John Zink National Reliability Trials aboard a Kawasaki KX250 that was bored out to 285cc... Kevin Schwantz crashed while leading the Spanish 500cc.GP and handed the win to Eddie Lawson...The upcoming San Jose Mile was ad vertised as the last ever... c:N leathers up his arm and removed a nice chunk of skin... Bart Markel topped the Terre Haute National... The new Keystone Helmet was on sale for $23.95 at Accurate Wheel, and that even included the ,d u ck bill visor.. . A Simichrome ad read: Simichrome shines suddenly. Simichrome .is a honey, cleans quick as a bunny... rand National Champion Jay Springsteen fended off the repeated attacks of Steve Eklund to w in the Ascot Half Mile aboard his Bill Werner-tuned facto ry Harley-Davidson... Brad Lackey took over the points lead in the 500cc MX ' GP Series with a win at the French GP... Don Greiwe scored his first-ever Pro class win at Corona MX... Goat Breker aced the 250cc Pro class at SSM MX aboard aHusqvarna... A steel shoe made by Ken Maeley cost $55 .. . Kenny Roberts decimated the field at the Austrian GP... straightaways. Barring any drastic changes, this will be an old-fashioned motocross race, the kind of race where old-fashioned motocrossers like those who ride for Belgium, England and Sweden do quite well. With that in mind, we must vote for three riders with considerable outdoor success,like Emig, Henry, Kiedrowski, LaRocco, Stanton and Steve Lamson. You might want to think twice about voting for Jeremy McGrath, no matter how strange that may seem. He'll be the first to tell ya that he 's not an outdoor-kind-of-guy. The Motocross des Nations is the epitome of high pressure in motocross. No one is racing for their contracts - they are racing for their countries. And for American riders, that's one big country to have to carry on their backs. It would be hard to hold one of our riders responsible for bad luck. Mishaps like flat tires, first tum pile-ups and collisions with lappers are bound to happen sooner or later. But if we send a team over there that gets flat-out beat it won't be the fault of the riders. It will be the fault of we voters! . Bear all of this in mind as you make your selections for.Team USA. There's no reason for us to lose the 1994 Motocross des Nations, especially if we send our National motocross champs. (Hint.) Just vote, c:N baby! 5YEARS AGO... May 17, 1989 he Meadowlan ds Supercross saw Je ff Stanton and Damon Bradshaw top the 250 and 12Sec Classes, respectively... Scott Russell won his fir st-ever Superbike National at Road A tla n ta aboard a Yoshimura Suzuki. Jamie James topped the 750cc Supersport class aboard another T

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