Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

.By ACCoombs ,.. ·R E RX·:· . Davey eople who talk sports love to talk about The Streak. This occurs any time a team or a player starts into a long string of su ccesses. The spo rts media and fans soon pick up on it and follow with magn ified interest. Pretty soo n everyone is either on the ba nd w a gon or g unning to be the on e to blow the tires off it. . Every spo rt ha s its own version of The Streak. Baseball legend Joe DiMaggio got a hit in 56 straight games. The Miami Dolphins of the National Football League had a record of 17-0 in the '73 season; college football counterpart Oklahoma University bu ilt itself a 47game winn ing streak right after World War II. UCLA's basketball team went 88-0 over seve ral seasons. The women's soccer team at the Unive rsity of North Caro lina won 92 straight matches before they were finally tied. (As fate would have it, all three teams - Oklahom a, UCLA and North Carolina - had their winning strea ks ended by No tre Dame). The Streak is everywhere, and The Streak always must end. On e autumn day in 1981, I was sitting in m y ga rage arguing with my brother about football cards when the mailman de livered th e iss ue of Cycle News that reported that Team USA ha d wo n the Motocross des Na tions over in Lo m m el, Bel g ium . John ny O 'M a ra, Danny LaPorte, Donnie Ha nsen and Chuck Sun somehow knocked off the defending champions from Belgium in a shocking up set. We said, 'Wow!' and went right back -to arguing over which card wa s wo rth more: his Franco Harris or my Walter Pa yton. I w as a 15year-old ninth grad er with no spee ding tickets, no knee injuries and no idea of what girls were all about. Beer wa s something my dad drank; motocross was something we did after mowing the lawn. The importance of Team USA's firs t win at the MX des Nations was lost on me. How could anyone know that the . mo st dominant era in the history of motocross would beg in with these four good-but-not-quite-great racers who w ere dressed in id en ti cal JT Racing outfits? In the course of the next dozen y ea rs Team USA w o u ld w in in th e sands of Europe, the mud of America, the rocks of Europe, the sands of Australi a and the high- spe ed freeways of P Europe. But, as other sports remind us, The Str eak mu st end . Last mo nth a three- man tea m from Gr ea t Britai n kno cke d off the Amer ica n s o n a clou dy, dismal day in Roggenburg, Switze rla nd, and the longest streak in mo tocro ss h istor y was ov er af ter 13 yea rs. To pu t The Streak into persp ective, one mu st th in k back to the good old days of 1981, when a Nissan was still called a Datsun. When the year began, Jimmy Carter's moving vans were still in the driveway of th e Whi te House and the U.S. hostages were still in Iran. (That was an unfortuna te 444-da y streak). The Berlin Wall was still in p lace, which me an t there were tw o • Germanys and one Iron Cur tain. The re was a new product ou t called cable television, but ESPN and MTV were yet to be air ed . Disc o was only just beginning to suck. "Chariots of Fire" w o n th e Aca d em y Award for Best Motion Picture and The Clash trip le-LP "S andin is ta" was p rob ably the best album down at the local record store. Tha t' s right, alb um - CD players had yet to fall into the hands of the general public. Same goes for personal computers, cellular telephones, video cameras and automob ile air bags. They had not yet inve nted the FAX machine wit h which I se nt th is essay over to Cycle News. In the motorcycle world the reigning 500cc World Road Racing Cha mp ion was a gu y named Kenny Rober ts. Ame rica had yet to p roduce a Worl d MX Champion, which meant that Brad Lackey was still somew here over there in Europe, ba nging the drum slow ly in search of his dirt bike destiny . Belgian star Stefan Everts' dad, Harry, was still racing on the Belgian team, and Yamaha factory rider Kevin Windham wa s just th ree years old. Everyd ay racers were w earing th ose boot Gators and Scott face masks; Roll-Off systems , carbon- fiber knee braces and up sidedown fork s ' were still on the draw ing boa rds. Loretta Lynn was jus t a countr y singer, no t a rac e track op era to r, and Saddleback wa s still a track , not a distant memory or a junior college. The reigning NMA Grand National Minicycle Champion wa s a kid named George Holland and , as my d ad likes to remind me wh en he 's mad , the AMA's Minibike cha mp w as Davey Coomb s. Oust look at me now!) So many chan ges ha ve taken place over these past 13 years that it's sometimes hard to tell which way the forks are supposed to be pointed . Still, one thing we could always count on wa s The Str eak. Eve n tho u gh Team USA nearly lost that race four or five times, it always seemed to be a sure thing tha t we wo uld wi n it fo re ve r, especia lly with so m an y Ame rica n h eroes to defend us. Bob Hannah was part of The Streak. So was Rick Joh ns on and Jeff Ward. And David Bailey, Broc Glover, Ron Lechien, Mark Barnett, Jeff Stanton and Danny "Magoo " Chandler. Mi ke Kie d ro w s ki, Je ff Emig and Mike LaRocco were al so part of Th e Streak . Each rider was a member of at least one winning team . However, each a re als o m embers of th e team that finally lost, and for that they will probably be long- remembered . How could they have los t? The blam e game has begu n ... and so has the wi nter of our disco ntent . When th e race in Rog genburg en de d a British gentleman w ith sus pende rs and a cigarette skipped awa y from th e aw ards cer emony with th e trophy that had long been in our possession, LaRocco and Kiedrowski sat in seclusion in th e compound -like cam p of Team USA, while Jeff Emig wa lked al one to the mi d d le o f the em p ty, trash-strewn infield, sat down by himself and crie d . No one wa s embarras sed by th e performance, but a ll we re bi tterl y disappointed by th e defeat. Meanwhile, over in the Cam elshod med ia tent, the second -guessing had already begun. One scribe questioned the preparedness of Kiedrowski, who was just coming off a long absence due to a broken fing er . But in his defense Kiedrowski did not get passed by a single rider that day in Switzerland. However, bad starts on a technically void track like Roggenburg could stop anyone, including th e only four-t ime U.S. National MX Champion racing today. However, Rob Herring, not even a top 10 rider in th e 250cc World MX cham pion shi ps this year, got a holeshot and almost won. Kiedrowski did not have much of a chance, and neither would have any of America' s other top 250cc MX stars . Mike LaRocco ro de h is ass off, no questions asked. But how could he let French man Yves Demaria bea t h im in th e fi rs t moto? Well, pretty easily after Demaria grabbed the holeshot and disappeared . Th ere wa sno cat ch ing h im o n that rocky, s m oo th, wide-op en track . laRocco came from behind to win the second moto and top 500cc indi vidual hono rs, but when Dema ria , Jacky Martens, Dietmar Lacher and Ger t-Jan Van Doom all crashed in the first tum, there was no one left to finish between him and British star Kurt Nicoll. An d h o w could Jeff Emig, " M r . 125," lose to someone who hasn ' t raced a 125 in five years? That one's a little h ard er to exp lai n . Emig, th e fifthranked 125cc rider in the U.S. Nationals th is year, wa s th e wi n ne r of the fans' balloting - that's rig ht, the fans' ch oice, n ot just th e AMA' s cho ice . Emig had absolutely no chance against Great Britain's Paul Malin. You se e, Malin was riding th e race of h is life that day in Switzerland . If he didn't do well, his professional career probably wo u ld have ended du e to a lac k of employment and sponsors. Malin was also fortunate in that he was in wh at m an y athletes call "the zone" and everything fell right into place. Malin was on a faster bike then Emig. Malin wa s on the kind of track tha t exis ts only in Europe. Malin sta rted on the number-one gate each time. And , once ag ain, Malin w as rid in g for h is job. "Jes us could not h ave bea ten Paul Malin today," said someo ne, but that came as no consolation to Emig. Now you know how The Streak ended . In motocross, just like baseball, basketball or boxing, on any given day, if all sy ste ms are go and everything clicks at once, anyone can w in . For Team USA, it happened for 13 straight ye ars before it finally happened for someone else. Funny th ing about the end of The Streak is this: Those three British gu ys have nothing to do with that s trea k-b r eaki n g s ch ool called Notre Dame, but Mike LaRocco does. He lives right ne xt door to the presid ent of Notre Dam e in South Bend, Indiana . What does th is have to do with motocross and winning streaks? Nothing. ~ ,.LOOKING·BACK·..···I : Octo~r 28, 'Neal won ..~~ 1969 Im O 25 YEARS AGO... . J - -~":;:':"-;-''iJ' the CMC Ann iver- C '-...."'c;1 sa ry Series, scor- F ' .·Yo:;;". ing 33 of a possib le 36 1 ' points . A photo on ' .. page eig ht showed "" ,-. O'Neal shaking hands : "c.,Ji.l" with CMC Presi dent I, :,;;:: Stu Peters while - ---.-.-1 'accep tin g th e fi rst -p riz e, a brand- new Greeves Gr iffon fro m the North Hollyw ood , California, shop of Nick Nicholson.. .Arne Kring wo n the first ro und of the 500cc Inter-Am MX Series at Pepperell, Massachusetts. Dick Mann was seen dicing with John DeSoto at the event... Cycle News ran excerpts of Ted Penton's letters , wh ich vivid ly described the trials and tribulations of the American team while competing at th e International Six Day Trial in Garmisch, Germany.. . 15 YEARS AGO... October 24, 1979 ea m Yama ha 's Mike Bell we n t 1-2 for the overall w in in the Intern a tio nal class at roun d four of the Tra ns -U SA moto cross series at Road Atl a n ta in Braselton, Geo rgia . Kent Howerton finishe d th ird overall to retain a 22point lead over Bell in the series poin t stand ings. Jimmy Ellis won the National class ... Cycle News highlig ht ed the 1980 lineup from Suzuki... A 25-yearold Terry Vance was int erviewed by John Germa in . Van ce had al rea d y amasse d four P ro Stock d rag-racin g cham p io ns hi ps while wo rking wi th Russ Collins and Byron Hines at R.c. Engineering.. .Another feature article by Dale Brown po sed the question "Will T th e Sierra Club rule California?" The story dealt with the Sagebrush Rebellion bill ...Greg Zitterkopf was show n tangling with Marty Smith en rout e to the 250cc Exp ert w in a t th e DeAnza MX.. . Do ug Cha ndler won the 500cc Novice class at the Monterey sho rt track on Sep tember 29, the same d ay that Ronnie Jo nes won the Junior Expert main at the Oklahoma State Fair short track.. . 5YEARS AGO... October 18, 1989 full color shot of Fred Hoess graced the co ve r of th e iss ue whic h fea tured co mp le te resul ts from the 64th ISDE in Walldurn, West Germany . Stephane Peterhansel won the eve n t, and Italy won the World A Troph y; deja vu all over aga in ...Team Kawasaki's Jeff Ward wo n the 500cc cl a ss and Team Ho n d a 's Mik e Kiedrowski wa s the 125cc victor at the 125/500cc Budd s Creek N a ti o n a l. Recently crow ned 125cc World Champion Trampas Parker was on hand to compete bu t DNF'ed the second 125cc moto.. .Scott Parker cla imed his 30th AMA Grand Natio nal di rt track win at th e Sacram ento Mil e . The wi n w as Pa rker 's 10th of the season, a nd it made h im n ine for ni n e on mil e ova ls .. .John Mafaro downed Keith Gray to win the Pro Stock titl e at the NHRA Hea rtland Natio na ls ...Tallon Vohland topped the MTEG Las Vegas Ultracross...The Human Race Team won the 12th round of the WERA/EBC Bra kes N ational Endurance Series in Shannonville, Ontario, Canada .. .Ken Lyon clocked a 205.245 mph run in his BMW-powered streamliner at the Bonneville salt flats... ~ -::t< 0\ 0\ .-< 0\ .-< I-< Q) .g .... U o 59

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