Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

'SUPERCROSS. ·. Round 15: Sam ,B ydSilver Bowl o U .S,SupercroSs Series . Sho rt ly alter the second 250Cc semi , the Silver Bowl stadium lig hts went dim due to a power outage and some of the riders thought the conditions were unsafe and chose not to race In the main, one of . whi ch included Honda 's Jeremy McGrath. Team Yamaha's Jeff Emig chose to race and sc ored his first ever supercross win. fHE SHOW MUST GO ON By Kit Palmer Photos by Kinney Jo nes LAS VEGAS, NV, JUNE 10 one was weird. Going in to th e Ll.S. Supercross . Series finale at the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl in Las Vegas, there really wasn't a whole lot on the line . After all, both the 250cc Series and the Western Regional 12SccSeries had already been clinched by Team 1-800-Collect/Honda's Jeremy McGrath - his third in as many years - and Team Suzuki's Damon Huffman - his second consecu tive 12Scc title. McGrath also had already sna pped Rick Johnson's alltime supercross win record with 29 victories th e previ ous w eek at the San Jose Supercross, so tha t was no longer a factor. Plus, any chan ce Huffman had of putting together an undefeated season also ended at San Jose when he finished second . The only questions left unansw er ed going in to the Las Vegas Supercro ss w ere w he the r or no t McGra th wou ld break his own single-season supercross win record with 11 wins (he already matched his own record with 10 wins at San Jose), and, would factory support rider Larry Ward, of the Noleen / Yarnaha team, maintain his second place in th e series standings when it was all over? Wh at b asically shou ld h ave been a low-pressure, easygoing nigh t of uncompli cated .racing tu rned in to controversy, resulting in bad feelings between the rid ers, the supercross promote rs (AIR) and the AMA, and amongst many of the rider s themselves. Even so me of the fan s walked away fuming. Team Yamaha's Jeff Emig end ed up winning the 250cc feature on this stra nge ni ght in th e Nevada desert, but as it turned out, his first-ever supercross victory w ould be, in hi s w ords," ...n ot a great joy." l 6 rns Things started going sour immediately following the seco nd 250cc semi. Up until then, th e evening' s program was moving along pretty much as expected, but su dd enly, the stadium went dark. A power outage in the east Las Vegas area caused most of the stadium's lights to go out, and the lights that did remain burning were running off the stadium's emergency back-up system. Howe ver, much of the stadium was in complete blackness as was the entire pit area , the only ligh ts b eing provided by the team' s o w n portable generators. Even the stadium's public address system went silent right in th e middle of an in terview with second semi race winner Brian Swink. After abou t 15 minutes , m aintenance cre ws man aged to restart the p .a. sys tem, bu t never managed to get the sta dium's main lights going again. While floor announcer Larry Maiers did an admirable job keeping the claimed 25,000-plus a nd p at ient crowd ente rtained by in terviewing various supercross racers, th e event promoters were hard at work trying to find a way to complete the night's progra m. To provide bet. ter track lig hting, th ree p ortable lig ht towers were eventually towed in behind pickup trucks an d onto the stad ium floor, then p laced at the darkest areas of the track. Then, three riders - Cliff Palmer, Mike Jones and Mike Healey - took three "test" laps to see if the track was lighted well enoug h to go on wi th the program an d finish up the last three races on the sched ule: the 250cc LCQ and the 125 and 250cc features. After a brief meeting with AMA officials, AIR (the supercross pr omoters) and the three rid ers, it was decided that the track was safe enough to compet e on. And so, at app roximately 10:45 p.m ., abo u t th e time th e 250cc feature would have normally started, the 250cc LCQ finally got underway wi th KIM's Jeff Dement taking the win. Due to the long dela y and the limited tra ck lighting, it was an nou nced that both the 125 and 250cc features would be sho rtened by five lap s - 10 lap s for the 125s and 15 for the 250s. Kawasaki' s Ryan Hughes went ou t and won the 10lap 12Scc feature, narrowly beating the recently crowned champ Team Suzuki's Damon Huffman by a bike length. But the 250cc clas s wound up going all 20 laps, much to the approval of Kawasaki Team Manager Roy Turner who was adamant, as were other team managers, that th e 250cc feature run a full 20-lap race, or not at all. "If the track was safe e nou g h to race on , then it was safe enough to race 20 laps," said Turner. Em ig jumped ou t to th e ea rly lead when the gat e dropped for the start of th e 250cc main, but to everyon e's su rprise Je re my McGrath, as well as hi s teammate Doug Henry, Kawasaki's Mike Kiedrowski, Honda of Troy m embers Brian Swink an d Mike Craig, and privateer Mike Jones were nowhere to be seen. These six rid er s as it turned out h ad refused to race, claiming th e redu ced lig hting ha d mad e the track u nsafe to race on . Thi s d ecision was mad e w hile the 12Scc main was being run, as all the riders w ho had qualified for the 250cc fea ture ha d gotten together, d iscu ssed the situation, and d eci d ed to b an d toget h er and n ot compete , including eventua l winner Emig. "We felt that the track wa s too d an gerous to rid e on," sa id Emig after his wi n. "I' m all for staying together and

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