Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

INTERVIEW AMA Superbike and 600cc Supersport Champion 'Miguel DuHamel 7 here's one thing we can all count on following Miguel DuHamel's next road race victory - no push-ups. Legend has it that when a young DuHamel won a motocross race many moons ago, his lead was such that he decided to have a little bit of fun. When his long-time rival crossed the finish line in second place, DuHamel had already parked his bike. And he was doing pushups. "I never practiced, I never tested," DuHamel says of what was a fairly successful motocross career. "The first race would always be my first time on the bike. This one time I was breaking my bike in during practice and my competitor, Carl VaiJancourt, lapped me and acted like he'd just won the race. In the race, T ended up winning and when he came across the finish line I was there, off my bike, doing push-ups. We were just kids and I thought it was funny. rt really made him mad and I learned from that not to show people up." It was one of lessons DuHamel learned along the lengthy path to AMA Superbike ational Championship. The other was that being the son of a legend wasn't always a good thing. '1t was hard when I was growing up, in motocross especially:' DuHamel said. "We'd just buy bikes and it was really just a privateer deal. My dad wasn't a mechanic; he was a racer. He'd do some jetting and teU me that the Japanese knew what they were doing. Back then everyone else had a kit - a Pro-Circuit and DG and stuff like that. I'd beat'em and they'd never believe we had stock bikes, especially when I rode a Kawasaki. They always thought I had that one-off jewel from Japan. "When I went road racing, people could tell I just had normal bikes off the rack. I was riding hard. A lot of people think, 'Oh, it's so cool you're Yvon DuHamel's son.. .' But I would think, 'Yeah, and you're Joe Schmit or whatever your name may be and if you ride good you're compared to yourself: I was being compared to my dad, one of the best racers in the world. It was always, 'Is he as good as his dad or is he below his dad?' Do you want that pressure? Luckily, when you're a kid you don't think about it too much." The comparisons don't come much anymore. Miguel DuHamel is now the undisputed king of AMA road racing, having swept to championships in both the premier Superbike series and the allimportant 600cc Supersport class. He is on top, a highly sought-after road racer who recently signed a lucrative two-year contract with American Honda and Smokin' Joe's racing. He's no longer somebody's son. uI don't think my dad had much to complain about this year," DuHamel said. "U was somewhat of a dream for him because he's instilled that in me. He's always instilled that we were the best, that [ had everything in me to do it. He just said that I had to apply myself. I started training a lot and started getting intense about my racing. T went out and won 14 races in a row and I think if this didn't at least equal it surpassed his expectations of what I could do. He didn't even give me any grief for not winning the last race in Phoenix, although he did mention that it would have been nice to have gotten the record (for most wins in a row):' And to think Papa DuHamel almost changed his name once... "One time I remember my dad sitting in the pits, totally demoralized," DuHamel recaIls. "He was right about everything: T didn't train, I didn't wash my bikes, [ didn't do anything. T just raced and I sort of took manx that half seriously. Sometimes I would win, sometimes I would finish fifth. That one day, he told me: ''I'm going to have to change my name. There's no way a DuHamel gets fifth in this race. I can't believe this.' I knew he didn't really mean it. He was frustrated." Some things have changed: DuHamel is now 27 years old. And he's extremely focused. He's a compulsive trainer, making a competition out of everything from cycling with buddies to weight training with his chief mechanic AI Luddington, to golfing with team owner Martin Adams. DuHamel doesn't take losing lightly. Some things haven't changed: DuHamel is still an avid prankster, and it isn't difficult to envision him knocking off 20 or so push-ups while he awaits the arrival of the second-place finisher in a Superbike National. He wouldn't do it to be spiteful, he'd do it to be funny. And DuHamel likes to be funny. But most of all, he likes to win. And in 1995, he did a lot of that. Coming off a season of racing the Harley-Davidson VRl00D in 1994, a season in which he dug deep, rode hard and impressed every team owner in the -country, DuHamel was hot. He'd refined his skills by sliding the underpowered VRlOOO around every AMA venue in the country - notching up a remarkable fourth-place finish at Brainerd along the way - and he was ready, ready to dominate in 1995. "I think riding the Harley maybe resharpened my tools a bit," DuHamel said. '1 knew that going in. I knew it would be a good place to showcase my talents as a rider. I've always been on slightly disadvantaged equipment - with Yoshimura in 1990 and even with Honda in 1991, we still had only a kitted ROO. We had some okay equipment with Rob Muzzy in 1993, but we had some problems with oil leaks, wheel weights and stuff. I've always been the underdog, and to go to Harley was definitely to be a big underdog. [ rode really hard and it made me feel so powerful, so confident going into this year. [ was thinking I could dominate the series:' But it wasn't that easy. First there was this little hurdle - the Honda RC45. DuHamel's first ride on the bike, in a test session at Daytona prior to the start of the 1995 season, left him feeling a little uneasy. "The first time I rode the RC45 I did one lap," DuHamel recalls. "[ went out the pit lane, did about two or three corners and thought, 'Ah, I'm going to pull in: Then I decided that I was going to give it a chan.ce, I was going to do a full lap. After a full lap I said, 1 should have pulled in.' The next lap after that [ came in. The best way to describe my look after that was if somebody had just shot my dog. That was using their setups from the year before. I just took a deep breath and said, 'Okay, we're going to have to do some work here: All the credit should go to the team because they just dug in and we did like a two-day test in one day. We just worked really hard, and by the end of the day we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Before that I had no idea where I was at. Usually when I test I'm not the fastest guy. I like to keep a prettysafe margin. I knew definitely we were in trouble. I was struggling to do 53s with the bike. I thought it shouldn't be this hard to go fast with these bikes. J was a little worried. Thank God i~ was early enough in the season that we weren't ready to throw i" the towel. Unfortunately, for Daytona we weren't quite as ready as we would have liked to have beerL We were ready enough to be in the top two, maybe even win the thing, but unfortunately that didn't happen."

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