Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

There were a hundred other guys in that series and you were the only one close enough to take advantage o~ Jeremy's one mistake. That's exactly how I see it, too. So what do you do during the week? I deal with a lot of everyday stuff, normal day-to-day chores around the house like anyone else. Like right now, I got about 100 pieces of mail to go through before I go to Europe tonight. I do this a lot because I handle a lot of my own bills and stuff. It's not that easy when you got a lot of overhead. What kind of cars do you have right now? ·You're calling me at a good time because I'm at an all-time high, car-wise. I just got a new car last week that I've 'been waiting on for a long time. I got an M3sedan, a BMW. I've wanted it for about a year and a half. It's not that I couldn't afford it; I just wanted to wait for the right time and I wanted to earn it. And every time I would reach a goal I would say, "Okay, that's not good enough," and I would bump the goal up. So it's taken me maybe since December of '94 to finally get this car. What color is it? Light blue, medium blue. Do you still have your big truck? I got my big white Ford and I just bought a dlevy four-wheel-drive truck that I think I'm -going to end up keeping and I'm going to get rid of my Ford. The Ford's pretty big - it's a monster. The dlevy has a little bit smaller engine and it's not lifted or anything. I don't want to sound old, but it's more practical. Do you still have a boat? YeaI1 I do. But you cut me short. I've got more cars. Oh, I'm sorry. What else do you have? I have a Jeep. I've got an older Jeep, a _ CI5 that I've kind of been working on. I used to drive around the hills a lot until Denny blew up the engine and we're still fixing it. . So you have four cars now. YeaI1, and that's about two too many. Do you have any street bikes? No. Do you still have those old YZs in your . garage? I have a 1980 YZ250. My older one is my '75, but I just gave it to my dad. What kind of boat do yoti have now? Right now I have two boats. I have a big, huge pontoon barge-type boat that's pretty much a circus on the water. It's the happening, it's the happening wherever it's at. I've got that and a Mastercraft ski boat right now. I know your father's got a smaIl company called Emig Racing that he and your brother Bryan are working on. Do they ever call you up and say, "Get out here and build some triple clamps"? Well, I don't have to sweep the floors or anything, but I have my hands in on iliat. I really enjoy being part of the family business like what we have. It's ~ good thing and keeps us talking and working togeilier. . Your older brother is riding again? Yeah, he still rides as far as I know. And your dad, he slips up to the Colorado Mountains and rides a lot doesn't he? Yeah, he likes to go up to Colorado, that's his deal. Can we tell everyone that your real first name is not Jeff, it's Cam? Yeah, actually you can, it's on all my mail here. That's pretty cool. Why did he name you Cam? . I don't really know, but I think I was named after a camshaft. Not /Jeameron"? Just Cam. I just watched a movie last night called "Beautiful Girls" - have you seen that movie? Yeah, the movie's great. YeaI1, and there's a young girl and her name was Marty. The guy goes, "Is that short for Martha?" And she said, "No, Marty as in Marty." Well, it's Cam, as in Cam. That girl in the movie is the bomb. Natalie Portman. She was on David Letterman the other week. YeaI1, Denny loves her. I do too. ['II tell Denny that and maybe you two can get together and talk about her or something. How's your relationship with your girlfriend Launi going? . It's got its ups and downs, but she's a great girlfriend. What do you do training-wise? Do you have a personal trainer? YeaI1, I work with a personal trainer in the gym. His name is John Hall. I've worked with him for about six years now and he's a great guy. He used to race motocross back in the early '70s. Actually, he rode the Daytona Supercross before. He always brags about Bob HannaI1 lapping him a couple of times. He works with me' as far as weights and all that stuff goes. He's really a great motivator, and he's definitely the most positive person I know. Just being around him makes everything more positive and he makes you work for it. As far as my cardiovascular work goes, which is really important also, he knows . that's up to me, because your cardiovascular is your running and your bicycling. So you still head out the driveway and go jogging. Oh yeaI1. On the hottest days in the middle of the day is my fayorite time to run.What's your average run? Maybe 30-35 minutes, but they are pretty intense runs. I dlink I get the job done and that makes me happy about what I'm doing. But the main thing is to get your run done early enough so iliat you can go to the lake everyday. Just kidding. What about your future with Kawasaki? I'll be riding a Kawasaki f<;>r -the next two years. That's basically it. I don't know after that. I'm not putting any dates on my career because I still feel pretty young and I see no reason, especially right now, why I should retire because I feel I've got a lot of good years aI1ead of me. Right now you and McGrath are p~etty much considered the elite racers. Whenever you guys do get ready to step down, who do you think will be the next few really top guys? Who do you think will be the next pair of supe.rstars? Well, I see Damon Huffman definitely; and Kevin Windham, he's been riding great. Huffman, Ezra Lusk and Windham, I kind of think of them as the younger guys, even though they might not be a whole lot younger than me. I'm pretty old (26). I think those guys are riding real well. I was real happy to see Ezra get teamed up with YamaI1a and myoId mechanic, Steve Butler, because I think they will make a good pair. But I'm still here for a while. What else would you do? I don't have anything else to do. That's a hell of a reason for racing, isn't it? Do you snowboard at all? YeaI1, a Ii ttle bit. I love to play hockey and I like to wakeboard and I golf a little. I surf, but not real well. It's tough. I think ilie main problem with learning new sports is the fact that I don't want to get hurt doing those new sports and I don't want to risk my own racing career. It keeps you humble too, doesn't it? Oh yeaI1. Some of ilie top surfers in the world are good friends of mine and I have a lot of respect for those guys because surfing is a really intense sport. Do'the 'Fro Fan Club guys ever come by your house or anything? No, nobody really comes by, but I'm really happy when I see them at the races. It's definitely a hard-core fan club. I think there are a few different groups of them now. It's really cool when I see them because I know that these guys are really into motocross and into racing and they chose me as their guy that they want to win. And that in itself is just like a great honor. I mean, here's some hardcore motocross enthusiasts and out of everybody at the raCe track they want to see me win! Right now maybe it doesn't seem like a big thing, but I think lafer on down the line I'll probably step back and say, "Wow, those guys. were intense." I think of the fans back in the day when I was cheering on Broc, or Ricky or Bob HannaI1 or whoever it was, and I thought that was pretty intense. I guess I'm still pretty humble about everything that's happening right now and I'm really happy with what I've been given and what I've accomplished. Maybe later on I'll see a story on the past motocross greats or whatnot and hopefully my picture will be in there. That would be pretty cool to show my kids or whatever. And they'll say, "Dad, is that really you? Why is your gear so tight?" . Speaking of little kids, what happened to the Z50 races that were immortalized in the Crusty Demons of Dirt video? We haven't seen a Z50 race lately. As a matter of fact, we're scheduling one right now, a little Mini Olympics actually. We're thinking about doing a little circle track in a parking lot, then doing like a motocross, and also a jumping contest. Ju~t last week we went out riding, jacking around on the 250s and stuff, and Randy Lawrence was riding bicycles off some of the dirt jumps, like the big BMX dirt jumps. Anyway, I had my 50 there and I talked Randy into jumping this big bicycle double on it. It was huge! It was like a 5-foot-tall face, straight-up takeoff and it was about 15 feet long. He aired it out on the 250, the highest a 250 has ever been! So now we're thinking about having a jump contest. One last question: What's the status of the bus you were supposed to give to your mechanIC Jeremy Albrecht for winning the 250cc National Championship? We decided not to do the bus. Instead it was a cash deal - he made his own decision. He decided not to go with the bus, he decided to go cashola, take the almighty dollar instead. I think he was more happy that way. I kind of wanted to get the bus. CN

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