Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

TIME REMEMBERED One year later, the boy had a new job with the powerful Team Husqvarna and he would ride under his own name with a legjtimate license. Sometimes you get two chances to make a good first impr~ssion. And this l8-year-old gave his competition plenty of chances to learn his real name, written plainly for all to see on the back of his jersey: S-em·i-c·s. It wasn't a coincidence-that one of the first American riders to recognize the importance of physical training would go on to stretch out his career over 14 years. Gary Semics started out on air-cooled, twinshocked bikes with chrome fenders and finished on single-shocked, liquidcooled machines with nearly twice the horsepower. Semics was a pioneer of sorts, having learned from the original iron man of motocross, '60s World Champion Rolf Tibblin, that physical conditioning was as important as rider skill and bike preparation. Early motocross tracks were bone-jarring rough and bumpy, as was the suspension found on early MX bikes, so when Rolf spoke about strength, Semics and fellow Husky teammates Bill Clements, Bob Grossi, Jim West and Mark Blackwell listened. "Rolf was our team manager, but he was realJy much more than. that," Semics says from his Ohio home. "He was more like a big brother, and he real- By Kent Taylor y the time their motocross careers would wrap up, superstars Brad Lackey and Jimmy "The Jammer" Weinert would combine for one World Championship, three ational Championships, one Supercross championship and a wagonJoad of big wins. But on a certain fall day in 1971, these two go-fast racers were taxi service, dispatched to the airport by Team CZ to pick up a new teammate. He's a farm kid coming in from Lisbon, Ohio. Somebody, they are told, named Burton - Dale Burton. The rus.e was on, and it continued until the hard-charging CZ rider finally turned 18 more than a year later. Eighteen was the legal age for professional MX in 1971; had AMA officials peeled away the glued-on photo on the rider's license, they would've seen the real 33year-old Dale Burton and not his freshfaced protege, a talented farm boy who had talked his parents into letting him quit school to chase the dream of becoming a motocross star. Gary Semics is one of only two riders to win a 500cc Supercross title, winning his in 1974. ly helped us, both mentally and physically. Everybody on the team looked up to him." Semics paid attention, worked hard, rode fast and won a SOOcc AMA National in 1974 - only to be booted off the team that fall. "It's a really weird story," he recalls. "That was back when minibike races were really popular. If we weren't racing for real, we would play-race on minis. It got pretty serious and one time Bob Grossi and I were racing and we both wound up crashing. The story that spread around, which wasn't true, was that we had crashed together. "Anyway, Bob really messed up his knee and I hurt my elbow. When 1 healed up, 1 drove to the St. Louis round of the Trans-Am Series." When he arrived, he found his mechanic, Eric Crippa, prepping his Husky for another rider, a little-known Texan named Kent Howerton. "I wanted to ride and so 1 drove on to California for the final two rounds of the series," Semics remembers. "Billy Grossi (Bob's younger brother) was out of action with a broken leg, so he let me ride his Honda CR practice bike in the final two Trans-Am support-class events." A couple of top-five finishes later and Semics found himself on b&rd with Team Kawasaki, a relationship which would last for the next three years.

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