Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

pIe understand that with my own team I can do what I want. I also have a lot of say in what goes on and it's kind of ne.at. It gives me a different aspect of things, somewhat running the team, giving those guys advice, and riding the motorcycle. Are you not going as fast as you did before you quit, or has the sport just evolved to where those guys are going faster than ever? I think those guys are going faster. They've aU really changed. When I was going my fastest, the times when Jeff Stanton 1 had our races, we were going as fast or faster than these guys now. I remember days when we were on a rail and we were a gear higher than everybody. That is the type of speed that these guys do every weekend on all the different tracks. And now it's a lot harder to find a little bit of an edge on a guy, and when I was racing before it was pretty easy. It was easier to outsmart the guys back then. They have a couple more years under their be Its now. Maybe I just progressed a little bit qtticker than they did when I was raciog . against them before. Then obviously Jeremy came along, and Emig really changed itt the last several years. I don't think that 1'm as fast as I was when Stanton and I were racing, but I think I can get back to that. The mam thing is to be a little bit stronger physically, but mainly m~ntally. That's a big part of my game, to really know that I have confidence. and know that I can do it - that's the only thing I've struggled with. The confidence will build as the good rides come along. How different do you think your results would be now after two months of the 1997 season if you hadn't fallen in the second tum on opening night at Los Angeles? Probably a lot better. Right after LA, the next couple of races, my confidence was shit. My wife's telling me she knows I can do it, she's seen me do it, and I'm not riding like myself or acting like myself. I said I knew it was a lack of confidence and the only person that can fix that is me. People can talk until they're blue itt the face and tell me this al1.d tell me that, but until thil1gs start happening for me it's just not going to fly. It's like before, after winning so many races, then all of a sudden you fall off the edge just a little bit. It's really hard to make the step back there again. Once you get beat and you get beat again and you start going down' you either have to find something that really picks you up agaitt or you're just goittg to go farther down. People don't understand how mental it is. It's real mental for me, way more than physical strength. There's got to be physical strength but the mental way overdoes that. Were you ever a player in the Team Honda thing that came up after Jeremy McGrath quit? Were you ever approached by Honda? No. There was talk about it. Honda· never called me directly, but there was talk about it amongst other people. Some people said something to me about it and I said, to be honest, I didn't really want to be right back into the fire. I said I'd like to be affiliated with Honda enough to where they can help me and help me to make my life better, and maybe I could help them. But I don't want to be slammed back into that truck and be expected, whether it was me or Steve Lamson or whoever, to continue what Jeremy has done, 'cause it's just not going to happen. It's not going to happen overnight. I'm not saying that nobody can ever do it again down the road, but it wasn't going to be something to happen overnight. And I think the Honda guys felt the same way. There were a lot of things that were going to have to change if I ",as going to have to go there. Not that I wouldn't be interested in the future, but I need to get back on my feet ~o where I can be stronger mentally, to have what it takes when you're on one of those teams. Nobody knows, when you're there and you ha ve these other guys, you're not only competing with the guys on the race track, but in a sense you almost feel like you're competing against the guys in the same truck. What can you do to fix your confidence? I feel that my speed has been really good but I just can't get off of the gate. I've been struggling with that. And I know that my speed is as good as tho e guys, even the guys who have been winning. But it sucks when you go to the races and you want to do well and you get a 15th-place start and you're doing shit, and it's like, 'Well, here I am again. The same place: And it's really hard to motivate yourself to go forward when you see the same thing every weekend. The start has a lot to do with it, and Gainesville (third place) was a big mental boost for me. I know you don't like to get too much into speculating, talking about the number-one bike, but if Jean-Michel Bayle hadn't quit, if you hadn't quit when you did, would Jeremy McGrath have won 14 races last year or all th,ese titles? I don't know what the answer is to that. We can't really go back and say that if we would have been there that he wouldn't have done it because I don't take anything away from him. I think he's good, but I also thought he had a hell of a lot of momenhim. You know, when I won eight or nine races in a row, everything was different in, my mind. Going to the races on the weekend, I didn't really care what place I started. If I was 10th, if I was fifth, it didn't matter, because I was going to the front regardless. I know how he felt when he was on a roll and won however many races. I know the feeling he had, it was just multiplied times 10 of what I had. He didn't care what start he got, and it just built from there. Now he's kinda back down to a normal level, trying to get back there. It's not that he's fallen off the top, he's just not winning every race. Just like me, he's trying to get back over that edge agaitt, and it' stough. Maybe if Jeremy hadn't fallen, in the first comer at LA. It may have been a different story for him, too. It's really hard to speculate on what one person has done, but [ think I've been through so many different mental stages in racittg. I've been doing it for 20-something years now. I think I've probably been sitting pretty close to everybody's mental stage at one time, whether it was good, bad or indifferent. It's so different being where l:m at and not being with the factory because as long as you're there and as long as you're winning. everything's fine. But as soon as it's not, everybody's face changes. And that's aile thing I got tired of seeing at Yamaha, pOint blank, was frowning faces. I knew my results weren't as good as they needed to be. But I can't stand moody people, and there were a lot of those people at Yamaha, and I know people come down on their asses from upstairs. It's just a food chain from the top to the bottom and if you're at the bottom you catch the shit. That's the neat thing about. where I'm at now. Regardless of what place I get those guys are the same guys. They're happy if we win, resul ts do a lot for anybody, but I see the same face every time I come off the race track regardless of what place I get. One thing about your deal now, and I know it's always been a sore spot with you, is you don't have to talk to the media now if you don't want to, right? Basically, not if I don't want to. It's not that [don't want to. I'll talk to most anybody out there, but there are a couple of people. that I don't care to talk to, because they just hacked me so many times that now I feel like if I do an interview Witll them, regardless of what 1 say. I don't mind doing interviews, it's kind of fun. There's always a time and a place for interviews and some of the guys understand that and some of tltem don't. I don't want any of the press to feel like, "We can't go and talk to Damon:' The guys 'that I don't want to talk to know who they are. Did you know that Michael Jordan has a personal embargo on Sports llIustrated, which is the biggest sports magazine in the world? He refuses to talk to them, because of the way they treated him when he quit for a while to try his hand at baseball. They got into some personal things about the death of his, f.ather and stuff that they maybe shouldn't have. Instead of celebrating him as an athlete, they brought him down as a person. There's always going to be somebody like that in every sport, and I (eel like I know who they are itt this sport. Jordan is definitely a guy who can basically say whatever he wants and he's still going to be loved in everybody's eyes, but I know that a couple of magazines that have hacked me have changed the way a lot of people think about me, at least until the people talk to me and get to know me a little better. [ have people, come up to me all over the place saying that they read this or that. I just say, "Tf you want to know something. come ask me yourself:' Play big brother for a minute: In the· last two weeks, we saw Ricky Carmichael win some races and explode onto the scene like you did in '89. He's the first right-out-of-thewoodwork, teenage phenom we've had in a while. What advice would you give him? Well, I know he's getting ready to go through a hell of a lot of changes in his life, and people are goittg to have a lot of expectations for him. He just raced against the top guys in the country and beat them. Now it's going to be expected of him by a lot of people. The first supercross that I won was ill Japan (at age 16). We're standing on the podium and Ricky Johnson told me, "It's good that you won this, but from now on, when you don't win, it's going to be 'What happened?'" and he's exactly right. Until when 1 quit racing, if I called home or saw somepne in a grocery store and they'd ask how I did, I'd say second or third, and they'd say "What happened?" I'm not saying it's to that point in his career now, but the best thing that he can do is to try to keep this as much fun as he possibly can and stay levelheaded. I basically think he should stay level-headed and take it one day at a time. Enjoy the ride? Yeah, just go, go, go - as long as you can go - but keep it fun because he has a long career ahead of him, and that's what's so tough now about going forever, coming to terms with what's expected of you and how you treat it mentally. Right before I quit racing, I never said no to one thing. If it had to do with racing, if any of my sponsors ever asked me to do anything or go anywhere, I never said no. And if they asked some other guys and they didn't want to do it, I would do it. And now it's a little bit different, if there's something I don't want to do, I just say I'd rather not. When I made J:?:lY big jump and won a couple of races, there was not a whole lot going on, and then, bang! All of the

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