Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Miguel DuHamel By Henny Ray Abrams ust for a moment, you held your breath. As the winningest rider in AMA road racing history went tumbling through the scrub and dirt, his immaculately prepared black-and-red Honda RC45 cartwheeling like a cheerleader run amok, you held your breath and hoped he'd stand up on his one good leg and his one bad leg, and walk away. The crash - another burst of equal parts passion and indiscretion - encapsulated all that is Miguel DuHamel, a rider with the biggest heart in racing, but one whose judgment is sometimes lacking. .I 38 He has won more AMA Superbike Nationals - 22 - and more Supersport races - 37 (36 in 600 and 1 in 750cc Supersport) - and more championships one superbike and five in 600cc Supersport - than any rider in AMA history. But there are those, including some at Honda, who feel that he's lost too many championships, pointing to mistakes he's made in pursuit of glory. Honda made a Faustian bargain when they re-signed the eminently likable 31-year-old French Canadian for two years at the end of the 1997 season. They knew that he could do wonderful, transcendent things on the motorcycle, that he could bring them fame and glory and success. His nonpareil career shows ample proof of that. They also knew that he could do wonderfully infuriating things - win ra<:e after race, bu t lose sight of the big picture and the championship in the process - of which there was also ample proof. His last four races are illuminative. Four races ago, in June of 1998, the rider with the ready smile and facile quip was on a roll. He'd won four of the previous six races, finished second in the other two to the rider he sarcastically describes as "the most naturally talented human being ever built by manGod-kind," Anthony Gobert. ("I keep reading that in every other paragraph; it's starting to irritate me," he says.) He'd erased the deficit he'd made for himself when he crashed while chasing Scott Russell at Daytona and was back in the points lead. At New Hampshire International Speedway there was a point to be gained for taking the pole position, even if it meant trying to cheat nature by getting in one final lap on a wet track. He got no further than turn one. "I still stand by what I said: If it wouldn't have been for that slower rider guy going around there - he was going around doing whatever he had to do that lap would've been my last lap," DuHamel explains a year later, still limping, but now rid of his cane. "I figure I'll just try to squeeze another one in and it was just pouring in that corner. It started raining, the water was probably flowing down from the banking into that area where I brake, and I didn't know tha t the pa tch there was more slippery when it rained and the pace of the track. I got spat off the bike and hit an unprotected wall. The crash was me pushing it, which is my forte. Sometimes you might get a blistered tire or oil or something; it's happened. That was my fault and I take full responsibility for that. That's part of my job. That's why I'm one of the highest-paid guys out here and (one of) the winningest guys, because I'm always putting it out there. There's no other way of doing it, in my book. But not to have any hay bales or an airfence on that wall, that's not my problem. If that would've been there, who says I wouldn't have just walked away?" . Instead, he badly fractured his left leg and .knee, which required hours of surgery and months of recuperation. Even 110w, 10 months later, DuHamel figures he's only at 30 percent strength in the leg. "With this leg here (the right one), I can do 300 pounds on the leg press, and this one I can do 75 pounds. Twentyfive percent. And I just did 75 pounds before coming here," he says. Nine months after the accident, he felt good enough to race the Daytona 200. 0 one expected much. One of his fellow riders picked him to finish sixth, and collectively they chose him to finish sixth in the AMA Superbike Champi

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