Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

BY DENNIS NOYES ere's what it was like to be in the TV commentary booth in Jerez when Mick Ooohall crashed in the Friday ~ternoon qualifying session. We were live on Eurosport and I was looking through my notes, saying something to the effect tha t this was the first time since 1993 that Ooohan hadn't won at least one of the first two races of the season. Just then, co-commentator Toby Moody suddenly started shouting, "Mick Ooohan is down! Ooohan is down!" Toby, Randy Mamola and I do a marathon weekend of 14 hours of live Grand Prix coverage for Eurosport, and that same commentary on Sunday is recorded and, after a little postproduction work, becomes the commentary for our one-hour same-day-delayed broadcasts of the 250 and 500cc races on Speedvision. You get to see and hear roughly one-seventh of what fans in Europe have available to them. Randy is in pit lane with a radio microp1)one and Toby and I are up in the booth. Toby and I make sure that one of us always has his eyes'on the screen, because the worst thing that can happen to you in the commentary" booth is to get caught looking out the window, or at your notes, when something big happens on screen - something that you don't see. When I looked up at the screen I saw a horrific sight. Ooohan's bike was cartwheeling high in the air and Mick was just in the process of slamming into a Michelin sign that was placed in front of some tire barriers. Then, in a flash, we realized that the crash was nght behind us. I jumped up and opened the door and looked down from the back of the grandstand at a helmetless security guard lying prone on the service road beside his scooter. On the other side of the barrier, I could see comerworkers bending down, but I couldn't see Mick. Yellow flags were waving. Two ambulances were on the way via the service roads and then, very soon after the incident, red flags were being shown all around the track. So much had happened at once that it was hard to take it all in, let alone explain it. The first official qualifying session had begun at 2:00 p.m. sharp, ~ith the track still damp after a rain that had fallen at the end of 125cc qualifying. About a half-dozen 500cc riders had gone out with cut-slicks or "intermediate" tires, among them Kenny H Roberts Jr. and Alex Criville. But Ooohan stayed in the pits until he saw Roberts' times getting down near the 2:02 mark. Ooohan had been quickest by more than a second in the morning's dry free-practice session, and he was obviously out to do what he has been doing for the last five years: put pressure on his rivals by getting deep into the quick times very early in qualifying. 1'd mentioned several times on the air how slick the white lines in Jerez can be when they are damp. I remember racing, there when the track was new and almost being caught a couple of times when I touched the lines. OQohan quickly got under two minutes, and he then started bringing his times down very quickly. Soon he was down to 1:47.5 and then 1:46.4, but it was during the 1:46.4 that he ran up on the white line at Nieto comer and spun the rear wheel, sending his Repsol Honda into a long slide that he was .able to control. That, 1 figured, would have been warning enough. We were nearly halfway through the one-hour session - the track was dry and all riders were out on slicks. The corner in which Ooohan crashed was the same one he went down in back in '95, when Spain's Alberto Puig won the race. Mick came out of the turn-two hair'pin and accelerated through the Michelin right-hander. He was running about 120 mph in third, flat out, when he peeled off for the fast left-hander. He let the bike drift a little too far to the right and put the rear slick up on the still-damp white line. Without any warning, the bike spun, stepped out and then gripped again, snapping the rider out of the seat and hurling him over the bars and into the gravel. The machine shed its tank, then bounced and cartwheeled over the deep gravel. Doohan, tumbling like a rag doll, slammed into the tire barrier and an instant later his Honda hit the top of the fence about 10 yards behind him. The fence was strong enough to stop the bike, but several parts broke off on impact, including two silencers. As fate would have it, a Spanish security guard was traveling along the service road right behind the wall and never saw what hit him. He's still in very serious condition. Ooohan was motionless on his back in the gravel for about 1.0 seq::nds before opening his eyes. He broke his right leg just below the knee - the same leg he broke so badly at Assen in 1992and also his right collarbone and left wrist. It took a while for it all to sink in, but we realized that Mick Ooohan's run for a sixth straight title was over, and tha t he would be facing a lengthy recovery at best. Mick's intentions are to return lias soon as he can." What we didn't know at the time was that Kenny Roberts Jr., at about the same time, had done the same thing on a fast right-hander. He put his rear wheel on the white line and a few sec-. onds la ter found himself in the fence. On the same lap that Ooohan and Roberts were crashing, Biaggi and John Kocinski also touched the lethal white lines and both riders were thrown up and out of the seat, though both managed to save it. Were the white lines too slick? Had someone forgotten to sandblast them? Had the wrong kind of paint been used? Those are the questions that the riders' safety delegate, Franco Uncini, is being asked by Ooohan, Roberts, Biaggi and others. In the crazy moments after the crash, while we were watching the two ambulances, one carrying the policeman and one carrying the five-time World Champion, I found myself in awe of the magnitude of the event. I felt that I'd never see Ooohan race again, and that whether I did or not, this day marked the end of a five-year period of domination the likes of which may never be seen again in Grand Prix racing. I knew that many would say that Mick was riding too hard on a damp track and that he was out there on the edge, trying to break the spirit of guys like Roberts and Criville. They are right. Mick went down, ending his string of consec.utive championships and (almost certainly) his run on Agostini's record for total wins in 500cc GP, beca use he was trying to ra ttle, shake and maybe even break his opponents' confidence. But if this workaholic and obsessive aggressiveness was, in fact, his downfall, it was also t~e quality that made him the man for the l~st five years. I could give a lot of examples of instances when Ooohan, under dodgy conditions, went out and put in heartstopping laps tQ take yet another pole. Mick always said that he didn't care about the pole, that being on the front row was enough, but nobody in modern GP history (as I pointed out last week in a Cycle News article on statistics) has ever been on the pole with the frequency of Doohan. In 137 GP starts, he has 58 poles for a percentage of 42.3 percent. Only Freddie Spencer, at 41.9 percent on less than half the number of starts, is even close. Maybe it's true that Mick didn't care about getting the pole, like he said. But what he cared about was not letting anyone else get the pole - not letting anybody go to bed too happy. Here's a story that tells you a lot about Doohan and what he was prepared to do to beat you: In Imola a couple of years ago, we were in the final minutes of the final qualifying session and it had just started to rain. Criville had been in the right place at the right time and had put up the quickest lap of practice just as the first little cat's paws of rain started popping up on his screen. Mick had been in the Repsol Honda pit, getting ready for a final run. When he stepped out of the garage, he saw a few drops coming down and saw Alex coming in. Mick's crew had his bike ready to go, but Mick walked over to Alex and asked about the conditions. Alex, who still had his helmet on, pointed up to the sky and mad~ the riders' international fingers-extended gesture for light rain.. Mick turned on the spot, got on the bike and went out to put in a fantastic lap to steal the pole from Alex. He did it on a track that was taking a light rain and he dared to touch white lines that could, at any second, become lethal. It was a calculated risk. He was living dangerously, but he trusted his instincts and his feel of the race track. The effect of taking that pole from Criville was devastating. I talked to Alex that night and he just· shook his head in wonder and said, "Este tiD te rompe los huevos (That guy is a ballbreaker)." In Jerez last week, Mick was facing a difficult situation. Roberts was coming in on a two-race winning streak and Criville had won the last two in a row at Jerez. He had to make a statement. He had to stop their momentum. If Ooohan had kept that Honda about an inch tighter, the story of the Spanish Grand Prix would have been a lot different and maybe a lot less memorable - but then you always remember the wingwalker's failures more than his successes. CM 30 YEARS AGO••. JUNE 3, 1969 20 YEARS AGO... MAY 30,1979 10 YEARS AGO... MAY 24,1989 The Palmgren brothers finished 1-2 in a Triumph s~eep of the Reading, Pennsylvania, Half Mile. Larry Palmgren (Tri) took the win, followed by his brother Chuck Palmgren (Tri), with reigning AMA Grand National Champion Gary Nixon (Tri) finishing third... In Canada, two Honda in-line four-cylinder-powered road racers were spotted at the Harewood Acres races in Ontario ... The Bushmasters MC hosted its final motocross of the season in Beaumont, California. Don Watkins won the 100cc class, and Walter Sharp won the 125cc class. Both riders were aboard Sachs-powered machines... Shorty Sea bourne (BSA) won a Friday night half mile at Ascot Park for the first time in two years, while up the road in Paicoma, Rick Woods won the speedway races held at Whiteman Stadium... BSA was advertising wins by none other than "Crazy Dave" Aldana in order to push its Victor line of off-road motorcycles. Kent Howerton (Suz) stopped Bob Hannah's win streak at the fifth round of the AMA 250cc National MX Series in Southwick, Massachusetts. In fact, Hannah finished a disappointing 10th overall after carding a DNF in moto two ... In the opening round of the AMA 500cc National Championship Series held at the same venue, Danny LaPorte (Suz) put together a sweep to take the overall victory ahead of Rex Staten (Yam) and Darell Shultz (Suz)... We ran an interview on the always-smiling Gary Jones, who captured two successive AMA National MX titles in the early '70s. Jones rode for the Yamaha, Honda and Can-Am factories before going on to build and race Ammex motorcycles with his father, Oon... Neil Hudson (Mal) won the Belgian 250cc MX GP at Genk ... We also took a look at. how the EPA was addressing the problem of noisy motorcycles. Doug Chandler (Hon) put together a flawless performance aboard his Hank Scott-prepared RS750 to win the Ascot Half Mile. Ricky Graham finished second, with Rodney Farris (H-O) finishing third ... The Human Race Team of Kurt Hall and Andy Fenwick (Yam) made it two wins in a row when they captured the overall victory at the Willow Springs International Raceway round of the WERA National Endurance Series in Rosamond, California... Kevin Hines (KTM) carded only 11 points en route to the win at the Cherry Creek National Enduro in Traverse City, Michigan, round four on the AMA schedule... Eric Geboers (Hon) drew even with his factory Honda teammate David Thorpe (Hon) at the top of the World 500cc MX Championship Series standings after winning the Italian GP in Fermo... Tyson Vohland (Kaw) led his teammate and brother Tallon Vohland (Kawl across the finish line for the win during round six of the Mickey Thompson Off-Road Gran Prix Series at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. CII fA "I I ~ iii J: Q 83

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