Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

SoSe Suzuki's Sean Hamblin I think if he was given the right chances and opportunities, he'd be fine. I guess I just kind of lucked into this, and I'm pretty happy with it. For an "unknown" like you io go out and do as well as you have, do you think this should make the established factory stars a little less secure in their futures? I would say so, because they haven't heard of me before and then all of a sudden, now, here I am. I'm not running at the front yet, and I think within a few short weeks I'm going to be there for sure. lf you had a choice right now for next year between a 125 or a 250cc team, what would you pick? 1'd say 125 for supercross, but I don't know for outdoors. If I could have the option [of riding a 250 outdoors], it would be nice. Jeff Stanton, Steve Lamson, Jeremy McGrath, Doug Henry - there have been a lot of really successful riders who weren't highly touted amateurs or didn't have factory rides on their 16th birthday, and actually McGrath was a successful four-stroke rider originally. What do you think about the difference between guys like that and guys who have a factory ride when they're 16 years old? I think it makes you look at things a lot different - your perspective on where you want to be and how you want to do it. And I think it gives you more of a desire to go out there and do good. When you're handed everything, you're not used to the lower life. But I think everything's been good for me. I like where I came from. Everything happens for a reason, and that's why I'm here now and not at 16 years old. Have you ever heard the quote commonly attributed to Bob Hannah, "You can play now and pay later, or you can pay now and play later"? What do you think of that idea? That's what I'm living by right now. I want to work hard for, say, the next 10-11 years, and when I retire I still want to stay in the industry and help out. But I definitely want to be set for life, just like anybody else. And right now is the time that I need to put my head down and forget about all the past and just look ahead to make sure that I'm going to be doing good in the future. When you see guys that seem to have it all and then throw it away by doing something stupid - the most extreme examples being maybe Jeff Emig or Ron Lechien - have you taken notice? YOU know what? There's a lot of guys out there that nobody realizes does that stuff. You know, Jeff just got caught. It doesn't make him a bad person, and it doesn't make him a bad rider. He just paid the consequences of doing something and he has to live with that now. It never made him a bad person or anything, but it was mistake that h~ made and I'm sure he regrets it to this day. YOI1 know, there are a lot more riders out there who party and don't take their sport serious and jUs~ take everything with a grain of salt and say, "Forge it. I deserve this because I'm So-and-So." But, you Q A Q A Q guys, but just not as many. It matured my riding and me physically. DO you think there are any specific reasons why you've been getting overlooked? Just, I wasn't always the biggest name in amateur stuff - J mean, I was always there. I was always top-five, top-three at every amateur national, but I guess everybody didn't look for that. They looked for the guy who was dominating all the time and all that. And a little bit had to do with some family problems with my mom and dad at a race, and Yamaha saw it, and from there on out I've had a black cloud over my head. HOW do you like working with Roger DeCoster and the other people at Suzuki? AW, man. Everybody at Suzuki is just 110-percent behind me. DeCoster and Ian Harrison, and everybody. Lee, Scott the Showa guy, Alley Semar, they're all behind me 110 percent. It's pretty cool to be on a team with DeCoster the team manager. HOW are you handling aU of this sudden attention - all kinds of people demanding parts of your time and such? YOU know, it's good for me. A lot of people thought that it might get to my head come Mount Morris last weekend, and I don't think it did one bit. I'm riding the same, and it hasn't changed me as a person. I don't see how people change over it. It's awesome that I'm getting press and stuff, but it'll never change me as a person, me getting a factory ride. I still associate with all my friends. It's not like I'm some big rock star who's on tour or something. I'm just the same person. DO you think there are more guys like you out there who have lots of speed and determination but tend to get overlooked for whatever reason? Oh, definitely. A lot of kids are out there, even in the amateur ranks. I've got a little buddy that I .help out all the time, and he needs a lot more credit than he gets because of the Alessis and the Millsaps. STORY AND PHOTO BY STEVE COX ust a couple of months ago, Sean Hamblin was considering retirement from professional motocross. Continually passed over for the "big ride" while his amateur competition seemed to get opportunity after opportunity in the United States, the determined 19-year-old spent his time racing north of the border - earning the 2000 Western Canadian 125cc National MX Championship in his rookie year. Still, the Southern California native was a relative unknown in the States until Power Pros Exhaust's Dave Aleman gave him a YZ426F to ride in the Western Four-Stroke Nationals and the FourStroke World Championships earlier this year. His impressive rides helped land him a testing gig (and his own privateer RM for AMA Nationals) with the ailing So Be Suzuki squad, whose riders Travis Pastrana and Kevin Windham were sick and hurt, respectively. Eventually, his results at the first two Nationals (aboard privateer equipment) earned him his biggest break yet - a factory SoBe Suzuki contract to finish out the rest of the 2002 season. We caught up with Hamblin as he was testing his new factory RM250 at Glen Helen raceway the week after the Mount Morris MX National. Where did you come from? Where'd you get this new fire? No fire. I've had it forever. All of a sudden, now I guess everyone's noticing it. It doesn't feel like I've changed anything at the drop of a hat or anything. It's just me, I guess with more confidence. I'm just a little bit more into myself, I guess. DO you think racing in Canada helped you get where you are now? Yeah, definitely. You know, I didn't just jump straight into the [AMA National] pros, only because I didn't have a ride - otherwise I would've. But I think racing up there helped me establish [myself] running up in front, in that there's fast Q A Q A Q A Q A Q Q A 36 JUNE 12, 2002' cue • e n e _ A s A Q A Q A a

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