Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMA National Enduro Champion Mike Lafferty happened where it happened. So then we went into the summer break with everyone knowing something happened to Jason and the possibility that he was going to come back weak. Did that make you change your strategy or your training program? No, I just took it the same after that, because I wanted to get back into winning races. I didn't want to be a factor in the series with just one race win. I wanted to win some races! I rode all summer long, and I was riding great; I felt great. I kept all the training the same; I wasn't burning myself out; I wasn't riding too much; I wasn't slacking off. And then you broke your shoulder. And then I broke my shoulder. It was August 13, at 1:30 in the afternoon. I was out at the KTM dealer show in Colorado. We were sitting in the emergency room. AI [Randt] was there, and I was thinking, "I'm making the next races. I will be there." You know, I tried to convince myself that it wasn't broke; it didn't seem that bad. Then we got the Xrays, and it was definitely broken. It was going to be six to eight weeks, the doc said. So immediately after that I called up an orthopedic surgeon back home. I got to see him two days later, and he got me back on the road to recovery. No surgery, just training, therapy. I got it out of the sling in four days, started getting good movement out of it and started doing rehab. I had full range of motion in three weeks and started riding again in just under five weeks. It was just riding though; I wasn't going at speed. Things got complicated after that. The next GNCC you were going to ride was Mount Morris. The rumor at that time, before Mount Morris, was that Jason was going to come back strong. We all 34 JANUARY 22,2003' eye I e n learned differently the week before Mount Morris,' when Jason could hardly ride. In light of all this, what were you hoping to accomplish al Mount Morris, your first race back from the injury) I wasn't sure. When I first heard that Jason wasn't strong enough to race yet, I wasn't really surprised. But at the time, Rodney was still fairly far back, and all I really needed to do was get back out and get some strong finishes. I figured that if I bandaged myself up, took some precautions and got out and managed a top five, I'd be doing something. When I met up with AJ the Friday before and did a bunch of riding, I felt great. And actually, during the race, I worked my way up to third. And then I broke my rear brake line and fell all the way back to 10th or something, and I ended up finishing seventh. Top five would have been a little better, but I don't think that would have changed my situation totally. The biggest disappointment was at Ohio, St. Clairsville [round 12]. I think I was still in the points lead. Rodney was real close, and Freddie had gotten up there as well. We were all real close, and I didn't ride that well at all. I got an eighth, and I didn't have any problems. It was all a mental thing, like, "Don't crash again; don't hurt yourself again." I was still trying to grab hold of everything I had lost, and it still wasn't coming to me. I knew at S1. Clairsville that I wasn't really ready. It was too soon. But then what happened at Indy, at the final round) Do you think you were ready for Indy) Yeah. I knew by then that I was healed, that I was back to speed. Actually, at Mount Morris I had a little breakthrough because I was running about 10th or The spoils of victory: Lafferty won his first GNCC race in '02. eVIl's 12th and I did a big crash. Right over the bars and landed on the front of my bike and on my back, and I thought, "Ugh, this is going to be bad." I got up, shook myself off, didn't feel bad and put the hammer down. But by the time I got to St. Clairsville, I just didn't ride good. I felt bad, had all kinds of doubts. Then at Indy you got a last-place start at your last opportunity to finish the season on a high note. What happened there? I tried two different things. I tried kicking it over [at the dead-engine start] and pushing the electricstarter button at the same time. And you know with a four-stroke you can't touch the throttle at all, and I pushed the button and blipped the throttle, and I flooded it out. When you do that, it isn't going to start right up no matter what you do, so I was just kicking it, and everybody was taking off. I think I passed Steve [Hatch] in the first turn. Steve had crashed; Shane [Watts] was laying in the first turn, too. But I remembered before we took off that there were 31 Pros on the front line. So after I passed the first two, I was thinking "Oh, wow, only 29 to go!" I rode my butt off. I rode fast the entire time; I picked guys off. Once I caught up to people in the woods, I just started thinking like it was an enduro, cutting through the woods, cutting turns off, cutting people off, putting the hammer down, and I never settled behind anyone the entire time. I think by the end of the first lap, I worked my way up to sixth. Me and Chuckie got together, then Barry Hawk had problems and we moved up to fourth and fifth, then David Knight had problems and we were third and fourth. I wore Chuckie out. Toward the end he started tapering off a bit, and I just kept it going all the way to the end. I think the closest we got to Freddie and Rodney was 15 or 20 seconds. We were in striking distance, and Chuckie and I were riding good. That would have been even more exciting, if we would have gotten up there, but I'm not disappointed in that ride at all. If we could have gotten up there and mixed it up, the three of us, we could have changed things up. But I'm not disappointed in that ride at all. So you were satisfied with it? Well, I wasn't satisfied with the way the year ended, but I was happy by the last race that I had gotten through the injury, gotten through everything else, back to at least where I left off. And in all, it only took two months to break my shoulder, lose everything, go all the way down, then come back, get the confidence back again and be back on pace, if not faster than the pace sometimes. It was rewarding, but it wasn't for the championship. You had the attitude going into the enduro series in February. Did you feel like you were unbeatable in enduros at that point? No. No, you can't be like that in enduros, because they go to so many different places. When you go all the way out to California for a race, you're dealing with different guys, different situations. Every race is different. Then maybe there's Russ Pearson and Ty Davis; there's all these other guys there - a different element and a different place. But it was so good to go in there so strong and pull off a win there. I mean, you go off to the first round and pull off a win, and I'm not going to say it's smooth sailing from there, but it's like, "Whew!" Then you can settle down and start taking them one race at a time. It lets you breathe a little bit better after pulling off the first win. I didn't think I was unbeatable, not even after I won the first three races. I had some good confidence going on, though. For enduros, the confi-

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