Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

By SCOTT ROUSSEAU PHOTOS By MIKE BASSO A sk any speedway fan, and you'll likely be told that speedway is a sport that rarely serves up a dull moment. The wildly intense races usually pack more drama, color and excitement into 40 seconds than most road race, flat track or motocross events do in three hours. On the surface, it's great family entertainment. But scratch that surface and delve into its politics, and it seems as th.ough speedway, a mere birthmark on the cheek of professional motorcycle racing in America, can often present all the color, drama and excitement of a Sopranos episode, especially when conflict arises between promoters bent on keeping their pieces of a very little pie intact. Such is the current status of speedway racing in San Bernardino, California, where a rivalry has been spawned by way of a deal gone bad. After three years, Arrowhead Motor Speedway promoter Charlie Venegas is now at odds with the very venue where his events were held, the NOS Events Center (formerly known as the Orange Show Fairgrounds), over what he perceives as a coup d'etat, with International Speedway, Inc., the 35-year promoter of speedway at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, California, apparently waiting in the wings. The stage was set when Venegas, who had just come off his most successful year of promoting AMA-sanctioned speedway at NOS Events Center on a track that he had built in the back parking lot, was presented by NOS with a proposal that he deemed as financially unfeasible. "They had raised the monies to a point where we could no longer do business at the Orange Show," Venegas said. "It had gotten to the point where every year the monies that we were to pay at the beginning of the year always changed. And they always held th.at [threat of termination] over our heads. In fact, we had gotten phone calls the year before from people inquiring about the sta- (Left) Racer-turned-promoter Charlie Venegas, proprietor of Arrowhead Motor Speedway. (Below) AMS' biggest event was the AMA National held last August. 22 APRIL 2,2003' II: U II: I e n e _ s tus of our speedway promotion at the Orange Show. The year before, they had tried to threaten us by telling us that [another promoter] Charlie Ermolenko was interested in promoting at the Orange Show. We could no longer jump through all their hoops." NOS Events Center assistant general manager Blake Inman confirmed that a meeting with Venegas did take place on January 28. "We held a meeting with Charlie Venegas, and he declined our proposal on the spot," Inman said. "Frankly, we were surprised that he left without taking the opportunity to think it over. Without going into the details of the proposal, I can say that our differences were very minor compared to previous years." Venegas admitted that he did refuse the NOS proposal straight away but that he did contact Inman 36 hours later to discuss the deal further, only to be told that the AMS speedway facility was going to be demolished and that NOS was moving on. Venegas also said that he began receiving phone calls from parties who said that they had heard that NOS was dealing with another promoter to keep speedway at the fairgrounds. An AMS press release, dated February 14 announcing the termination of the deal between AMS and NOS stated the following: "Venegas feels that the fair board negotiated with him in bad faith by never directly informing him that they were seeking the possibility of other promoters. That, coupled with the notion that the fair board was entertaining the idea of promoting speedway themselves, forced Venegas to threaten legal action. Although Venegas doesn't feel that the Orange Show could successfully promote speedway themselves, due to a lack of knowledge of the sport, he felt he needed to protect his investment." In the release, Venegas also stated that he was working with the city of San Bernardino to build a new speedway venue to run on Friday nights. Venegas told Cycle News that his concern was that NOS was attempting to steal the good will that AMS had built up in San Bernardino by running speedway on its own. "It is our position that what was happening was that they were going to try to steal the fans that we generated," Venegas told Cycle News. While Inman denies the motive and that NOS intended to throw Venegas out, he did say that the NOS never had any intention of eliminating speedway from its entertainment line-up. "We are an events center," Inman said. "We rely on concerts, trade shows, auto racing, wedding receptions, whatever we can do to generate revenue. Speedway is great entertainment, and we had no intention of

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