Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128216
National Hillclimb Champion Dave Watson at year was a good one for Dave Watson. He won his fifth AMA U.S. Hillclimb Championship, and after winning both classes (540 and 800ccl in the same year for the second time (he did it in 2000 as weill, maybe it was a great year. tered. He remained true to the form that led him to the base of the Devil's Staircase that day. Cool, confident and focused, he was prepared to face the hill before him ... the hill that had a championship title waiting for him at its crest. Since midseason, Watson had been in a heated battle with wildman Walter "Tiger" Strank Jr. Watson's consistency paired with Strank's six- race win streak prOVided for the perfect setting: Oct. 13, 2002, The Devil's Staircase, Oregonia, Ohio, the final round of the 800cc class in the AMA U.S. Hillclimb Championship. Watson's last run would require a fifth-place finish or better to beat Strank in the points race. The script couldn't have been written any better. Normally a fifth-place finish might rank as a lackluster performance for Watson, who finished off the podium only twice that season. Those two "off" days netted him fifth place finishes. (In the 540cc division, his amazing consistency saw him outside the top three only once.) But on this day a fifth would be welcomed, and it was. "He already pretty much had the race won," Watson said of Strank. "I tried to be smooth and not screw up. It was barely good enough. I came down, and neither one of us knew who had won because it was so close. They were looking through the score sheets, and they said, 'Yeah, you got 40 MAY 28, 2003ยท e y e I n By CHRIS MURRAY PHOTOS BY DAVID L. PATTON N o doubt the nerves were firing quicker than lightning bugs in the summer night. His shoulders felt a weight they had never before known. The next 7.092 seconds of his relatively young life would prove to be some of the most important to date. With so much riding on one solitary run, hillclimbing's poster boy had all the elements of pressure working against him. However, Dave Watson never fal- e e uv 50 fifth.' So I won by one point. That was unreal." The champ relished the triumph but admitted the pressure. "You don't ever want to come that close," Watson said. "That was pretty nervewracking." Having already wrapped up the 540cc championship the week before in Jefferson, Pennsylvania, Watson's 800cc class title marked the second time he scored dual number one plates in the same season. In 2000 he did the same. Add a 540cc championship in 1998 (a season in which he never recorded a race win), and you've got a young man packed with raw talent, halfway to Earl Bowlby's record of 10 championships. Not bad for a 24year-old metal worker from a little Massachusetts town. Like most of his counterparts, Watson took a liking to dirt at an early age. By age eight, he was competing in his first hillclimb in Munson, Massachusetts. An unexpected win materialized, and 16 years later he hasn't changed his ways. Watson made a name for himself in the New England hillclimbing scene at an early age. Winning everything in sight, including a yet-unchallenged four consecutive amateur national championships, Watson emerged in the late '90s as a force to be reckoned with in the professional ranks. After taking home his 540cc number one plate in '98, Watson decided that to be the fastest he would need the ultimate machine under him. That's when he and his dad, Dan Watson, plunged into their own engineering world in a 20 x 20-foot garage and handcrafted a pair of state-of-the-art bikes, rivaled only by factory-produced race machines. Dan designated himself as the engine man. With years of motorcycling under his belt, he had a good grasp of how to make an motor churn. Dave, facing uncharted waters, was determined to build the bike that would best suit him. He set out to build