Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

in my career. I had an ACL repa ir in my right knee a long time ago before I turned pro , and I was able to rebou nd fro m that pretty good , so I'm excited to see if I can rebound fro m this one as good as I did my other one . I'll be on the 450 starting the serie s that I love to race - outd oors - which is a little easier for me, so... T he re .s been a lot of speculation that you may ca ll it qu its at t he e nd of you r Honda co ntract. es pecially w ith t he threat of Bu bba looming o n t he ho rizon. What do you have to say abo ut th at ? I can tell you this much, just knowing thatI'm not going to be able to race this supe rcross season, I definitely feel like I've got a lot more year s in me , and as far as Bubba's concerned, I look forward to racing the guy. I'm not going to run from anyone . And I'm not going to sit here and beat myself up and worry about him until I race him. Everybody knows he 's going to be good , and I think after I'm do ne , he's the next guy, but he' s a guy that's going to win a lot, a lot, of races , and I think it'll be coo l to race the guy so that when I look back on it and he excels and really does good , I think someday I will be glad to say I raced him, as wellas I think he wou ld say the same for me . I'm pumped I got to race McGrath, you know? My contract is up, and this'll be my last season on my Honda contract . Hopefully we'll get something togethe r and tack on a few mor e years to my contra ct. I mean, now that I do n't get to race supercross , I definitely want anot her go at it, for sure. I don't want to go out like that. I want to at least try some more , so I know as long as Honda 's willing to rene w my contract - and, as of now, I'm sure they wo uld because we've had a good re lationship and they've Q A ---'- ................-....A R[ On the MXdN Why he's never turned down racing the MXdN ... Oh, because I love going for my country, that's why. And I love outdoors. I've won the Motocr oss des Nations before , and I've lost it , and I know that feeling of w inning it, and that's one of th e great est fee lings I've had in racing. along w ith m y champ ionships. And to turn the Motocross des N ations down , the fans w ould ham m er you, but that's beside the point - 1w ould never do it. I go because I like to, and it's the right thing to do. For me , it's like going to w ar, you know?I'm not in the service or nothing. but that' s kind of like w hat it w ould be like to me - going over there and racing and tryi ng to m ake your fellow citizens proud of you. How he felt he'd do against Stefan Everts... Y know, I felt like Icould be good, for sure. I had raced everybody except Stefan ou [Everts] , and I knew that I cou ld beat everyon e ex cept him , because I had never raced him on a 250 . And w hen I got to t he tr ack and I seen w hat it was like, I started to get very happy, but on the flip side of that , I knew my knee was trash, so I just wa nted it to hang in t here, w hich it did. Where he was making time on the Euros... A little bit o f ente ring the turn s and stuff. I think I w as riding good . It w as super, super rough, and it was a little bit of hardpa ck and a little bit of sand - it w as exact ly like M illville. and M illville's like my back yard. so it w as a fun race for me . I had a blast. I mad e it out like a vacation with a litt le bit o f racing in there. stuck behind me for a lot of stuff, and a lot of things I've wa nte d, they've com e throu gh - and I fee l like I've done a lot for them, and I still feel like I can, so I have no plans on going anywhere. I'm bored o ut of my mind now - I couldn't imagine hanging it up after this year. li ke I said, I have noth - www.cyclenews.com ing else to prove, but I'm doing it because I love it - that 's all. I'm not o ut there for the greed of it. I'm not racing because I need to make more money so that 1/ ...-: r CYCLE NEWS • JANUARY 14, 2004 31

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