Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

make me happy. But com ing back riding for Amsoil, Factory Connection and Honda , I've got t he best of both worlds, because I have all the support of a factory, the best bike they can offer - I mean, my Honda 450 is incred ible - but at t he same time , Factory Con nect ion has made this environ ment for me that wor ks, w he re my daughte r can be in there, and we kind of feel like this is our home away from home. I don't have to worry about if she's both ering Ricky or Ernesto or Nathan or anybody else. And for me , I have the peace and quiet of a motorhome, and the work's kind of w rapped up here , too. Factory Connection has really done a great job with re ading me and making an environment that's conducive for me to go put in some good results. A lot of what goes of my get away. It just snowballs, you know? I mean , the good snow balls - like I'm riding a great wave right now that just see ms to be progressively picking up - and on the flipside of t hat, w he n bad stuff starts happe ning, it kind of goes the same way, too. For me , I was just trying to find anything to make me happy. And I guess everybod y rea lizes that sometimes w hen you might be upset and decide to go have a drink or something - you try to drown your sorrows or whatever - that was kind of the way t hat Iwas going at that time. Realitystarted to set in, and I saw what was happening, but how do you really get out and get away from the sport in midstream? You know, I didn't want to be a quitte r, and I didn't want to leave my sponso rs high and dry - it's unfair have two surgeries on it, and it too k it a long time to where I felt like I could come back. But I defin itely wasn't trying to nurse this thing for everything it was worth - it was tru lya terrible brea k - but at the same time it gave me the time I need ed to get me t hrough the contract, and it gave me the time to find myself. But, to answer your question , t here was no drugs ; it was just drinking. 1 don't know w hat you heard... I was on th e bottle a little bit. sa id that yo ur daughter had a rough t ime of it coming into the world . How much did that have to do wi t h you r kind of re d iscovering yo urself! w ell, at that time, th e pieces were coming back into place. I kind of had decided w hat I wa nted to do , and that was to come back to racing. but there we re some t hings that had to happ en before I came back, and the birth of my daughter was one of them. And w hen she came into the world ... I mean, it's like the best story in the world right now because everything's fine and she 's healthy, but she had to fight for her life in the hospital for 67 days. She wasn't bre athing when she was born ; she had to have blood transfusions; she was in incubators; she was jaundiced and under the black lights... You name it, and she pretty much went through it, and to com e into this world and be such a fighter like that, that's why I don't want her dad to not have the same fight in me. I know that I can do it, and my fight level definitely went up, because 1 was fighting with her, Dotti e [Kevin's wife] was sick, and I was st ruggling and going to the hospital every day - it was just a trying time for everybody, becau se of Dottie being sick and the baby being sick and me trying to juggle around both of them . I was the healthy one , but it was pretty tough on me, mentally. But we got through it, and I came out so much stronger on the tail e nd of t hat. Q A Y OU H OW m uch of yo ur newfoun d confi dence is the bike , an d how m uc h of it is just you? A Yeah, it's always controversy. I want to "","ide the bike that's been provided to me , and it 's what I wanted to ride. When I first called Honda when I was coming back from my injury, I said, "I've been riding a little bit around local tracks and watching these four-strokes. They look fun, and it looks like these guys that are riding these things are just doing awesome. They're hanging with me on the bike that I was riding, which was a good bike. I would like to try one of these things." They sent me one, and I just started riding it and having fun with it, and I stuck with it. Maybe I don't have it because I haven't asked for it, but I don't have the desire of SWitching back and forth each weekend. The bike that I like is the four-st roke , so of course it's my job to do the best I can week in and week out with that bike in the situation that's given to me . And I think about negative things sometimes, like maybe it's not the best here , or man I got ninth at Anaheim I... But in my return to racing, I've been able to put t hose things behind me and rebound and come back and win the next Q down on the track starts in the weeks before , days before, or even the hours before. Pretty much, once you get on the track , it's a resu lt of how your week went and how other things went, so they've definitely stepped up and given me a great environment. DO you t hink it 's fa ir to say t hat, especially t oward t he end of your first career, you started t o get a reputation for partying a bit too much? And, if so, what hel pe d bring you around? A I was actually wondering when people we re going to #'4start asking those questions because I thought about that just the other day t hat that was a fairly large portion Q 42 FEBRUARY II, 2004 • CYCLE NEWS to them because they didn't reallysee what was going on in my head, with me trying to fight it through den ial and stuff. So, like you've sai d before, it's almost like the broken le g really was a blessing. lt rea lly, really was . I think a lot of people don't really understand how it can be that way when you break a femur or something, but it was the break that gave me the time. I mean, a broken collarbone would 've put me out four weeks, and I would've been faced with, "O h, hell, I've got to come back now." But on the same token, I don't want to have people think that I was just nursing this thing along, you know ? It was a serious break, and I had to Q A 40th Anniversary

• Cover