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/128331
In hi!i rookie World 5uperbike !iea!ion. the reigning World 5uper§port Champion Chri!i Vermeulen ha!i had a !itellar year eo far. Four podium!i in total and a breakthrough win at 5i1ver§tone in the moet: recent race have all marked out Vermeulen a!i a bit !ipecia/. We caught up with the Ten Kate Honda rider on the brink of hi!i fir§t Laguna 5eca e xperience. 48 JULY 7,2004 • CYCLE NEWS By GORDON RI TCHIE PHOTOS BY GOLD & GOOSE en your dad co mpe ted in all forms of motorcycle competit ion as an enth usiast ic amate ur , and yo u're given a Yamaha PWSO for your first yes, your first - birthday the n it may be no surprise to find that you end up with a high level of riding experience and machine cont rol befo re you even conside r embarking on a career in road racing. Even with that background you can hardly describe the rise of 22-year-old Australian Chris Vermeulen as anything less than stellar. After a long childhood and youth -level career spent dirt tracking, Aussie style, Vermeulen had only one thing in mind - road racing as a career. Not allowed to take to the tarmac in Australia until the magic 16th birthday had passed, Vermeulen echoed the early careers of many ultimate ly successful bike racers, learning the equations of grip vs. slide, throttle opening vs. steering on loose surfaces. Add in the Aussie specialty of going around left- and right-handers on two largely different track compounds, and you've got a 40th Anniversary great recipe for progress. Vermeulen, now a World Super bike race winner, describes the sce ne he cut his competitive teeth on. "We raced on what they call decomposed granite , which is loose dirt, where you run a motocross front wheel but a speedway rear w hee l," he said. "Then ther e was oiled dirt , which goes hard on top, and you run I7inch wheels with rain tires fitted - a bit like Supermotard . I started on the 60cc Yamaha, then 80s and then I25s, but you can only do up to 125s until you're 16, but the plan from then on was always to go road racing." It took him little time after he got his license . ':As soon as I turned 16, on the 19th of June, I could race tarmac, but there we re only three rounds of the Australian Championships left. and I did them all, on a 250GP bike and a Supersport bike," said Vermeulen, chilling out in the UK before heading off to his full-time European home in the principality of Andorra and thence to the USA for Laguna. "On the 250 I won two of the races and finished third in the other one, " he said. "In Supersport, I was between fifth and lOth. There were some good guys in Supersport then - Andrew Pitt, Kevin Curtain, Adam