Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

ake Zemke stood in the parts department of Westcoast Powersports in Paso Robles, California, and stared at the cover of Cycle Ne ws. A young Ben Bostrom and Matt Wa it stared back. The words on the cover jumped out at Zemke, who was working at the dealership at the time: "The uture Of Road Racing?" It was then that Zemke decided he had to give this road-racing thing another shot. "I'll never forget that cover," Zemke recalls. "I sat there and looked at it, and I was like, 'Man, these are the same guys I raced with my whole life,' I knew that I had to be out there racing w ith those guys." Zemke had met up with the Bostroms and Waits of the wo rld in an enti rely different arena - the world of dirt-track racing. But those two had moved on to road racing. Zemke, meanwhile, had quit the sport comp lete ly. He was working in a motorcycle deale rship , but that was as close to a motorcycle as he was getting . "I probably didn't sit on a bike for almost a year and a half," But first things first . There was the highly successful Amateu r dirt-track career. Zemke was at the top of his game, a multitime AMA Amateur Dirt Track Cham pion with a bright future ahead of him. But that went away. Quic kly. "I disappeared," Zemke said. But there's more to it than that. Zemke progressed through the dirt-track ranks in a hurry, earning a license that would allow him to race the big 7505 in the Grand Nat ional Championship - every young dirt-track racer's dream. He even had a solid program in place with help from West Coast Harley guys Tony Dodge, Mike Mockby and Jim Kelly. That rookie season started slowly. Zemke didn't make the main events at the first two races , the team late r finding that the swlngarm pivot in his Harley's frame was in the wrong place. Then came the Pomona round In Southern California. "I was actually going fast In practice, running right with Steve Morehead and Rodney Farris, and they were half-mile specialists," Zemke remembers. "Everyth ing was going pretty good," Then came qualifying Zemke got a bit excited and . crashed. But he made it the second time around , lining up In the back for his heat race. RickyGraham and Chris Car r were on the front row. Three would transfe r. Zemke was up to fourth and charging. "Then I stuck my foot in a rut, looking to make a pass for third, and tore the ligaments in my knee ," Zem ke said. "That was the end of my season right the re ," The knee was shot. ACL, MCL... everything with a CL was toast. "I had a lot of time to think about things, and I just took a coup le of steps back and looked at dirt-track raeIng as a whole ," Zemke said. '~t that point , track preparation wasn't as good as it is now, and they were going to a lot of bad trac ks. A lot of guys were getting hurt , and a lot of guys were riding hurt week in and week out. If you made the top lOin points, you we re lucky if you broke even . It was a tough deal. We made a conscious decision then to quit dirt- track racing. As much as it hurt, my parents were actually worried about my safety dur ing those years in dirt track." Money was also an issue . It always had been. And it would continue to be . The Zemkes weren't a family loaded with money, ready to throw cash at whatever young jake needed to be successful. But they did what they could whenever they could to help him. In fact, it was money, or the lack thereof, that led him to dirt track in the first place. Believe it or not , Zemke had already road raced - but he quickly found out that there was no way he could afford it. His first go-around on the pavement was when he was just 14. He rode a Yamaha YSRSO a few times, and caree r, the br ief Pro caree r, and the knee injury. Followe d by a bout of normal cy. "I just finished high school and was a norm al kid," Zemk e said. "I was working at the motorcycle shop and just not doing a w hole lot of anything. But I was getting the itch again." Enter johnny Murphree, the current top-level dirt tracker and longtime friend of Zemke's - and the man who turned the Itch into a second (or is that third) go at the racing thing. "Murphree kept bugging me - 'Hey. man, why don't you come out trail riding?'" Zemke said. "He got me out trail riding one day, and everything seemed different to me . I was riding along this ridge top, and I'd neve r done that before. I was looking at the area and how beautiful everything was around me , and something changed . I was like, 'Man, I want to ride." The money was gone , but the dream wasn't. What "Jake is in a position right now where he's wanting to win and he wants everything to happen now. But he is handling it really well. He hasn't made any mistakes. He's doing a good job with it all. I have a lot of time for Jake, because he's just a good bloke. He seems real about it all. He doesn't make any bullshit excuses like some of the other people who are over there. He's just trying to keep it real, and it's good to see. II - Mat Mladin then his sponsor, Rod Lake, set It up so he could take a private two-day school with te aching guru Keith Code. Zemke rode a Honda RS250 for the two days, and it led to his parents buying him a Yamaha FZR400. Then the short road-racing career began, ending just as quickly as It started with a few races at Willow Springs. "We went to Willow Springs like flve or six times, and we just couldn't afford to do it," Zemke said. "There was no way. I could road race one weekend a month or I could dirt trac k four weekends a month . That was our budget. My mom and dad were spend ing all the money they had on me , and my sister was sacrificing as well,obviously. We decided to go dirt trac king. I didn't dig sitting around for three wee ks out of the month not doing anything," So dirt trac king it was . Then came the Amateur www.cyclenews.com else to do but head to Southern California to race speedway every night? Hey. at least it was cheap. So that's where Zemke ended up. A speedway race r driving from track to track in Southern California, racing at little bullring trac ks like Costa Mesa and bigger ones like Glen Helen , the old fifth-mile that used to sit right next to the Nat ional-caliber MX track. "Speedway was a pretty cheap way of going racing. so basically I spent 1995 and '96 racing speedway in Southern California," Zem ke recalls. If you're going to make a living at racing speedway, you have to head to England. It's there that the good Americans end up, racing in leagues throughout the summ er and making a pretty decent living. One of Zemke's racing budd ies, Charlie Venegas, was across CYCLE NEWS • AUGUST 1 1, 2004 33

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