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/128344
The Dreaded Asterisk T he dreaded asterisk is one of the mean est. nastiest , most joy-killing metaphors used in sports. The little symbol itself is not evil, but more often than not it is a horribly abused indicato r that plays loose with the facts and only serves as little more than a point of argument for those who would choose to bring it up. The dreaded asterisk usually denotes that a rider or team's given accomplishment is not all that it was cracked up to be. You hear it all the time. "Kevin Schwantz wo n the 1993 SOOcc World Road RacingChampionship, but you have to put an asterisk by his name because Wayne Rainey suffered a careerending injury while leading the points." "C had Reed won the 2004 AMA Supercross title , but you have to put an asterisk by his name because Ricky Carmichael was injured and had to sit out the title." Having just clinched his sixth career AMA Grand National Championship, dirt tracker Chris Car r knows the pain that can be inflicted by t he asterisk, as it has pere nnially plagued his first career championship title, which he won in 1992. At that point, his factory Harley-Davidson teammate, Scott Parker, ap peared headed for immortality as the first rider in history to win five consecutive AMA Grand National Championships. Carr wanted to stop that from happening. In 1992, he would - only not in the way he was hoping. "Leading up to that point, my career had been a 'chase Scott Parker' type of thing, other than the first coup le years, when Honda was still involved and we were all chasing them for the most part," Carr remembers. "Basically in 1989, '90 and '91, I'd inch closer and closer to Parker in t he po ints. In 1991, we actually tied in po ints." Carr pauses and then adds, "On the one hand it was good to be able to finally stop Par ker 's streak and claim the champi onship, but because of the accident, I'm sure t hat it is viewed by a lot of people as an asterisk-type year." The "accident heard round the dirt track world" took place with just four laps left in the Ok lahoma City Ha lf Mile on July 2S, 1992. Privat ee r Honda rider Will Davis was w inning the race . Carr was running third at the time, with Parker seventh. "I was try ing to chase Sco tt down in points, and I was ahead of him that day and gaining on the leaders when I just slid out in the middle of turns one and two," Carr recalls. "I did what I always would have done in that situation - if my bike was run ning I wou ld try to pick it up and get back in the race . The bike was running, but the clutch lever was stuck in t he ground and I couldn 't pull the clutch in. So in order to get the bike up and get the clutch lever in, I had to kind of jerk it up o nto its wheels. I got the thing up and was grabbing for the clutc h lever, and I knew that the thing would step out a little bit, and it did. Scotty came right by me ... The thing hadn't stepped out more than a foot , but it collected him. As far as I know, the yellow flagswere out. The bike stepped out, but it didn't back up. He hit the bike just as I grabbed the clutch. It was almost instantaneous, and the bike was ripped right out of my hands ." Parker says that to the best of his recol lection, there were yellow flags waving when he entered the corner. "I saw Chris laying on the ground , and I wasn't really surprised to see him try ing to pick it up," Parker says. "I just tr ied to stay on the edge of the groove because I didn't wan t to go wide and have anybody pass me beca use it didn't loo k to me like something they wo uld red flag the race for. I had the points lead, and I figured it was just time to go w in it. I was looking at the bon us plan on that fifth championship." Parker, too, says that it all happened so fast, but by the time he realized contact would be made it was too late. ''All of a sudden, it was like, 'Oh shit," ou Parker says. "Y can see in the video footage that I was just trying to move my leg out of the way, hoping that it would just hit the pipes and not catch me . It caught me and the bike, and we just cartwheeled fro m there." The ensuing crash could have been far worse. Luckily fo r Parker, his injuries were limited to facial lacerations and torn knee 110 oaOBER 6,2004 • C Y CLE N EWS 3 U YEA RS AliU.•• Uctober B. 1974 ligaments . He was credite d with 16th place at O klaho ma City, while Carr reg rouped and finished e ighth, making for a six-point swing. The bum knee fo rced Parker to miss the Peoria TT, which Carr went on to w in, taking a series lead tha t Parker was never ab le to recover from once he did return to action. Chris Carr became the 1992 AMA Gran d National Cha mpion , with an asterisk. Nowadays, Parker, more than anyone else, probably makes the most co mpelling argument to eliminate the mythical asterisk surroun ding Carr's '92 title . "I don 't t hink anybody else wou ld have done anyth ing different ly tha n Chris did." Parker says. "He won the championship that year. He put together 10 or 20 races or whatever, and he beat me that year. Peop le cou ld always say there was an asterisk around the year that I bea t Bubba Shobert in '88 because his bike was too light, but the bottom line is that you have to put together 10 races or 22 races, or whatever the package is, to win the cham pionship. You have to put them together, and if you 're sick or hurt , it's t he same thing. I, in my own mind, know that what Chris did wasn't deliberate. It was just ironic that it was me who came t hrough there when he crashed." In th is case, history shows that all's well that ends well. After a magical year by privateer Ricky Graham in 1993, Parker returned to his championship-winning ways in 1994, and he went on to earn his five consecutive titles, from 1994 through 1998. After returni ng fro m an ill-fated road racing career, Carr lost the title to Parker by whisker in '98 but the n came back in '99 and won his second career AMA Grand Natio nal Championship in the exact fashion that he had hoped - out-pointing Parke r by scoring more wins than the champ. A quick look at the AMA record books shows that there are no asterisks by either of Carr's first two titles. Scott Ro usseau 40th Anniversary We did the first test of the Can-Am motocross bike. Overall , it was a good bike and was the first bike to be produced in North America... Rick Ho cking won his first National Mile after he came fro m behind to take the victory... The Shamrocks Distric t 37 Ha re a nd Hound took place in Fo ur Corners, California. Winning the eve nt overall was Cordis Broo ks... The big winners at the annua l CRC Rawhide GP were: Hugh Williams in the SOO-c1ass, Jamie Avels in the 2S0-c1ass and Jeff Larsen in the 200-c1ass. This event was normally not dusty but months of d ry weather left the 7-mile course dry. And the racers were forced to endure it for two hours. i!U YEA RS AliU ••• U c tober IU. 19B4 Yamaha's new 250cc motocross bike appeared on the cover. Inside we did a test on the entire Yamaha lineup that year. In the end we came away quite impressed... We also took a closer look at HarleyDavidson's three-wheel motorcycle called the Trihawk. It was laid out like a car, and even hand led like one , but was still considered a motorcycle... Broc Glove r won the first-ever supercross held in Scandanavia. Taking second was German rider Gert-Jan Van Doo rn and finishing third was Ma rk Barne tt... Joh nny O ' Mara and Danny Cha nd ler headed up a Honda sweep of the 12Scc, 2S0cc and SOOcc classes at the second round of the CMC/ Pioneer Electronics Trans-Cal series in Adelanto, California. In YEA RS A liU ... U ctober S . 1994 Ty Davis was Top American at the 69th annual ISDE. The event was held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Davis finished third in his class... Sweden finished up a dominant year in World Spee dway competition with a victory at the World Team Cup in Bro kstedt, Germany. Leading the team to victory was World Speedway champion Tony Rickardsson... We tested the 1995 KX 125 and found t hat it was just as good as the previous year's. Kawasaki didn't do a ton of changes to the bike, but just refined it... Casey Lytle won the 12Scc Intermediate class at a CMC Trans-Cal motocross. The event was held at Sunrise MX Park in Adelanto , California.