Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

In fact, that's exactly what Ward was doing the day that the new opportunity came knocking in the form of a phone call from his longtime pal, wo rld-famous helmet painter and artist Troy Lee. It seems that five-time Daytona 200 winner Scott Russell, also a Troy Lee -backed racer during his career, had showed up to contest o ne of the local superm oto races in Southern California. Russell was going out to a kart track to practice, and he invited Lee to come along for a spin. "Troy called me and said, 'Hey, Scott 's going out to prac tice his superm oto bike,''' Ward remembers. "I was riding moto cross somewhere - maybe at Glen Hele n and Scott was going to Apex [Raceway, in Perris, California]. So I dropped by and rode his bike, and my times we re right with his right away. Scott said, 'Man, you're good at this. You ought to race this weekend." STTARS organize r Don Cane t had put together a supermoto event as a support race to the AMA Super bike Series event at California Speed way the Iollow ing weeke nd, and before Ward knew it, he was putting a moto rcycle together to compete. "jere my McGrath had also come out, and he told me that there was a guy at Moto Connection who had the wheels," Ward says. '1vld then we went to White Brothers the next day and had the suspension lowered . Then we just showed up. All of a sudden, I was involved in it." At that Fo ntana race , a race that may som eday be remembe re d as the spark that ignited the current blaze of supermo to mania in this country, Ward and McGrath, motoc ross titan s from two differe nt eras, w ound up squaring off in the main event. In a hot ly conteste d batt le that came down to the wire , Ward emerged as the victo r. "We had a blast," Ward remembers. "We battled the w hole race, and I passed jeremy on the last lap. The crowd loved it, and it kind of just too k off from right then. There stillwas no AMA ser ies, but peop le we re just kind of doing it in Southern California, and it was gett ing kind of big." Although Ward says that he never envisioned a time when he would have been faste r than McGrath on a motocross bike · albeit on e with 17inch slicks - the fact is that Ward had a head start in the sport now known as supermoto, a head start that dates all the way to the beginning of the concept. Dur ing his early factory motocross days with Team Kawasaki, he cont ested the original Superbikers races at Carlsbad Raceway in the late I970s and early '80s. "That was such a neat concept," Ward says. "It pitted everybody from all the disciplines together, but the whole draw to it was that it w as on ....1..-_~_~_ ABC's Wide World of Sports. If it wasn't, then I don't think that it wo uld ever have taken off. But it was on television, and it really boosted our sport up and made the factories want to get involved with it at the end of the year." While Ward remembers that it was a lot of fun, he also remembers that those pioneering days we re harrowing compa red to the more streamlined version of the sport he currently enjoys, especially with regard to the equipment being used. "We ran dirt trac k tires, and on the pavement they don't get much better grip than knobbies really," Ward says. "It was sketchy. We used our works 500 motocross bike, and we borrowed brakes from the road race team . It was fast, but it was pretty scary. I look back at the pic. tures , and we just ran with a chest protector over two motocross jerseys. [laughs] Eventually, I wore leathers, but for the first couple years we just ran the jerseys and didn't even use elbow pads." Ward contested the se ries until its demise in 198 5, and he says when it wa s over, he never gave it a second thought. "I can't even remember missing it," Ward says. "O nce it got up to '83 or '84 , the Motocross des Nations was going again, and we were racing supercross races in Europe and testing in japan. It just kind of got to where it wasn't worth the effort to put into it. With all the other stuff, it was just too much to think about." Fast forward back to 2003, where Ward was back into motorcycle racing fulltime... we ll, as fulltime as a retired guy having fun could be . Backed by longtime pal and helmet -painting god Lee, Ward saw the perfect opportunity to remain competitive and have fun doing it. The all-new Troy Lee Designs Honda team was formed to contest the entire schedule of the inaugural AMA Red Bull Supermoto Championship Series, with Ward as the lead rider. He was abo ut to reinvent himself again. Ward went on to win the 2003 AMA Red Bull Supermoto Championship series opener at Laguna Seca in Monterey, California, and went on to score two more wins, in Columbus, Ohio, and Dallas, Texas, making him a favorite to win the winner-take-all series finale - the inaugural Red Bull Supermoto A·Go·Go at Las Vegas. Ward was competitive in that race, leading several laps, but in the e nd the title went to race winner Ben Bostrom. Even today, the competitive fire in Ward leads him to admit that he felt cheated afte r Vegas. "Ifelt a little bit ro bbed ," Ward says. "The AMA could have done something a little bit differently, although we knew it was going to be like going in. The wh ole reason that we ran the whole ser ies with Troy [Lee], and [Mike] Metzger, and Steve Drew, and Greg and Gary Trachy, and whoever else was going to all of 'em, was to grow the sport. If we hadn't gone back East, if all we had said was, 'O h, we 're just going to go and run Irwindale to qualify and the n go try to win the championship,' the series pro bably never would have made it back from the East Coas t. Who would have gone to watch it? Nobody would have gone just to see local pros, and the AMA certainly couldn't have advertised it. It was in our hands to help the series get on its feet. "But you know, the last race of the series was winner take all, and that's wha t it came dow n to ," Ward says. "I just didn't get the job done . We blew up a motor the day before the race, and all we had was a stock mot or to throw in. Bostrom's factory Honda had at least 10 or II more horsepower than ours . Because I know what we have now, I can tell you that we we ren't even in the ballpark, speedwise, on the straightaways. But it was a close race , and it was good that Bostrom won, good for the sport, because it brings in the road racing fans to watch it. I was fi ne with where I finis hed and that the sport took off even more because of that race ." Still, the incredible poise and skillthat Ward showed in that inauguralAMASupermoto season begs the question : What if he had stayed on two wheels rather than switching to four? With his AMA motocross career over, what might have happened if he had gone to Euro pe or switched to off-road racing or taken a crack at the ISDE? It will forever be a moot point because, just like his supermoto career, Ward sort of fell into his Indycar career at the last possible moment. "I never really thought about Indycars until after my last year of racing, in '92," Ward says. "I was focusing on my last year of motocross racing. I was getti ng injured, and I had decided that '92 would be my last year, so we put together a fan-farewell-to ur kind of deal, and halfway through that year I got hurt again. The year was

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