Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Hannah's Most Heroic Ride Ow, at 31 years of age, Bob "Hurricane" Hannah ever wound up riding in the 125cc class for Team U5A at the 1987 Motocross des Nations is still a headscratcher to even Hannah himself. It is less important than the outcome, though, as Hannah's stunning performance in the event held at the fabled Unadilla Valley Sports Center in New York stands as a poignant reminder of how the Hurricane took care of business. "I think it was a vote," Hannah says of his nomination to the team. "I remember all the promoters calling me up and saying, 'Hey, I voted for you to ride Unadilla.' I said, 'What!? I don't want it.' I wasn't even racing full time anymore. [Suzuki director of engineering Tadaomi "Shiggy"] Shigenoya had signed me with Suzuki to test, but because I had to prove some of the stuff, I did still ride some races until '89." The real rub of his odd nomination was that Hannah had been called upon to ride in, of all things, the 125cc class at the MXdN. Jeff Ward had locked into the 500cc ride, with Rick Johnson set to ride in the 250cc class "It was crazy because how many years had it been since I'd even been on a 12S? Ten?" Hannah says. "So, I told Suzuki that I wasn't going to do it, and Shiggy just threw a rod. He said, 'We've got to ride this. You are going to get a lot of publicity for Suzuki - win, lose or draw.' 1 said, 'Yeah, I don't want to lose or draw, Shiggy.' "Johnson could have ridden a 250 or a 500 - either way and I didn't have a 500 at Suzuki, so the logical thing would have been to put Wardy on the 125, me on the 250 and Johnson on the 500," Hannah adds. '~d that's if you even wanted myoid ass in there anyway. Why did they even want me in there?" Hannah says the already uncomfortable arrangement soured further when his "teammates" Johnson and Ward publicly accused him of not being a team player after Hannah declined to attend a Team USA training camp in Pennsylvania. "Here's my problem with that," Hannah responds. "It really isn't a team deal until the day of the race, and I took a lot of shit for that. I'll be frank: Johnson and Ward can both kiss my ass. [Team USA manager Roger] DeCoster wasn't too happy with me at the time, but he knows me really well, so he didn't buck me too bad. But Johnson and Ward both said crappy crap to me and H 94 APRIL 13, 2005 • CYCLE NEWS about me, saying that I'm not the team guy because they were all going to ride at some place in Pennsylvania the week before the race, and they wanted me to come there." Hannah makes no apologies for haVing his own agenda. '" needed to ride my bike, and' needed to test my bike," Hannah says. '" needed to the job that I know very damn well how to do. I didn't need to be holding Ward and Johnson's hand for a week, eating dinner with them and acting like I'm their teammate. I was going to be their teammate at Unadilla. It doesn't mean that we needed to have a love affair before then, right? 1 just told Roger, 'When the goddamn gate drops, I'll be ready.''' Hannah recalls that from the time he committed to running the 125 in the MXdN until the time he was on the gate, he had 30 days to prepare, and prepare he did. If Team USA failed to bring home the gold, Hannah wasn't about to let it be through any fault of his. Facing incredible odds against his success only further energized the Hurricane. "I was going there to win." Hannah says. "I told 5higgy, 'Okay, here's how we're gonna do this: You call Japan and have them ship two works 125s over here immediately. I'm robbing another mechanic out of your shop to be my practice bike mechanic, and he's going to Idaho with me for 30 days. I'm going to Idaho, and I'm not coming out of Idaho for 30 days. I'm not going to do squat but ride this 125 every day, and my mechanic Randy is going to get the race bike prepared to do the race.''' That's exactly what happened, according to Hannah. "I went to Ketchum [Idaho], and I had a run [running trail] there, up Fox Creek," Hannah says. "It went from 6000 feet to 8500 feet, and it was about an eight-mile run. I had 21 days straight on that eight-mile run. Twenty-one days straight. I never missed it, and I never missed a riding day either." When he wasn't running, Hannah killed himself daily by racing two 45-minute practice motos on that works 125 practice bike. When the gate dropped for the MXdN at Unadilla on September 13, 1987, he was in just about the best shape of his career. He needed to be, because the first moto didn't go so well. "I got knocked off two times on the first uphill by SOOs," Hannah remembers. "Riding a 125 against 500s at Unadilla was going to be tough anyway, but on a muddy track - especially with a bunch of Europeans who were good in the mud there - that wasn't good. It would have been good for Bob Hannah if there were only Americans there, but that rain just gave the Europeans another advantage. They are good in the mud." Down but not out, it would have been easy for Hannah, who finally got going in 15th place, to just give up. "It would have been, but I didn't train one month straight to look like a scapegoat," Hannah says, "and then to get my ass knocked off twice on that uphill and look like a fool." It didn't set well with Hannah, who pinned that little 125 to the stop and rode like he was being chased by the devil. When the moto was over, he had made his way to fourth 125 - not great but still in the hunt. In moto two, however, the still-possessed Hannah left nothing to chance, outdistancing Italian ace Corrado Maddii and Belgium's Marc Velkeneers to finish third overall in the moto and go 4-1, which was good enough to net the I 25cc overall win and lift the USA past a tough Holland team to win the MXdN by two points. "If we'd lost that race, you know it was going to be Bob Hannah's ass," Hannah says. "I hate to say it, but I rode great. And I got lucky. There were a lot of good riders there that day. I told my mechanic afterward, 'I don't know how the bike didn't blow up, because I didn't baby it.' I couldn't. That was a good bike, I have to admit." Today, Hannah says he believes it was the most heroic ride of his fabled career. ':t\bsolutely it was," Hannah says. "You know, I couldn't do it, but I actually had it in my head to try and outrun Johnson in that second moto, but he was just too good on that 250. You know, a lot of people were on my side to run that race but, really, I wasn't the right guy for the job." Sorry, Hannah, but history takes a different view of that one. CN

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