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/128628
Mike Smith paid to do so. But , like a lot of young racers , he reall y didn't know how good he had it and at the time he didn't enj oy it as much as he should have. Now he kn ows. "Talki ng about it with someone is one th ing , sitting in a Bobcat for hours working is another - it's hard ," Smith said . " Hindsight is alwa ys 20 -20, but it seems li ke tha t's th e h ardest , dark est p l ace. I' v e h ad to depend on God with racin g, and why he t ak es people and he didn 't ta ke m e, I don't know. All I know is I've chos en the faith and that has grown. I'm no scholar of the bi ble , and I'm not try ing to preach, but m y experiences have grown and in those dark places that we go in our lives , that's where he's there to help. I found that happiness isn't relied on a job or racing , but it was . That's where m y happiness was and when I lost that, I lost m y j oy, I lost life - I was depressed to where I was in a dark pla ce." The nam e Mi k e Smith fir st starts to creep its way into the AMA m edia guide in 1988 . With ratty old bl ack and wh ite leathe rs, a m ostl y wh ite helm et and a Honda 600 sponsored by a local dealer, the then- 20-year-old went out and won the 60 0cc Supe rspo rt final at Road Atl ant a - beating Doug Polen and David Sadowski in the process. "I loved it. That was a fun race ," Smith said at th e tim e in a Cycl e News race report. Even so, he says he wasn't co mplete ly happy. It was the beg inning of th e end. It was when Mik e Smith started to get serious, too serio us perhaps, about try ing to be the best in the wo rld. By PAUL CARRUTHER S PH OT OS BY H ENNY RAY ABRAMS Vfl\Ihere' s something about sitting in a Bobcat for U hours on end, digging ditches with no end in sight, that makes you realize racing motorcycles is a pr etty cool thing to do for a living. Mike Smith knows this now. He didn't necessarily know it then . Then seems like an etemity ago for Smith. From his humble beginnings in Canton, Georgia, to his rapid rise to a professional motorcycle racer, Sm ith has seen both sides of the fence. And he certainly knows which side is better. Smith has been a factory Su perbike racer, he 's raced a Honda NSR500 in Japan and he 's won 13 AMA 600cc Supersport races (second most all -time in AMA racing ). He's also spent time driving a Bobcat, framing houses and working as a m ech ani c in a ca r deal ership . It 's tho se hours of l ab o r and his d eep rel igi ou s beliefs that he says have made him a better person. He talks now about th e dark places he's visited. And he admits th at he wasn't a very goo d person back when rac in g suc cess was all tha t rea lly ma ttered to h im. Fam il y , friend s and bu siness associates suffered the wrath of a you ng m an ca ught up in try ing to fulfill his dream s. It' s tak en him this long to finally realize th at he was living a drea m . He was do ing everything he'd ever dream ed of. He was raci ng a m ot orcy cl e and getting 32 A UGUST 3 0 , 2000 ' .. U .. I e n D VII' S "A fter that first 600 race th at I won at Road Atlanta , I ask ed m yself, 'Why can' t I be happy when I lose? Why does it just k ill me lnside'P '" Smith said. "T he reason why is because I was trying to keep this dream th at I never really created. When I started road racing, I just had natura l abili ty . The opportunit ies just fell. Don 't get me wrong, I had to ride to be a part of it, but as far as plann ing it all out - that never.wo rke d for me. " Smith captured one champion ship along the way , the Formula USA title in 1990 on a Valvoline Suzuk i, during a two -year hiatus fro m AMA raci ng. Wh en he returned , he d id so wi th th e Sm ok in ' J oe' s Honda team . He was a high-profil e rider in a high -pressure situation. In 1992, with thre e 600cc wins und er hi s belt, he crashed at Loud on and suffered a brok en leg. In '93 , he retumed to win tw ice , including Loudon, whil e fin ishing seventh in the AMA Superbike Series. In '94 , he won five times in the 600cc Supersport, but gav e away th e champions hip with a crash at Sears Point in th e penultimate round. It speaks volu mes that th is reporter did n't even attempt to speak with Smith after hi s crash at Sears. He could be a tad on the difficult side to deal with if th ings weren 't going righ t. He realizes that now . "How I treated people usua lly related to how I finished , or how I th ought where I was go ing . If I thou ght I was on co urse to where I was going , and everything wa s going g reat , th en it was al ways, ' Hey , ho w's it goi ng? '" Foll owing his fac tory ride with Hon da, Smi th jumped arou nd . He rode a factory Ducati for Eraldo Ferracci in 1995, a 600cc Supersport bike for Rob Muzzy in 1996. Then it was on to a sem i-factory effo rt in 1997 with Kinko's Kawasaki. It was there that he started to realize how good he'd had it. "A fter '96 I went to Kinko's and that was one of the hardest years for me," Smith said . "I went from Muzzy's to Kinko's, making big bucks to making nothing. My ca reer has never been where I m ade a whole lot of m oney . I've ridden a lot of goo d races , but fo r some reason or another I never got th e ch ampionships. I was alwa ys lik e a dark horse. It was going back to th e real world, going back to a regu lar j ob. That was the hard est part for me . In 1988, I was sitting in a World History college class in m y freshman yea r of college, and I was falling asleep listening to this guy . I was wo rki ng full time, 40 hours a week in a Honda shop, and I was rac ing ... I figured if I spent fou r years going racin g, surely I cou ld make a living at it. I m ade th e decision to quit goi ng to college and I basically quit working . I was presented an opportunity to go racing . Racing is day by day, and that's the hardest thing. So I go on a car eer path that yo u think yo u have co ntro l over and you realize, about '95 or '96, you realize yo u m ight not make enough money to retire on. When you take that chance to do that with your life and you see it start to fall, you think, 'Man, I really screwed my life up.' " Smith is a happier man now . He's married with two young children . And he's racing again, And having a lot of fun doing it. He's also win ning. In fact, if his bike do esn 't suffer mechanical problems, he wins th e Pro Thunder class . Every time. Th at's right, Pro Thunder. Sometim es you have to rub your ey es when you see him in th e Pro Thunder cla ss. Ditto wh en yo u see him walki ng around the pits and actua lly talk ing to peop le, building relationships. What he's doi ng is making up for lost time, att empting to repair some of the damage he's done - dam age he's ashamed of. "I can still ride, but I've made a lot of enem ies from the pressur e," Sm ith admits. "W ith [Rob) Muz zy and [Eraldo) Ferracci , I ca rried an att itude a lot of times and yo u ca n't treat peopl e lik e that - no m att er what. It' s not lik e I di d it all the tim e, but I did it eno ugh. Wo uld I want somebody treating me lik e that? - Heck no . Life is more tha n th at. I'm doin g somethi ng that I've never