Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

sion , he was a fiel d filler, never a real threat to earn a Grand Nationa l win - le t alone the cha mpion shi p. Those hopes seemed mo re like distant dreams. The dream of chasing th e circuit beca me a sobe ring reality when Kopp accepted a ride aboard the HarleyDa vidson XR750 of Spokane-a rea logger Do ug Don ne ll y for the '9 5 seaso n. He wouldn't make all the races, but he was able to get in enough to expe rience the emotional heavens and hell s tha t are a big part of the Grand National sce ne . T ru th be tol d, despit e the I. . So why does this all not feel "right " to me? It appears as th ough th is pl ace sho uld be th e emi nen t domain of som e redneck , no t the king of m y sport. A nd ye t th ere sits Kopp - who , I mig ht add, still has all of his teeth re laxing in his Lazy- Boy, ready to answe r my qu estion s. As he speaks , I can remember a tim e when it used to be difficult to get him to say shit if he had a mouthful. Now, after co m ing off of one of the finest - if not somewhat peculiar - championship sweeps in AMA dirt track history , it's only slightly easier. Ask him a question about his life, his career or the sport in which he is now the man , and yo u will get sufficient, thoughtful answers. He says wha t he m eans, but he is always car efu l to m ak e sure that you unde rsta nd the co ntext . St ill , to sit and talk w ith hi m , it's apparent that he sim ply doesn't act like you'd th ink a champion wou ld. He's quiet, very low key, perhaps th ese traits being analgous to his environment. "T his year," Kopp sta rts, "lik e every year before th is one, I told m yself that thi s was going to be m y ye ar, and we sta rt ed out in Dayton a with a second, so I knew that I wa s going to have a good year. But I didn 't think that th is was going to be m y ye ar to win the cha mpio nshi p ." It wou ld be hard to argue w ith him. After all , the re had only been tw o oth er riders in Grand Nati onal hist ory w ho have ta k en the ti tle with a sing le victory. D ick Mann pulled it off in 1963, with Randy Goss winning ju st on ce en route to hi s 1980 ch am pi onship . Dick Mann, Randy Goss, J oe Kopp ... Sounds funny doesn 't it? But get to kn ow him, and yo u rea lize th at Kopp really is cut fro m th e same clot h as those two legendary riders. "I d on 't k now D ic k Mann ve ry good , but I know Randy, and I know how mu ch of a hard wo rker he is," Kopp said. "I' m th e ki nd of guy where if people do n't thi nk tha t I can do something, lik e go out there and beat them on a Suzu k i [TLI 000], then that just gi ves me more incentive to go out the re and beat them on tha t Suzuki. After I got a fi rst at Seattle and second at Sacram ento [Fo rm ula USA events] this year, peop le started say ing, 'Oh, he's on ly doing that bec ause of the ho rse power th at he's got with that Suzuki.' So when we went to Phoenix , I tol d my team owne r Dav e Burks , 'Okay, we 're not even going to rid e the Suzuk i. I j ust want to ride th e Harley beca use I want to prove that I can ride the Harl ey . A nd we went o ut and got third. I like to be stirred up like that, just like Da ve y Camlin . When you used to fire him up, he was a roc ket." See, Kopp's cham pionship did n' t come as th e direct resu lt of a brilliant rise t o form - he was alwa ys good enough to be a champion. Instead , thi s past seaso n was m ore lik ely a reflecti on of his persona l growth. "Th is [season] is all just about m e growing up ," Kopp said. "I've alwa ys been real qui et, and I don 't think that th at' s a bad th ing . It' s ju st th at I've gotten older, and I rea lize that now is th e time to say m ore and do m ore. A nd I' m not afrai d of failure." A sk his fr iends and family, and they'll tell yo u th at Ko p p has alwa ys had his head o n stra ight and was never one to look for tr ouble, or have it come to him any w ay. His success has co me as the result of ball bu sti ng hard work, h is fail ures no t fo r lack of try ing. (Abo ve) Just about everywhere that Kopp ran in 2 0 0 0 , he ran up front. His three podium finishes at the Spri ngfield tripleheader on Labor Day Weekend spelled doom f or the competition in the AMA Grand National tiUe chase. (Right) The Inside of Kopp's workshop bears testimony to his success. His dad and uncle Norm both rac ed motorcycles and snowmobiles when he was a ki d, and Ko pp actually started raci ng, thoug h not with any serious attitude, at a very early age. "I did abo ut a dozen snowmobile rac es when I was a kid," Ko pp said. "My brothers and siste rs and cousins and I would all share th e sam e Kitty Kat [snowmobile] when we ra ced . I sta rt ed riding motorcy cles at the sam e tim e. I just pre tty m uc h rode tra ils in the m oun tai ns here with m y dad and m y cousins. I d idn 't really even start raci ng un til I was 14 or 15 ye ars old. When I got serious into racing , it was cross co untry raci ng with m y cousins, Lon nie and Rob . We started tr av eling a lot as soon as we got our dri ver's licenses. We di d a lot of Nationals on th e West Coast, like Luceme [Califomia] and Sun Valley [Idaho ]. "In abo ut '87 , I was raci ng a stock KX 500 at a local short tr ack , j ust for fun . One of my current spo nsors, a guy by the nam e of Tracy Collins, came up to m e and asked me if I wanted to rid e a Ch ampi o n -fram ed Honda 250 that he had . I to ld him th at I would love to ride a real flat track bike, so I rode that for the last couple races of the season and di d really good on it. Then the next year, he asked me if I wanted to get a Pro -Am license. I did n' t even know what a Pro -Am license was or what the clas sifications for dirt trac k were, so I said, 'Yeah , I m ight as well.''' He raced some local regionals tha t next year at places like Castle Rock. " Dan ny Stan ley was a fi rst-year Pro -A m with me, and we were already like rivals," Kopp said. "He used to beat me everywhere we went. By th at tim e we had th e 250 and a Boss-fram ed XR500 . I remember that I fini shed th ird a lot that year. Then one time we were comi ng back fro m a race in Bo ise , Idaho, and th e m otorhome c aught fire and everything burned to the g ro und. We we re pretty much done until the end of '89. A fter I had ta ke n the who le year off, th ey called m e a nd sa id that they had scrounged up enough m oney to buy a Honda RS600 that Bill Hemdon had fo r sale in Cycle News." It was aboard th is machine that Kop p got his first taste of Gra nd Na tiona l competition, raci ng the TT events at Castl e Rock and Peoria in 19 90 and retum ing to Peor ia for the next two years. But by his own admis- c fact that Kopp was ab le to po st 12 top- 10 finis hes inc luding his first p o d ium visit via a th ird o n the cr atered surface of the D env er Half Mile, th e '95 season was a m ak e-o r-break year th at almost tilted in the wrong directi on. He was 12t h in the po ints , but it hardly mattered . "Way before I got to Denver, I was wondering what I was even doing out here ," Ko pp said. "Doug Donnell y we nt to a fe w of the races w ith me , but when he couldn't come along, I would have to dr ive all th e way back home if th ere was major repair work to be don e. We had some real bad cr ank cases on our Har ley that yea r, and we d idn't have the bud get fo r new cases suppo sedly th ey weren 't even available. I had just the one 750, and wh enever I had to come so that we could weld up th e cases, I would end up missing that week end's race . He would m ov e on to a much -publicized tw o -year stint w ith Kenny Tolbert under M ik e Shattuck 's HarleyD av ids on of Sacramento team . But if ther e w as a defi ning mark duri ng th at assocation, a moment in th at season when the little -hera lded k id fro m Mi cah bu rst into th e consciousness of A m erica n d irt track fans, it ca m e at the '96 Peoria TT. With Carr , Tol bert had no t been defeated at th e legendary facility since 1988 , but now Carr was road racing, and all eyes were on Tolbert and Kopp. Th e rec ord books simply show th at he fin ished thi rd tha t day , but th ere is so m uch m ore to the story. Ju st as Danny Sull ivan's famous "spin and win" at th e Indy 500 over a decade earlier had eam ed him the permanent ad ulatio n of the o p en- wheel c ro wd, Ko pp 's last-to-th ird cha rge after fl ying off th e side of the Peoria jump an d bulldogging his bi k e int o th e creek , gav e the dirt tr ack bairds a yarn to spin fo r year s to come. "I'd had real good Rotaxes there up until that tim e, with Denny Lopp, bu t this wa s m y first chance to ride one of Kenn y' s," Kopp said . "I remember tha t we were really fast that day . We set th e four- lap reco rd, and we were j ust go ing real fa st, and we sho uld n' t have had any worries about th e main event. But th is was m y fir st chance to win a Grand National, and I was really ner vous . A ndy [T resser ] wasn't really bo the ring m e. I felt like I had him co vered, but I also felt that I needed to get into the lead right away . I' ve watche d tap es since th en , and I ca ug ht up to him instantly . I just wasn 't ue I e n e _ S • JANUARY 3 ,200 1 25

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