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VOLUME 57 ISSUE 44 NOVEMBER 3, 2020 P103 Hangtown in dominating fashion. He won the first moto after going wheel to wheel with Husqvarna's Marty Tripes, then came from behind to pass defending series champion Gary Jones in the sec- ond moto, and battle Tripes to the finish again. Grossi prevailed, going 1-1 for the overall win. Consistency kept him at the top of the points standings into the summer, but a badly broken leg suffered in a crash at the 1974 Superbowl of Moto- cross ended what appeared to be a certain championship. Instead, he finished fifth in the series. "I had a big points lead [in the Nationals] up until then, and I prob- ably could have just finished up the series, a couple more races, in third or fourth place and still win the Championship," Grossi says. ''At the time I just dealt with it. I figured I'd have another shot at it [a National title], and sure enough, the next year I did." Switching to both the factory Suzuki team and the 500cc class, Grossi arguably hit his high-water mark during the 1975 season. "I think I rode fastest on the Kawasaki in 73, but as far as the books go, '75 was probably my best year," Grossi says. "I won the National at Ravenna, Ohio. I beat Lackey because he had a flat tire, but I still beat him. That put me into the points lead, but we still had one race left, which was The Battle of New Orleans." And, as fate would have it, Grossi wound up losing The Battle and the war. "Somebody went down in front of me on the first lap, and I hit them and went through the fence and parked my bike underneath somebody's van," Grossi recalls. "I knocked the spoiler right off the front of it. It was pretty bad. I wasn't hurt, but my bike was bent up pretty bad. I got back on it and finished the race, but I ended up fourth in the championship." Undeterred, Grossi dropped down to the 125cc class in 1976. "I battled with Bob Hannah and Marty Smith," Grossi recalls. "I was kind of hanging in there, and I had as good a chance as anybody," Grossi says. "I remember that I went 3-3 at the U.S. GP, and I felt pretty good about that. Then I got home, and about two days later, I had an appendectomy, and that put me out for the rest of the series." Grossi soldiered on through the decade, bouncing between priva- teer rides and factory rides, and never quite recapturing that moto mojo that he'd held in the mid-'70s. "My last real factory ride was with Husky in '82," Grossi says. "When that ended, I retired, but then I got a call from a friend and wound up do- ing a couple races in France. Then I got what I thought was going to be another factory ride with Maico in '84, but they were going bankrupt, and by the time I got there and did a couple races, it all dissolved. That was basically it for me." After a long layoff, Grossi got sucked into racing AHRMA Vintage motocross just after the turn of the millennium. It was a lot of fun until a crash at Sears Point in 2002 left him badly injured and spelled the end of his racing days. "I just blew my leg up," Grossi says. "I broke it in five places, and it put me out of work for a year. Now, I just do dual-sport rides and stuff like that up here in Northern California. "I never really got to say thanks to all the people who helped me after I got hurt," Grossi adds. But this doesn't completely tie up the tale of Bill Grossi. Only one real question remains: In an era when the sport's top stars were adorned with rough-and-tumble nicknames, such as Hurricane and The Jammer, how on earth did Grossi get saddled with the nickname, Sugar Bear? ''Aww, we don't have to do that, do we?" Grossi groans. "Okay, I was down in Florida, doing the Florida Series with Tony DiStefano in 1975. I was in the 250 class, and he was in the 500 class; and we were win- ning everything in sight. So we met a couple gals, and anyway one of them named me 'Sugar Bear' be- cause I reminded her of that Sugar Crisp [cereal] bear, you know, and I could never get enough... Well, you can take it from there." As for his racing days, it wasn't perfect, but Grossi wouldn't trade any of it. CN This Archives edition is reprinted from issue #48, December 7, 2005. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many des- tined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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