Former Supercross Champion
Mike Bell Passes
T
he motocross family is
mourning the loss of one of
its stars—1980 AMA Supercross
Champion Mike Bell.
Bell rose to fame in the late
1970s, and although he captured
only one major championship,
the Californian won a total of 20
AMA and Trans-AMA Motocross
Nationals, and was regarded as
one of the sport's elite through-
out his seven years as a profes-
sional racer.
His name is synonymous with
Yamaha because he spent his
entire professional racing career
with the brand from 1977 to 1983.
When he retired at the end of the
1983 season, he was third on
the all-time AMA Supercross and
fourth on the all-time AMA 500cc
Motocross wins lists.
Perhaps Bell's single biggest
moment of his racing career was
when he won the Superbowl of
Motocross at the L.A. Memorial
Coliseum in 1978, which came
a week after winning his first
outdoor National MX in Mis-
souri, where he won both 500cc
motos. But it was his Supercross
win on his Dave Osterman-tuned
factory Yamaha at the Coliseum
that night that really put Bell on
the map. After all, he beat the
hottest Supercross/motocross
rider in the world at the time, Bob
Hannah.
"When I woke up the next
morning, I thought I had been
dreaming," Bell later told the
AMA's Motorcycle Hall of Fame,
of which he became a member in
2001. "But my father had put the
first-place trophy at the foot of
my bed and there it was—I really
had actually won the Superbowl
of Motocross! It was one of the
proudest moments of my career."
Bell nearly won the AMA
500cc National Motocross title
in 1979 but came up three points
short of Suzuki's Danny LaPorte,
one of Bell's good friends. A year
later, Bell won the Supercross
Championship in dominant fash-
ion (he won seven races that year
IN
THE
WIND
P32
Former Supercross
Champion Mike
Bell passed away
at the age of 63.
