pro soon who have never wit-
nessed Yamaha win an outdoor
motocross title in the premier
(250cc two-stroke or 450cc
four-stroke) class until now. That
seems crazy to me. The last rider
before Ferrandis to give Yamaha
a big-bore outdoor championship
was Grant Langston in 2007.
Digging a little deeper, I was
surprised to see that the last time
Yamaha won the outdoor title
(again, 250cc two-stroke/450cc
four-stroke) before Langston was
another nine years further back
when Doug Henry won the 250cc
title on the Yamaha YZ400F four-
stroke. Jeez, remember that?
I kept digging. I discovered
it was another 14 years prior to
even that when Yamaha won
its last 250cc MX title —at the
hands of Rick Johnson—in 1984.
However, Broc Glover did win the
500cc title in 1985. I'm not sure
which one was considered "pre-
mier" back then, but even '85 is a
long time ago. Man, time flies.
Had you asked me just a few
weeks ago how many titles Ya-
maha had ever won in motocross
before Ferrandis, let's just say I
would've been way off. I would
have guessed a lot more.
Okay, want to know something
that is perhaps even more sur-
W
hen it became clear
that Dylan Ferrandis
would win the 2021
450MX Pro Motocross Cham-
pionship, I did a little research.
I wondered: When was the last
time Yamaha won an outdoor title
in the 450MX class? Surely, it
could not have been all that long
ago, but why could I not remem-
ber? Here's why—because it was
nearly 15 years ago!
For some reason, 15 (okay,
14 to be exact) years seems like
a really, really long time to me.
Heck, there are kids winning
championships at Loretta Lynn's
these days who will be turning
P138
CN
III OBSERVATION CHECK
BY KIT PALMER
Kawasaki could not
have come up with a
better place than New
Mexico to introduce its
all-new KLR650.
TIME FLIES
