Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

can get anything you wa n t for just a sticker or two. Why is it that every week you show up with a different number? That's one thing that's funny here. It's the qualification syste m that th ey have in Europe. T h e top ten riders fro m last year don 't have to qualify. And I don't know who came up wi th th at number, but w hy not the top 40 fro m last year, or why no t nobody. My idea is that what's fai r for one sh ou ld be the same for everyone. T here' s no one wh o shoul d have an advantage. I have to q u al ify on Saturda y just to be able to ride the race on Su n day. And it 's fu n n y beca use even though I'm leading the Worl d Championships, I might not qualify because my bike breaks in q ualifications. When did you ac tuall y decide to com e over here? Last year in the mi ddle of th e summer. An d I decided th a t if I di dn' t ra ce in Euro pe I'd qui t raci ng , beca use I was just getting the " burn-outs." Because it's such a funny pace th a t th ere's not h in g fun to it. People a t the races don' t get along, there's a n imos ity between riders; young guys co ming up say in g, 'I want this a nd I wa n t th a t,' and it 's really bad. So I decided th a t I'd had en ough of that. I've done wha t I wanted: to be Nation al C hampi on, and th en leave to go ra ce in Eu ro pe. That's wha t I always wanted to do. But it 's di fficu lt to get a con tract in Europe for an American ri der beca use for a lo ng time the y didn't believe that an Am erican could win a World Champions hi p. Maybe a race , bu t not a World Cha m p ionship. It 's easy for a rider to co me h ere for one race and win beca use he's not living here. Maybe it's a track wh ich su its hi m real well. Bu t to do the whole circu it is not easy, it's a ch alle n ge. You fly to the ra ce, rent a car, stay at the nicest hotel about a block a way fro m the track, then drive back and fly home after the race. That's nice, but it's also good to have the pioneerin g spirit to go to a new coun try, seeing things. Bu t a lot of these guys are a lot younger and they wan t to go back, see their frien ds. There's a ti me for everyth in g. For me it was th e same. I always wanted to go back to my neighborh ood, to see all of m y frien ds during the week. You've been over here since January 20 and you haven ' t been back to The States since then. You race at Unadilla on August 1. T h en are you going back to California? No, because I don't want to br ea k m y con cen tra tion. If I go bac k to Cali fornia, I'll feel like I'm home a nd I'll say, ' O h no. Now I have to go back .' How is the develop men t of the bike coming along this year? In the begin n ing of the year I'd always set my bike up for the tra cks in America, so I'd use shorter suspension and I was co n vin ced th at the shorter suspension bikes wou ld corner better. It's true that they did corner better, but some of these tracks h aven't been graded in 15 year s. The sand tracks they grade. So me of the sand tracks get so bumpy after a couple of races that it 's in credible. The en gineers were trying to convin ce me to try the long suspensions, and we tested and took la p times, and then I was convinced that it wor ked better. The difference between what I was using in Am erica and wha t I'm usin g now is about an inch. But I noticed a bi g difference especially with the hi gh -spe ed tracks. In Fr ance was the very fir st ti me that I raced with the long sus pension. I rode two days on this one track and there's one straightaway that I ha d to gear my bi ke so much highe r tha n I' d ever gea red before, like 14-45 (co untershaft and rear sprocket teeth ), an d they had one straigh t that wa s a bo u t 85 mph on a 250. I'm sure that when I was testing there with Carla (Hakan Carlqvist) he had his 500 going 90-95 mph. And it 's really hard and rocky, so when yo u brake the front en d wants to shake when you bottom out, so we were try in g stronger springs. I th ou gh t that on a track like th at , which is so flat, long suspension woul dn' t work. But yo u' re go ing a t such high speeds, even with th e Gforce a nd the braking it works, so I was convinced it wo u ld work. I th ink in th e long run over 45 minues it's better to use the long suspension. I made a mistake with the power , too . All year I rode on sandy, rea lly loamy trac ks, where you want mo stl y torq ue. Then I want to Spain, which was the first really hard track that we had all year, an d I set the bike up wit h th e gea ring too low and I was sp inning coming out of the corn er. My su spension was too low in th e back and I was hitting the bumps at rea lly hi gh speeds and almost cras h ing. I had it all messed up. Who decides how to set your bike u p ? We ha ve en gineers who h elp us a nd th ey warned me . They to ld me before tha t I was going in the wrong directio n . I j ust h ad to try my idea, but it didn't work. So 'th ey were right. I tested fro m January to April. You're always testing and tryi n g different things for the fir st Gran Prix. An d .I was go in g cra zy getting all mixed up myse lf. T hen you have to get back to basics. So I th in k it h elps to have an en gi neer say, ' Hey, I th in k you're get ting off ba se here.' And when I th in k a bout it, a lot of times th ey're righ t. What is you r relationship to th e other 250 Yamaha rider, Da ve Wa tson of Great Britain? We' re on th e same tea m , but unless we have a rea l p roblem I don 't tal k to him about it. But if we' re bo th h avin g th e same problem we'll tal k and the n tr y to come up wit h something th at we both agree on. Why is it that you ride for Yamaha . Team Denmark? In Europe there's Da ve Wa tson, Neil Hudson, H akan Carlq vis t, Marc Velkeneers and me. There are im port ers in each country an d the re are Grand Prix in a lot of different countries. So every ri der rides for h is ow n country. Carla rides for Yamaha of Sweden. Hudson and Watson ride for Yamaha of Great Britain. And me, they said Denmark has always wanted a rider and there haven't been any good riders from Denmark, so far. So they said that they were go in g to give me Denmark. I said, 'Why not Yamaha of America?' Yama h a in Europe said they were kind of in competition with Yamaha of Amer ica, beca use they're doing their own thi ng. So I ride for Yama ha of Den mark, although everyt h ing comes fro m Japan. It 's straight from th e facto ry so it 's funny. It 's a good questio n because everyone asks me that. Have you ever been to Denmark? No, I' ve n ever been there. I' ve been to th e airport, but that's abou t it. Yamaha is doing it more to complem ent each country. What's the comradery like here? The 250 riders seem to be prett y good friends a nd for the first time las t wee k we had a little meeting and we got org anized. We were going to dr a w something up and appoint a commissioner of motocross for th e rid ers . It will p robably end up being G aston Rahier because he sp eaks q u it e a few languages . That way at a race, if we have a problem, we're go ing to do it legally. So if the maj ority makes th e decision then the rest have to follow. Like Russia. Most of the riders didn't want to go to R ussia. It's so far and it's so expensive to get there. Last year one guy lost his wallet and another guy had h is p assp ort stolen. O n e of the J apanese guys from Yama ha was there for two and a half weeks. They kept him there at a hotel and wouldn't let him leave for two weeks because he lost his passport. They didn't believe who he was so they telexed his father in Japan and his father had to go a da y on the train to Tokyo to go to the Russian embassy and show them a picture of his son, and they finally let him out. It's foolproof. It's not like people can sneak in and out of that cou n try. I was wondering about that because as soon as you get to the Iron Curtain it's machine guns and lan d mines and barbed wire fence , and these people that patrol the whole area. I was shocked. And' it's funny to see the American flag just on the other side where we have NATO forces along the border of Russia a nd the Western countries. Where do you practice ride? I have to drive 10 to 15"minutes to the nearest motocross track, which isn 't so bad. I have a selection of 30 tracks in Belgium that I can choose from , nice tracks, too . They're all within an hour. It's funn y, h ere in Europe they have times that you can practice. Usually you can pract ice from two in the aft ernoon 't il eigh t o 'clock at night, or nine in th e morning to one in the aftern oo n on Wednesdays. Some of the tracks are laid out on grassy rolling hills, the most beautiful tracks, and they open the m for practice once a week so they do n 't get destroyed. They wan t to preserve th e area. Who do you practice with? Usually when you go to practice somebody shows up. Jobe or Malherbe will show up. It 's a game. A guy will go out there a n d go hard for 30 minutes and so meone tries to get behind him and th e guy will pull off. .And everyone takes times here in Europe, ever y lap, and when you change th e suspension they really know what's going on. Sometimes you read in the newspaper about who was fastest in practice Wednesday at Lommel. Or who was fastest at Dessel. One day a guy was takin g times at Dessel and I was riding a 250 and Vromans was on a 500 and it was the first time that I had ever beento that track. On the firs t tw o laps that" I'd been on th e tra ck he took m y slowest lap times an d said how much fast er Vromans wa s. So they put it in jhe p ap er. Bu t he didn 't stick around and take the fast laps. They love to get a co ntroversy going a nd th e people ar e so in to it. So p eopl e rea d it and th ink, 'O h yea h, Vro ma ns was fast again.' Vromans is fast, though. He is fast. There's n o doubt a bou t it. He's abea u ti ful rider. Very smooth. I think the riders here ar e as aggressive, but they have more technique and they 're mo re in control when th ey do it. Because they'r e never riding on the same track, which is what makes them so technical. Are you surprised that you're leading the World Championship race? Yes, I am surprised, but I believe I know why. The difference in the tracks suits me real well . There's not one easy track, th ey've all been difficult. Switzerland was about the easiest . It's fast. It's like an American type track. The rest of the tracks have all been reall y dangerous and difficult. For me it 's good because I've done a lot of trail riding in the rocks in the past. That's why in the sand tracks I'm strong and I can go 45 minutes where some of th e riders can go fast in the begin n ing and fast at the end, but th ey can' t go 45 mi n u tes strong. There are nine races down and three to go . Do you thin k you have an advantage at Unadilla? It depends. If I can bea t the Am er icans a n d the Americans can beat J obe an d Van der Ven, then I h ave a real good advantage. Bu t I don 't think that I'm going to get a ny help from th e Am ericans; th at 's j ust th e way it is. That's racing. All that I want to do there is win. I know Glover and Hansen can beat Watson, they can beat Guerra, they can beat Jobe, and Van der Ven and they can beat me. So it 's going to be a lot of fun . I'm looking forward to it because I think now I'm probably riding better than I've ever ridden. Just because it's a new .sh o t in the arm for me. Just being - here. It 's new excitement. I'm looking forward to going back to America and really racing. When you came over here you didn't have the enthusiasm at first, did you? I had the enthusiasm, but I didn't have everything right in my mind. Now I think I made the right move at the right time. Due to the circumstances in the past everything led to why I'm here. The timing was just perfect. To me there's only one thing in motocross. You can win a National Championship, but that's just a National Championship, or a Stadium Championship, but that's just a Stadium Championship, that's not even motocross. There's only one thing for me in the whole world and that's the World Title. Nothing else . And the people who co me h ere and want to win are looking to be th e best in the world. Tha t's all. Nothing else. Believe it or not, th e money's not so much different. It 's very good here. I was a little bit in a ru t in The States. We're spoiled. We wer e acting big with money. At international races the start money is incredible. Some of the French promoters are still offering DeCoster big sums of money to show up to race . If you 're doing well, if you 're a good character, a good personality, they catch onto you. Every week , two or three days a week , I'm doing interviews with local newspapers and magazines. People come from France, Holland and Germany to my house to sit down and do interviews. And nothing like that ever happened in America. It 's interesting. Do you think that racing in Europe can prolong your career? It already has. It's like starting over again. 1 feel really good and now I think about racing until I'm 30 or 31 yea rs old. I was going to quit last yea r because I had more interesting things to do. There was a lot more to life than motocross raci n g. I was getting into business, and I bu ilt a house a n d I was doing a few different th ings inves ting my money in real esta te. I had to get alon g with my li fe. I was thinking in th at direction. I have to get some business goi ng. This is ridiculous, this is a joke. But now th is has given me some adrenalin . What do you think of the move toward the stadium format in America? It 's a show. It's a carnival. Because they can 't sell it as a sport they make it a show. When I signed my first contract with Suzuki in 1976 they asked me to race the stadiums and I didn 't even know what a stadium was. And I'd been racing motocross for ten years before that. Because to me that wasn 't motocross. And now it's almost all centered around sta(hum crosses. That's not my sport. But they have started going to some stadium races over here. Yes, that's right. There'll be probably ten here next year, all around Europe. There have already been two in Rotterdam. There are going to be four more here this year a n yhow. It seems like the re are so many, but there ar e 15 countries h ere, or however many, so if there's o ne in each country that's q uite a few . Bu t they do it as a show. They say it's not mo tocross, this is a show. An d the people like it. It's good start money, it's good for th e riders , but they kn ow the differen ce betw een motocross and stadium cross. • 27

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