Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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VOLUME 59 ISSUE 48 NOVEMBER 29, 2022 P91 industry during that period was an amazing thing to be a part of," Dewhurst said. "It was an exciting time with new and innovative mo- torcycles coming out every year and racing, of course, was really at a peak as well." Interestingly, Dewhurst was one of several British expatriates who made a strong impact in the motorcycling industry, like three- time AMA Superbike Champion Reg Pridmore, Speedway racer Barry Briggs and magazine pub- lishers and race promoters Bruce Cox and Gavin Trippe. "I think it was the sunshine that brought all of us out here," Dewhurst said. "By the late 1980s, I went away from the motorcycling end of things and only have really come back to it in the last 10 years or so," Dewhurst said. Dewhurst's photography com- pany thrived during the 1980s. He said he gradually lost touch with the motorcycling industry when the automotive side of his busi- ness became so successful. His primary clients for 30 years were Toyota and Lexus. However, over time he did PR photography for just about every car maker. Life was good, but Dewhurst admits he missed the camarade- rie with his friends in the motorcy- cling industry. "I'd been friends with guys like Ron Lawson [Dirt Bike editor] and Rick Doughty at Vintage Iron for over 30 years, and I just sort of wandered back into motorcycling as much for the friendship with all the people as much as anything." So gradually, Dewhurst made his way back to motocross by riding his vintage 1978 Husqvarna 390 in AHRMA motocross events. "It was fun to get back into the family," he said. "That's how it felt anyway." And as he made his way back into motorcy- cling, Dewhurst's attention turned more and more to- ward his vast photo collec- tion that had been largely untouched for decades. "I thought I've got to use these somehow, do some- thing with them," he said. "I thought I'd just do a big picture book with a bunch of captions. I started to work on that and go through and digitize the images. As I was going through that process, I realized that there were so many stories behind these pictures. So, then the theme of the book changed from just a picture book to more of a story thing. "As I started to talk to the rid- ers, team owners, mechanics and people who were around, they all wanted to tell their story. And they said, 'Well if you do my story, you should do this story,' and it kind of just snowballed and became this thing that got out of control." While writing the book, De- whurst interviewed around 60 key figures in the motocross industry, many of whom he videoed for the project. "In the end, I got so much infor- mation I couldn't squeeze it all in," Dewhurst said. "The book ended up being 480 pages, which is bigger than anything that's ever been done in the motocross side of the world. We were pushing the limits of printing and binding at 480 pages." Dewhurst said he wanted the book to go into depth. "I didn't want two pages on Roger DeCoster and a page on Brad Lackey, or whatever, I wanted to get a little bit more of a story going. All together 11 champions ended up being in the book and each chapter is at least 20 pages on each guy. So, a lot of words, a lot of pictures and hopefully I've scratched a bit below the surface to give people an idea of what these guys were about and what they went through during their careers."