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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1542355
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Grorr
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Great
Advice
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I looked like he was concen-
I
trating
on the
iob
at hand, bur
over
his shoulder was five-time World
Motocross
Champion
Georges
Jobe.
jobe
was whispering something in his ear and
Tortelli was like a sponge, taking
it
all
in
and churning
out what was helpful and
what was
not. The
current
trend in
Grand
Prix Motocross is for the top rid-
ers to have somebody helping them out.
lfyou look around the Grand Prix
pad-
dock in the 2006 season
you
will see
many legends of the spon wearing team
colors. lf
you go
further to America,
you
see another bunch of former World or
Al"lA Champions working for teams,
often as team managers, but also as
per-
sonal managers, team trainers and advis-
ers. The ethics of the old-school
riders is
very much different of those of
today. The
hard yards
done
in the
garage
the Friday
night
before
a Grand Prix is long
gone,
a
rider
iust
needs to arrive at the circuit,
and his
job
is, more or
less,
to
ride. They
have a race-day mechanic, a
prac[ice
mechanic, a trainer, an advisor, a
press
officer -
you
name
it
and
it's there.
Just
take a
look
at the
top l0 riders in
the l'lx I class, and
you
will see that €ach
and every one of them
ha5
a
former
champion helping out. Also
in
the
lt4x2
class, some
riders
are using the services of
legends
of
the sport, and as far as team
managers
go,
a
good
number of the lead-
ing teams have former
World
champions
or GP winners as team leader.
For many, it's Stefan Everts who start-
ed the
current trend of having somebody
who
gives
them advice on the track. He
has had his father, Harry working his cor-
ner since day one. and it s been the advice
of his four-time World Champion father
that has
Siven
him a lot of his confidence.
It's a relationship that helped the
greatest
Grand Prix rider take the early steps in his
brilliant career.
"For
sure,
he taught me a lot,
but
on
the other
hand, having my father involved
also
put
a
lot
of
pressure
on me; lt meant
I had to
perform
at a level higher rhan the
others," Everts says.
')As
for
help
around
the track, yes, I learned a lot from him,
but
in the end, it's
you
as a
person
who
has to execute the advice. He still stands
on
parts
of the circuit and lets me know
what I should do and sometimes his
advice is helpful, I mean, I have also been
around long enough to know how to do
this, but
you
can always have somebody
helping
you,
another
pair
of eyes, or ears
around the circuit."
Harry Evens knows when his son needs
help
(it's
obviously not often), and he does
not
give
out advice to his son when he feels
it's not needed. The older Everts also has a
training school in Spain,
where he has
had
pupils
such
as
Grant
Langston,
Steve
Ramon,
Tanel Leok and many others.
"Sometimes
I can see him doing some-
thing wron8,
and he is always open for
advice. He is old enough to know what is
good
for him
-
but he is not
perfect.
nobody is
-
and if I