Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/168405
CN III ARCHIVES P86 BY LARRY LAWRENCE THE STREETS OF MIAMI I n the early 1990s an extremely popular AMA Superbike race was held on the streets of Miami. No one knew it at the time, but the race proved to be a seminal event. Excellent network TV ratings of the Grand Prix of Miami would hasten the move to televise the entire series and an unfortunate theft of the race purse changed the way AMA pro racers were paid prize money. The street circuit, laid out in Bicentennial Park in downtown Miami, certainly wasn't the safest in the world, but was semi-reasonable by street course standards and with the limelight of CBS Sports covering the race and a generous $50,000 Superbike race purse, the riders relaxed their outlook on the circuit. While the race attracted tens of thousands of fans (many were likely non-paying spectators who snuck in), the concrete walls lining the track proved to be tough on the riders and machines of the championship. And if the craziness of the street course weren't enough, the ultimate addition of insult to injury came when the entire prize money cash purse for one of the events was stolen by either a group of expert thieves or an extremely lucky opportunist. The promoter of the event was Ralph Sanchez. Sanchez was a Cuban exile who arrived in Miami in the early 1960s as part of the Operation Pedro Pan airlift. Sanchez, who looked as if he stepped off the pages of GQ magazine, gave up a lucrative real estate development business to invest his money, his business acumen and his boundless passion into the 1983 inaugural Grand Prix of Miami. Sanchez earned respect in the motorsports world in that first race when a severe rainstorm brought the race to an end after only a little over 20 laps. IMSA officials told Sanchez it was up to him how much purse he would pay because of the rain-shortened event, yet he decided to pay the full purse. That gave him instant credibility in the motorsports world and despite the financial disaster of the first event; Sanchez would do it again and the event would go on to become a success. The lynchpin of the Miami Superbike race was the network TV coverage Sanchez arranged. Now that AMA Superbike has been a fixture on TV for nearly 20 years, it's hard to convey just how important network TV coverage of the race was in 1990. It was so big that the manufacturers stepped up to support the TV coverage in a big way and racing fans watched it in record numbers. In fact the 3.2 rating of the race translated to 8 million viewers, making the first Miami street race easily the most watched in the history of the series. The buzz for the nationally televised race was incredible, made even more so by Sanchez paying a big fee to former world champion Freddie Spencer to come out of retirement to race in the event. CBS Sports came to the Miami in a big way with 25 cameras and two more on-bike cams.