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/205581
CN III ARCHIVES P94 BY LARRY LAWRENCE THE FORGOTTEN SUPERCROSS CHAMPION D id you know legendary motocross trainer Gary Semics was a former AMA Supercross Champion? If not, you're not alone. With AMA Supercross readying for its 40th anniversary, Semics (along with Steve Stackable) just might be the forgotten champion of Supercross. The problem is Semics won the 500cc class of the Yamaha Super Series in 1974 and since the 500cc class in Supercross only lasted two seasons, Semics is one of those riders whose championship is largely forgotten or ignored. Semics grew up in the Eastern Ohio town of Lisbon, at the time a hotbed motorcycle hillclimbing and Semics grew up climbing the walls of strip mines on his 160 Honda Scrambler in the mid-1960s. "Motocross hadn't really come to America yet and my dad was a hillclimber so that's what I knew," Semics says of his early days of riding. In 1968 his life in motorcycling changed, when Semics attended his first motocross race in New Philadelphia, Ohio. "I went with a friend and when I first got there and found out it was a motocross race I was disappointed, because I thought it was going to be a hillclimb. I didn't even know what motocross was. But when I saw those guys riding the track, I was just really awestruck. It just happened to be one of the big races where Edison Dye brought the Europeans over. I saw CZ's Joel Robert, Husqvarna's Torsten Hallman, the top Czechoslovakian riders on CZs and many others riding like I had never even imagined. From that day on I was hooked. I was just 13 at the time, but I knew somehow that is what I was going to do." A year later Semics was at that same track in Gary Semics (44F) with Team Husky at Daytona in 1974. New Philadelphia on the starting line of his first motocross race as a rider. He raced a Bultaco Sherpa S fitted with knobbies and his motocross career was off and running. By 1971 Semics was racing Trans-Ams sponsored by an Ohio dealer and by 1972 he picked up his first factory ride with Husqvarna. Semics' career went along nicely. In 1973 he finished a solid fourth in the AMA 500cc National Motocross Championship behind Pierre Karsmakers, Mike Runyard and Peter Lamppu. Supercross was in its infancy and wasn't even called Supercross yet. The predecessor to Supercross took place in the L.A. Coliseum in 1972 and by 1974 the AMA instituted the Yamaha Super Series (Super Series quickly morphed into Supercross). The first official season of a Supercross series was only two rounds - Daytona and Houston.