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/229152
INTERVIEW P152 DOUG HENRY Henry was in California over the Thanksgiving weekend to take part in the Day In The Dirt event at Glen Helen Raceway. competitive, but to also make it the best bike in the world by piloting it to the '98 250cc National Championship (as it was then called). The endresult of an amazingly cooperative effort between Yamaha and Henry, the 1998 YZM400F, as well as Doug Henry, left a mark on motocross that will never be forgotten. Flash forward to Saturday, November 30, 2013. Walking towards the staging area at the Day in the Dirt motorcycle race to watch the Bossa Nova Grand Prix 3 Man Team Race (which was to match up members of the moto and movie industries) I heard someone yell my name. It was Doug Henry. I had no idea he was going to be there. Yet there he was sitting on his hand-made, purpose-built Yamaha motocross bike. Ready to go racing. As Henry has proved on so many occasions, you can't keep a good man down. So here he was, having done an end-around on the fact that he was immobile from the waist down (from a Supermoto crash suffered in 2007), Henry had found a way to keep himself involved in motorcycle racing, adding yet just another chapter to the "you just can't make this stuff up" Doug Henry story. An hour after the Bossa Nova race, Cycle News caught up with one of the most beloved and most inspirational racers the world has ever produced. Here is what Henry, a man who has created miracles (as well as miraculously overcoming seemingly impossible situations) had to say. Did you come out here to California specifically for a Day in the Dirt? Yes. Yes, this is just the kind of event that I love to do. My racing career is somewhat over. I'm still pretty competitive when it comes to all adaptive racing, but when I come out to an event where I'm racing against ablebodied riders, I just go out there and just try to have some fun. I just had such a fun race there. It seemed like there was always somebody right in front of me and I just tried to battle, you know? Where do you find that kind of fun? What have you been doing up to your arrival here in California? Yeah, I actually got injured eight weeks ago. I crashed on my dirt bike. I was trying to get ready for a Day in the Dirt and I broke my scapula and seven ribs. I was off the bike and everything for a while and I wasn't sure if I was going to do the event. They really wanted me to come down here and ride and to do the movie thing – the filming of "On Any Sunday" – so I told them I was going to try and make it, but I couldn't guarantee it. Then my shoulder started feeling better so here I am. I have also been getting ready for 2014. What will you have going on in 2014? 2014 is going to start off with the Winter X Games where there will be a SnoCross race. Yamaha just