Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 42 OCTOBER 20, 2015 P95 over to Barcelona for the Superpres- tigio and call the commentary for the English language version of that event that was going to go out for the English language countries, and I said, 'of course.' I went over and checked it out. "He and I have had lots of conver- sations since we first started talking to each other and along the way he PICKING SIDES Perhaps the most difficult part of putting the event together is being "that guy," the guy who picks the slots on each side—the flat track- ers and the All-Stars. In addition to designing the track and other organizing details, Chris Carr was also put in charge of the selection process. For Carr, the easiest (and most sensitive) decision-making process to explain was the flat trackers. "On the flat track side ideally you want to have people that are hot this year, that's the way I look at it," Carr said. "I didn't want it to turn into a little bit of a political nightmare on the flat track side. 'Oh, you didn't invite this guy, or you didn't invite that guy.' I'm hon- oring the four former and current Grand National Champions who are currently active, have been racing this year with [Jared] Mees, [Brad] Baker, [Kenny] Coolbeth, and [Jake] Johnson. And then I in- vited Bryan Smith as the X Games gold medalist. I felt like having somebody who won an event in front of a half million people on live television, it would be worthy of inviting him." Those five have all accepted their invitations, and are arguably the top riders in the GNC1 Cham- pionship. Carr's next group of in- vites are guys that have won races this year in the GNC1 and GNC2 class at the three previous AMA Grand National singles events, which includes Stevie Bonsey who won in Daytona, Henry Wiles who won the Peoria TT and GNC2 riders—Justin Jones, Andrew Luker and Jesse Janisch—for wins at those races. GNC1 Saddle- men Rookie of the Year Jarod Vanderkooi and GNC2 Champion Davis Fisher were also invited, and all but Fisher have confirmed. There are other flat track invitees, but Carr was not ready to announce at this time. "We have some, and I won't an- nounce them yet because I'd like to do a press release on repre- sentatives of flat track from other countries who will be coming in to race against these guys," he said. "We're going to do that at a later date. It will be a little closer to the event. I have invites out, I'm just waiting on some signatures before I can name anybody who's coming." The All-Star side was not as sensitive an issue but a bit compli- cated this first time around. "On the All-Star side, we've run into a few issues with this being a first-time event," Carr explained. "We've had a lot of questions about riders who may be coming or who people would like to see. The name Marc Marquez gets thrown out there a lot, and of course we would love to have a Marc Marquez. We did approach his manager. I don't think it's very likely. He has been invited, he just hasn't said yes and he hasn't said no. "We have tried, but those guys still have three rounds of MotoGP left. I think any MotoGP rider that will commit to this event may or may not do so after their final round of GP racing. So we're holding out hope that somebody from that group of people would like to participate. We have a good group of guys starting with Josh Hayes and we'll be releasing press releases over time going out for the rest of them." Carr added, that it's not going to just be road racers. "We're going to include some guys from some other disciplines," he said. "A lot of those guys are in the middle of their champion- ship chases right now as well this month. So out of respect to them, and what their focus in their professional careers are, I'm going to hold back and not name them at this time. Let them focus on what their job is."

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