Cycle News

INTERVIEW 2015 AMA PRO GRAND NATIONAL CHAMPION JARED MEES P110 a good banquet and the rac- ing was awesome. If the Grand National Championship is going to grow we need high-profile races like that. And for people who complain about short tracks—there were more miles on the circuit than anything else. Why should the season have to end on a mile? In my eyes the mile is the one track that mostly puts the outcome out of the hands of the riders and puts it more to the tuners. It doesn't come down on the mile as rider against rider, it's more machine against machine in a way. If you want to see who the best rider is, put us all on 450s and let us go out and find out. And in my eyes that's either a short track or a TT. I mean Henry Wiles, I don't want to pump his head up more than it already is, but when he beats us at Peoria, he beats us. It doesn't matter what bike he's on. He's been on everybody's motorcycle, on about every brand and has still won the thing 11 times. CN NICHOLE'S SWAN SONG NICHOLE MEES LOOKS BACK AT A HISTORIC CAREER I t was so typical of Nichole Mees. She quietly made it known early in the season that 2015 would be her last full-time season in AMA Pro Grand National racing. No press conferences, no ma- jor announcements, nothing to draw major attention to her. Nichole's emphasis has been and always will be about her racing. The fact that over the years she's be- come the most successful female racer in the history of AMA Pro Grand National racing, it's the kind of thing she downplays more than anything else. Yes, she's proud of her accomplishments, but she's never wanted special consid- eration simply for being a female racer. Mees has always wanted the emphasis to be on her results. It's ironic now that Mees (formerly Nichole Cheza before her marriage to current GNC number-one Jared Mees in 2013) announced her retire- ment from racing and then went on to earn her best season ever. She finished the season ranked 20th in the standings—something she's never done before—and she scored three top-10 finishes, including eighth-place results at both the Du Quoin and Indy Miles. She very likely would have been even higher in the final standings, but for a hard crash on the Half-Mile in Delmar, Delaware, that forced her to have surgery on her eye socket. This year was Nichole's ninth sea- son on the Grand National circuit, but she's been racing her whole life. In fact she says she can barely remember a time that she wasn't rac- ing. It makes sense considering she started racing when she was four. In 2003, Nichole was the AMA's Female Athlete of the Year, and the next year she moved up to the Expert class, and to Harley- Davidson XR-750s. Along the way she's won Heats and Semis and Dash for Cash events and has been very competitive, especially on the Miles. Now she and her husband will become national race promoters. When asked if there was any particular thing that made her decide to retire she said it was multiple factors. "There was not really one spe- cific reason," she said. "You know, eventually I'd like to start a family. I've been doing this sport for a long time and there just came a time where I thought 'You know I think I'm ready to step back a little bit.' I may do a few races here and there over the next couple of years—it's hard to say." She was happy to have one of her best years as her last. "I had a solid season with some top-10 finishes," Mees said. "Usu- ally there's a lot of pressure and the expectations of making the fans and sponsors happy, but this year I just had fun and I felt really comfortable on the bike. Now I'm ready to move on and try some different things." Jared and Nichole Mees had reasons to be excited at the flat track final in Las Vegas.

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