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VOL. 53 ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 9, 2016 P95 he raced four times in Canada, besides Sweden, Spain and Holland, and was heading to Costa Rica after the Rodil Trophy final. Supercross was still very much in its infancy stage as many of the tracks Holley raced at- tested to. "In Calgary, we raced in the Saddledome over the Flames' hockey rink," Holley said. "But one of the most unusual was in Amsterdam, where they used a bicycle velodrome and we had to run straight up the steep banking and around the rim on slick concrete before dropping down and do- ing our jumps and slides in the dirt infield. "Another unusual one was Sweden, where part of the track was on artificial turf laid over wood planking. It was kind of like the American tracks where they lay wood down to protect the football field, but instead of covering it with dirt, it was plain old AstroTurf. I was surprised how well we could ride on it and the tires didn't tear it up, either." Back at the Coliseum finale, the chaos began early. The inverted start procedure meant some riders sandbagged in their heat races. The setup was a typical one-row starting gate separated by the doghouse in the middle. One side of the gate was released first and then three or four seconds later the other side was dropped. No one wanted to start on that second gate, so many riders parked it (literally) in the qualifying heat races. "Yeah, guys leading their heat races and then were parking up on the peristyle," Holley recalls. "The fans were getting upset about it. And Rick Johnson, who'd won his heat race, got on the microphone – and you know RJ was a showman anyway – and told people he came to race and wasn't going to back down to get a better starting position. He was sort of calling out the riders who did that and the fans loved it." Holley actually crashed in his heat race and then had the pressure of making sure he made the main by way of a semi. Fortunately, it all worked out for Holley. He managed to put his factory Yamaha in the main and then finished fifth, ahead of rival van den Berk, who was seventh. Jeff Ward (one of the heat race sandbaggers) won the race. He fig- ures all told, including bonuses, contingencies and start money, he earned about $50,000 for winning that first World Supercross Cham- pionship. The Supercross World Championship contin- ued on and off over the next couple of decades before the FIM (as a result of the 2001 AMA, Clear Channel battle) scooped up the existing AMA Supercross Series and pegged it a world championship. Holley probably will never fully get the recognition for being the first World Su- percross Champion, but it is a fact. Holley, who now hosts Race Day Live from the Monster Energy AMA Supercross races, thinks in spite of the craziness that ensued at the '85 Rodil International Trophy, the event left a lasting legacy. "You think about it now and that race had an influence on Supercross," Holley concludes. "You've got to change things up occasionally to make things interesting and that wasn't part of AMA Supercross back then. You see with Feld doing the Joker Lane at the Monster Energy Cup and things like that. So what better time than to try an experiment back then? (Mike) Goodwin being the promoter he was, he was trying to advertise something different you know, 'Come see the first dual starting gate.'" CN INTERNATIONAL TROPHY SUPERCROSS FINALE Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives