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/734589
P108 CN III FRIENDLY FIRE BY STEVE BAUER I doubt that Clare Booth Luce had Glen Helen Raceway own- er, Bud Feldkamp, or Youth- stream President, Giuseppe Luongo in mind when she came up with that little nugget which, sadly, too often proves true. Some of you may remember what a huge deal the Carlsbad U.S. GP was during the '70's and '80's. It was the one time when we got a chance to see the European motocross stars in all their glory, but unless you lived in SoCal, you had to wait six months for Wide World of Sports to show the race on TV. For over a decade, the Euros kicked our asses, with a single- moto win by Jim Pomeroy the best we could do. Despite the June race date falling in the middle of our supercross and national motocross series, the 40-rider gate usually consisted of Brad Lackey, 20 or so Euros and 19 Americans wanting to be- come the first guy to beat them. In 1980, Marty Moates put an end to that nonsense, stomping the foreign invaders with wins in both motos and forever changing the motocross landscape. In 1981, the U.S. team won the Motocross des Nations for the first time and did not stop winning for the next 13 years. In 1982, Lackey became America's only 500cc World Champion and Danny LaPorte won the 250 title. You would think that Ameri- can riders would have headed to Europe to race the GPs, but Donny Schmit, Trampas Parker and Bobby Moore are the only Americans since then to win World Championships; the last one was Moore's 125 title, way back in 1994. Instead, the top GP riders began migrating to America to race the U.S. na- tional MX and supercross series, which, in turn, diminished the luster of the World Champion- ship—deserved, or not. By the time Mr. Luongo's Youthstream organization as- sumed control of the GPs in the late '90s, riders had been defecting for years. Whether it was the allure of more money, the American lifestyle, or the idea of becoming a supercross cham- pion, riders like Greg Albertyn, Mickael Pichon, Grant Langston, Chad Reed, Ben Townley and many more had ditched the GPs in search of American titles. Un- derstandably, this did not sit well with Luongo. For years there was no round of the world champion- ships held in the U.S. and the prevailing attitude (not shared by me) in America was that MXGP was a second-rate series. U.S. interest in participating in the "NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED" Glen Helen Motocross of Na- tions: Worth the risk? Maybe not now, so it seems.