VOL. 54 ISSUE 49 DECEMBER 12, 2017 P67
That leads me to my next
question. Do you feel there's
a correct balance between
lengths of track and types of
tracks? Should there be more
TTs?
It's an eternal question! We'd
gotten down to one TT, so this
year, 2017, we had three TTs out
of 18 races. The TTs are a polar-
izing discipline within our sport,
even though the Peoria TT is the
oldest event on the tour, held in
an amazing natural amphitheater
in deepest Illinois. There are
the purists who say, "That's not
flat track." There are the guys
who say, "That looks like a poor
man's motocross." There are
the riders who say, "Woohoo, I
love this!" There are the riders
who say "I hate this!" What I can
tell you is that out of 18 rounds
this year, the two best attended
races were both TTs. For the
Daytona TT in the Tri-Oval, inside
the Speedway, we had 10,000
paid admissions, which was the
biggest crowd flat track had had
for over a decade. Then we went
to the Buffalo Chip at Sturgis
in July, where they'd built a TT
course in front of the rock stage.
Oh, what a nightmare that was!
We had to build the track over-
night, after the Saturday night
rock concert, put in all the safety
equipment, the lighting, the
cabling. Run our racing through
the afternoon and the evening
with a hard stop at 9:15 at night,
in order to break down all the
lighting and safety equipment so
that a rock band could come on
stage at 10:30 p.m. But 15,000
people turned up, they were
everywhere! It was like one of
those photos you see from the
1930s of people hanging on
telegraph poles watching—amaz-
ing! So I think having three TTs
means we take them seriously.
We need three of those, we
need a couple of short tracks,
we need a handful of half miles,
and we need probably 50 per-
cent of the series to be miles,
because any mile is like the
Coliseum in ancient Rome. It's a
spectacle!
How many miles did you
have in 2017?
I think we had eight miles this
past season—but these are really
a different sport. It's not just dou-
ble a half mile—it's high drama,
so we must have a lot of miles.
Fortunately, there are many horse
tracks across America that are
very well suited to motorcycle
racing. Phoenix is a good ex-
ample, Sacramento another,
Remington Park in Oklahoma,
the Red Mile in Kentucky, etc.
We've systematically increased
the number of horse tracks since
they offer great facilities, great
viewing, comfortable surround-
ings and fast, fast racing.
In terms of the personali-
ties that you have in flat track,
this has always been one of
Shayna Texter is
one of the sport's
biggest stars.
"2017 was a year of revolution; rule
changes, class structure changes and
rebranding. 2018 is fine tuning that."
