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/914766
AMERICAN FLAT TRACK CEO MICHAEL LOCK: PART 2 P68 INTERVIEW the series' great strengths— these are real men riding their mighty machines. Oh my word, yes they are! But you've also got real women. Shayna Texter so nearly won the singles cham- pionship this year. Yes, and with all due respect to Kolby Carlile who did win the championship, Shayna might think she should have won it. But she has a real weakness, an Achilles heel for the TTs. The TTs are elbows out, very aggressive riding, and it's the one discipline where weighing 100 pounds and being five-foot two-inches tall is a distinct disadvantage. It's actually an advantage on the miles, being lighter and more aerodynamic, but she needs to get better at TTs. I mean, she didn't qualify for two of the main events, so she didn't get any points at two races. But, Kolby Carlile rode that classic season, what I would call an Eddie Law- son kind of season—he scored points at every race. Are there any other women riders coming through? Yes, it's this old cliché, I call it the Bjorn Borg effect. I don't think anyone in Sweden was playing tennis before Bjorn Borg came along, and then sud- denly every world champion was Swedish. So Shayna is an inspiration. We do have other females coming up in the sport, thanks to her and Nichole Mees, who's now had a baby and is permanently retired! Is NBC going to do a profile on Shayna? You never know, that might just happen! What novelties will you have for 2018, compared to 2017? Any new tracks? 2017 was a year of revolution; rule changes, class structure changes and rebranding. 2018 is fine tuning that. We have to speed up the race evenings. I want to run the whole program within three hours. So heat races, last chances, semi-finals and finals in three hours—that is an attention span that we can sell. Both classes? Both classes. We managed to run within three hours just four times out of 18 in 2017, simply because there were so many moving parts. I've tasked the team to tighten it right up, so that's going to be a big priority. Also, the entertainment needs to be better between races. We piloted a few different things, which we've learned from. I don't want to dumb it down, but I do want there to be constant entertainment while the fans are there. Because I don't want to say that I've created a sport only for white male baby boom- ers. They're very welcome, but I want them to bring their wives, their kids, their grandkids even. To do that, we have to have more three-dimensional enter- tainment. Supercross knows this very well, but no other motorcycle sport really takes en- "Eighteen races for next year at present, although there might be a very interesting 19th."