Cycle News

P122 CN III LOWSIDE BY RENNIE SCAYSBROOK I have many, many memories of staying up late on Sunday night, watching whatever racing was being beamed into the family living room. Sunday was race night, given Australia's eight-hour time advantage to Europe, with mum, dad and I awake way past our bedtimes every week. In the mid-1990s, grand prix racing was quickly becoming the sideshow. Mick Doohan had a grip on the 500cc Champion- ship like Stalin in 1940s Russia and, following the departure of the great Kevin Schwantz, the world's premier racing series lacked personality until a young Italian with initials VR rocked up on a yellow Honda in 2000. The racing to watch in the '90s was the World Superbike Championship. This was the UFC of motorcycle road rac- ing—Slight, Edwards, Haga, Corser, Fogarty, Gobert and, for a short but hugely successful period, the mercurial John Ko- cinski—bashing into each other like Spartans and partying like college kids at each meeting's conclusion (well, all except for Kocinski). The World Superbike Champi- onship of the '80s and '90s was the way racing was meant to be, and is almost completely unrec- ognizable to what we have today. The U.S. enjoyed considerable racing success in those early years, with Fred Merkel taking the first two WorldSBK titles (1988 and 1989), then Doug Polen with a double in 1991 and 1992, Scott Russell in 1993, Kocinski in 1997, and finally the Texas Tornado, Colin Edwards, in 2000 and in that classic, glori- ous title-deciding race against Troy Bayliss at Imola in 2002. That Italian epic is one of the all-time great motorcycle races, never mind superbike races. Ben Spies backed himself in 2009, rocked up to round one at Phillip Island on a factory Yamaha, and blew the doors off everyone in race two, setting the scene for what would be his only year in the FIM WorldSBK Championship. I was in the PI media center that day, and I remember speaking to former WorldSBK rider and then-current commentator, Aussie Steve Martin, saying he'd never seen a talent like Ben. He's still the only rider to ever nail the big one in his first year of WorldSBK— Kocinski took two years, so did Corser, but no one else has had such a short but immediate impact on WorldSBK racing as "Elbowz" did that magical year. America has also enjoyed some stunning wildcard ap- pearances over the years—Mat Mladin (yes, he's an Aussie, but he was U.S. based, so…) smacking that year's champion Neil Hodgson around at Laguna Seca in 2003; Ben Bostrom and Anthony Gobert doing the same in 1999; Mike Hale and Miguel Duhamel putting it on the box GAME ON, BOYS! Jake Gagne has the hopes of American superbike fans riding on his relaxed shoulders this year.

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