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/953622
VOL. 55 ISSUE 10 MARCH 13, 2018 P105 publishing an entire page about the Nac Nac? Cycle News was heavily blow-by-blow race cover- age and the existing magazines were into bike tests and product evaluation and I didn't want to do any of that. I wanted to be like, 'Hey, we get to go to the dirt bike race this weekend. How great is this?" At first Coombs produced a newspaper called The Racing Pa- per for AMA District 5 and it grew. "I would take stacks of them with me when I would go to cover a race for Cycle News. And then I got the job with ESPN and that opened a lot of doors for me. The newspaper became a mash-up of motocross, supercross, off-road racing and all the stuff I wanted to write about that I couldn't sell to other magazines." By 1997 his little newspaper had grown to the point that Coombs felt the time was right to make the leap into the glossy magazine format. He'd been inspired by the short-lived, but influential publication titled Inside Motocross, which published for only one year in 1993. Coombs had the concept in his mind, but that jump to a glossy was going to cost serious money. Coombs' mom and dad (Dave and Rita) encouraged Davey to develop a business plan and take it around the industry to see if he could get backers. He clicked off all the big players in the industry of the time, and while some loved his concept, no one was willing to front the money needed to get the magazine off the ground. "After I talked to everyone and they all said, no, my dad said, 'okay, now that I see how badly you want this, I'll loan you the money.' I'm proud to say I paid it back in six months." The timing couldn't have been better and Racer X was a suc- cess right out of the gate. "The industry was really hungry for what we produced," Coombs explains. "You have to remember the context of where we were. Freestyle was just coming online, the X Games, the Crusty Demons and Terrafirma in the video world were opening up new worlds. This was the after-party era, the Showtime era. People didn't want to know just who won the race, they wanted to know what they were eating on the way to the race, or what they were doing after the race, or who was the wild man in the group. And you had these ready-made characters like Jeremy McGrath, Jeff Emig, Travis Pastrana and Doug Henry. Guys who just had really compel- ling stories and who were also very open to the idea of not just being a cookie-cutter personality that read sponsors off his fender when he was on the podium." And how could anyone forget the gorgeous girls in the pages of the early years? Another first. The concept was gold. Racer X quickly became the thickest book in the industry. Not only was it the look, with impactful pho- tography and attractive models, Racer X also boasted some of the best journalist and writers in the industry, telling some of the best untold stories. The company was also on the leading edge when it came to producing a must- see website and also were early adopters to social media, which gave them the jump on their com- petition. Not that there haven't been missteps along the way. Davey points to Road Racer X and Racer X Canada as great con- cepts, but both ultimately had to be shuttered for different reasons. But in the big picture Racer X weathered economic downturns and became more than a maga- zine, but rather one of the iconic brands in all of motorcycling. Coombs says he has no crystal ball when it comes to predicting the future of print publications in the motorcycling industry. "If I had the ability to see into the future that would be a good thing, but it also might be a fright- ening thing. I've always been the guy who walks out of Barnes & Noble with two bags or enjoyed the time in front of a newsstand devouring periodicals as much as anyone, but I know that's a dying breed. But I hope that there will always be a tangible market for some magazines that people still want to have, that thing on the coffee table or in the bathroom or on the airplane, but it's changing and we're just trying to cover all the bases that exist right now." CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives