VOL. 55 ISSUE 24 JUNE 19, 2018 P99
Banzai Hill and West had gone
down hard after landing. No one
seems to remember exactly how
it happened. The old motocross
bikes were prone to rear end
swaps over bumpy terrain. Was
the bike angled wrong when he
hit the jump? Photos of the hill
as it led into the jump also show
deep ruts, likely caused by rain
or water run-off. Was it a dan-
gerous section?
"No" says Jim Wilson. "Not at
At 6'5", West made a 500cc Maico look like a minibike.
all. Saddleback was a safe track,
especially for a rider like Jim, who
may have had more laps around
that track than anyone else."
"We were all standing there,"
says Susan. "His parents, my
little brother and so we all saw
it. I didn't know what to think,
because Jim rarely crashed. I just
remember screaming. My little
brother pulled the bike off of him
and the paramedics began cutting
his gloves off. I remember he
didn't want them to do that. The
next thing I remember is being in
the ambulance and Jim was just
looking at me. He was not asleep,
but not really awake and he was
groaning. I knew it was bad."
"And then I heard the paramed-
ic tell the driver 'let's make this a
quick ride.'"
He was taken to a small hos-
pital located nearby Saddleback
Park, a facility which one pro rider
states was "notorious for its poor
care of dirt bike riders and rac-
ers." Once there, the staff tended
to Jim's broken arm—and allegedly
did little else. West had suffered
both a ruptured spleen and dam-
age to his liver.
"He cried out for me—he would
call my name," Susan says, "but
they wouldn't let me in to see him.
No one could go in. They would
only say they were waiting for a
surgeon. A couple of hours passed
and I didn't know what to do, so I
went outside and sat in the van."
"And then his Mom came out
and told me that Jim was gone.
He died of things that no one
would die from today; I think he
bled to death."
"There was no way that
should've been a fatal crash," says
Stackable. "No way."
On November 29, 1975, the
night before he became the first
rider to be killed in AMA profes-
sional motocross competition,
Jim West looked at his girlfriend
of nearly five years and for the
first time ever, he told her that this
motocross life was something
that wasn't going to last forever.
