EDITOR'S NOTE:  What you have here is a rare thing, indeed.  The first part of this column was written by Paul Clipper (owner/editor/publisher of Trail Rider Magazine), a long-time friend.  When I read this in his publication, I realized that,  once again, Paul had beaten me to the punch on a subject I had planned to cover.

   I sent Paul a follow-up on his column, and he's going to run it in Trail Rider, so I thought I would extend him the same courtesy and run his thoughts here.  My comments make up part 2 of this column. 

   The subject matter is the inherent danger of supercross, and how many people that sport is hurting. It's not a call to end the sport, or to create some sort of controls.  Instead, it's a plea for common sense.   Read it, pass it on to a friend ... and if you have some thoughts on the subject, you can email them to ORC at:  super@telnor.net.

   And if you're in to trail riding, woods racing and having fun on the trails, contact Paul at Trail Rider.  He'll send you a sample copy for three bucks.  The address is:  P.O. Box 2038  Medford Lakes, NJ  08055.  Or just go ahead and subscribe.  A year costs $18.  They also have a website you can check out at:  www.trailrider.com

Double or Nothing?
By Paul Clipper

      Two things happened recently that got me thinking   about   motocross, something I rarely do these days. The first was attending the opening round of the GNCC series in Okeechobee, Florida. I had an opportunity to ride the industry class at the Florida race, but I wasn't really sure I wanted to.  It  was  sunny  and  hot,  rather  dusty,  and  looked like it would be a whole lot more fun to get another lemonade and watch, and take a few pictures.

   I was still partly on the fence about riding when I walked out onto the motocross section of the track to watch Monday afternoon practice - they let you  practice  the  course  at  Okeechobee,  so everybody has a chance to ride and get their bike dialed in. The first thing I see is some guy launch across a 60-foot tabletop and land it sweet on the other side.   

  Wow! That's impressive. Then I scan around the track and see there's double-jumps in about four different places, and a couple more tabletops. Guys are jumping these things left and right, but there's hundreds of people on the track,  because it's an open practice session. There are C class riders poking along, just trying to stay upright, and meanwhile there are jump animals riding like winning practice is the only thing that matters. The more I watched, the more it looked like mayhem, and when I saw one guy jump clear over another rider - this is practice, remember - I was sure I wasn't going to ride the next day.

   You know, I mean it would be one thing if I could ride the track with a bunch of my spode friends, and we could screw around with the jumps, or avoid them, or whatever. We're not jumpers. I never learned how to clear a double, and dropping the front end to slide down a table-top properly is a mysterious art to me. I mean, I have never done it. It seems to me that every time my front end gets low, my feet are up in the air and I'm about to meet the ground in a most interesting way.

    So I'll ride hare scrambles, no problem. I even like to have a single, solitary jump now and then, because airborne is fun, but watching the potential carnage on that Florida track honestly scared me off that day.

    (I have to add the fact that I was doubly apprehensive, because I'd be riding someone else's bike, a machine I'd never slung a leg over before, and I just can't get that comfortable that fast. It'd be a little better if I was doing it on my own bike, but I still wouldn't have ridden down there. Too chicken.)

 The second thing was calling Rich Daly at Dyno Port the week after, and telling him about what I had seen down there. "It's crazy, isn't it?" I said to him.

 "It's  not  crazy,  it's stupid,  plain and  simple!" came his reply, and I soon learned that I had touched of a powder keg of emotions here.   "The sport of motocross used to be a fun thing to do, but now we're practically killing people with it.

  "I've  made  it my  mission to  change  motocross and try to educate race promoters that we don't have to injure riders to have a good time."

 Rich is passionate about it, there is no doubt.  He's not anti-racing, far from it. All he wants is racing to be a little safer. He has too many friends  in wheelchairs, he says, and he's sick of it.

  He has a point, even one that I - a non-motocrosser - can understand. It's been my belief that the popularity of Supercross style racing has split our sport down the middle, as far as amateur riding goes. On one side are the people like  me,  who  can't  hack  Supercross  riding  and know  it,  and  on  the  other side are the jump artists.  Not  that  there's  anything  wrong  with being in either camp, mind you.  I like what I do,  and given the circumstances, I'm happy.

  The trouble is between both these camps are a lot injured riders, guys who thought they wanted to be  Jeremy  McGrath,  because  he  made  it  too easy, and now they're wondering if hare scrambles might be more fun, once they heal. Or if they heal.   Or maybe they're going to heal and take up some other sport, because  "motorcycles are too dangerous."

 That's the one thing that really raises my hackles, the "motorcycles are too dangerous" line of thinking.  There  is  nothing  dangerous  about motorcycles. It is inert, a piece of art;  you can see them in museums.

   There's nothing dangerous  about them riding down the highway. The dangerous part is when  some wingnut aims  it at a wall and then tries to sue everybody because he got  hurt. 

   The  dangerous  part  of  Supercross is  when  little Johnny  Wingnut sees a set  of  doubles  and launches into them with no clue how to get out of the other side without a wheelchair.

 Now you know,  I'm  not trying to be negative, but  Rich  Daly  is  right. I  probably  would  ride motocross on the odd weekend if it was anything like it was a long time ago, when I started riding

  Or if I had the option to ride such a track. The old style of tracks - with  a lot of turns  and berms and off-cambers, and maybe two or three jumps - would  definitely look stupid and  boring to most of our Supercross clowns these days.

  But you know what? People raced on them. Bar-banging,  throttle  twisting,  berm  slamming  racing.   And the best rider always won and the  rest of us licked our wounds afterwards. And not once did we risk coming up short on a double, casing out and breaking both arms, nor did we have Johnny Wingnut launching off a triple jump and landing on us because he wanted that plastic trophy so bad.

  There was still plenty of risk – there is nothing "safe" about racing anything - but - old tracks were much more user-friendly if  you got out of shape on them.

  And being "jumpless" doesn't mean being a sissy. Unadilla, as far as I can recall, never had a man-made jump on it, and few would argue that it  wasn't one of the   toughest, meanest, and most humbling motocross tracks in history. And I'd still like to ride the Unadilla course one day. But I don't want to ride the Anaheim stadium track.

   The proof that there's something wrong is as easy as reading Cycle News. I recall a couple months back,  in one of the stories on the first Supercross races of the season, they ran a laundry  list of all the riders on  the  "injured"  list, and it was only two  or three  races  into the season:  Jimmy Button, Keith Johnson, Donovan Mitchell, Jeff  Emig,  there must have been eight or ten more names. All of the injuries were related to extreme jumping -  cased  it on a triple, came inches short on a triple, short on a double, jumped on in a  race  - and I hate to say it,  but all were avoidable if the tracks  were designed more for racing and  less for air time.

   Rich Daly has a mission, and a mountain climb in front of him, but I'm a hundred percent for him.  We have a new category of Freestyle riding in our sport now, a sort of exhibition-style jumping contest dominated by artists like Travis Pastrana and Mike Metzger; a sport with its own heroes and founding fathers, if we can offer such a title to Seth  Enslow, and they're doing some really cool things with extreme jumping. And they're great, huge fun to watch and the guys are incredible acrobats.

   So right now, we have a chance in this business to quickly and quietly turn motocross  back  into  racing  and  leave the jumping contests to Freestyle. Personally, I think racing would get better, and you'd probably see a lot  of  "old  guys"  like  me  and  Rich  a  lot  more enthusiastic about motocross.

    Plus, we'd keep a  lot of our friends and family out of the hospital;  and that would  be a wonderful thing.

THOUGHTS FROM RICK SIEMAN ...

Hola Paul...

  Your column in the May 2000 issue was not only right on the money, but sorely needed, as well. Right now, the sport of Supercross has turned into a very dangerous game, one that leaves bodies broken and crippled, with alarming regularity.

   Hey, these people have a right to indulge in this sport.  It's sort of a free country, isn't it?  But, I wonder if new riders know what they're getting in to when they decide to play the supercross game?

   Take it from one who has been there, breaking your back is not much fun.  You might recall the fateful year of 1979. You and I were working together on Dirt Bike, and having a lot of fun, before the change of command.  At that time, I whipped myself into the best shape of my life and raced everything I could. 

   During a Super Bowl of Motocross press day at the Colesium, I took one look at the Peristyle Jump and shuddered. There was a gap of over 90 feet at the bottom of that huge ski-ramp jump and it looked like the Grand Canyon.  But I watched a few pros launch it and figured I would show everyone how brave I was.

   Well, amigo, I rode down that spooky-assed hill, punched the throttle and sailed 90 feet through that smog-filled air.  The only problem was that the landing area was 92 feet from the take off.

   The bike landed square on the frame tubes directly under the engine ... and stopped dead.  The impact was gruesome!  I recall "redding-out" from the hit and then a whole lot of pain.

   I came to a moment later, and saw my bike laying off the the side, all crumpled up, with the frame rails pushed through the cases.  The foot pegs were ripped off and the bars were wrapped around the gas tank.

   More than anything, I was mad at myself for screwing up a perfectly good bike, and stood up to take a closer look at the damage.

   Or rather, tried to.

   When I started to push myself off the ground using my arms, I felt a crunching sound in my lower back, and Paul, I was scared as all hell at that moment. 

   I lowered my body back to the ground and figured I'd better not move around too much. A few minutes later, the ambulance came and took me away. 

   The doctor at the hospital showed me the X-rays some time later.  Three crushed vertebrae and two broken ones.  Luckily, there was no spinal cord damage.

   Seven months later, I took off the body brace and rode again.

   The story could have had a different ending. I could have been  relegated to a wheel chair, like friends Bailey and Magoo ... and so many others.  But, like I said, I was lucky.

      So what's the point of all this?

    The point is that we had damned well better separate motocross from these circus acts called supercross.  Only a handful of people are capable of playing that deadly game, and to encourage the masses to get involved in it, is to ask for the death of the sport as we know it.

   When the weather gets cold, my back reminds me of that day when I tried to do something beyond my skills.  And when I run into David Bailey, or talk with Danny Chandler on the phone, I give silent thanks that I was able to walk away with a frightening warning.

   All you heroes out there? 

   Maybe you ought to read this, and while you're at it, show it to a friend who wants to be the next Jeremy McGrath.  He just might end up being the next Christopher Reeves instead.

 Rick Sieman / Somewhere in Baja

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