Steve Cox | October 3, 2018
Contact Sports
COLUMN
Over the years in columns I’ve written here in Cycle News (the first one coming in 2000), and in myriad other publications, I’ve probably dedicated more space to the subject of contact in motocross and supercross racing than to any other single subject. It’s a passion of mine, not because I think it’s cool when people run into each other, but because it’s the essence of the sport itself.
When people talk about the greatest our sport has seen, most of the time they use words like “grit,” “determination” and “tenacity.” The greatest motocross and supercross racers in history didn’t often sit around behind somebody for very long. If there was someone in their way, they either found a way by cleanly, or found a way by not so cleanly, but they found a way by. Finding a way by is the point. It’s not a gentleman’s sport.
One of the greatest stories I remember about this way was in a Trans-AMA event in the late-‘70s (I believe at Unadilla, but I could be wrong, as this is from memory), where Bob Hannah and Roger DeCoster slammed each other so many times that eventually Hannah dropped out of the race because his exhaust pipe was smashed so bad that his engine quit. That’s extreme, but it’s our sport.
Rick Johnson agrees that MX is a contact sport.
After the 2017 Las Vegas Supercross, where Zach Osborne took out Joey Savatgy with one turn left in the race to win his first-ever professional title, I wrote a column talking about how amazing that was to watch. At Hangtown a couple weeks later, a Kawasaki partisan found me out on the track and pled his team’s case, saying that he thought it was a dirty move. Dirty or not, it won the championship. But the funniest thing, at least to me, was that as this particular person sort of got off on a rant about how this dirty riding shouldn’t be part of the sport, I was able to recall—at the exact same event, 16 years earlier in 2001—watching Kawasaki’s Ricky Carmichael slam his own Kawasaki teammate Stephane Roncada so hard that, in Roncada’s own words, “I thought he broke my leg.”
I pointed that out to the Kawasaki partisan, and they just shrugged and said the sport can’t continue to be like that. And I couldn’t disagree more. I said, “I don’t think there’s a single current or past champion who wouldn’t have done what Osborne did in Vegas.”
So, recently, I was interviewing seven-time AMA Supercross and Motocross champ (and Team Puerto Rico team manager) Ricky Johnson for a story in the VMXdN program via Dirt Bike Rider Magazine in the UK, and at the end of the interview, I had to ask him about the Osborne thing. Here’s what he said: “Kenny Clark, before I signed with Yamaha, it was in boldfaced type in Cycle News, he said, ‘You show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser,’” RJ said. “Zach Osborne’s move wasn’t personal against [Joey] Savatgy. My heart broke for Savatgy. But he froze up. It was his to lose, and he lost it. Zach took so many chances and hung it on the line, he had an opening, and he took it. He didn’t do it to take him out. He did it to pass him and hit him, and that was the time and the place. The nail never likes getting hit, but the hammer always likes hitting.”
RJ continued: “There was a truck race a while back, and Brad Lovell hit my son [Luke] and took him out, and on the podium, Brad said, ‘I didn’t mean to hit him.’” I took him aside, and we’re friends, and I wasn’t mad or anything, but I said, ‘C’mon, man, you meant to hit him, you just didn’t mean to hit him that hard.’ I’ve hit lots of guys, and sometimes I’ve hit a guy and it’s like, ‘Ooo, that’s a little better than I thought!’
“I don’t blame Zach for it. He did what he had to do. It was racing. He came in hot and he blasted him, absolutely, but that’s racing. Motocross is a physical game, and you have to know who you’re racing against and what they’re doing. If Savatgy knew he was coming, he should’ve come up the inside, opened up the outside, and blasted Zach. Racing against Ron Lechien, what he would do—textbook—is we’d start the race, and I’d get a holeshot, and about four laps in I’d hear him making a push because he knew he was going to get tired soon, so he’d come in to try to take me out. What I’d do is I’d open up the outside by short-braking him like I was going to take the inside, then I’d hit him on the exit. Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me!
“If I’m Savatgy, I know he’s going to hit me, so I’m going to go in and bait him to the outside, and then as soon as he arches the corner, I’m going to get off the brakes and come up and take his front wheel out and win the championship. I’m doing peace signs the rest of the race, you know? I did that to [Jeff] Ward, I did it to Broc [Glover], I did it to Lechien, I did it to [David] Bailey… I mean, that’s racing! And all of those guys hammered me exactly the same way. That’s a part of our racing that we can’t take away. Now, if you’re jumping from one side of a triple to another, you can kill somebody. That’s not cool. But in corners, it’s all fair game.”
So, there you have it, from one of the greatest our sport has ever seen. Let the racers police themselves. If one guy becomes too much of a bowling ball, the other guys will sort him out. But otherwise, as my dad told me the first time I got taken out when I was 11 years old: “Don’t leave the door open and you don’t have to worry about it.” CN
