| December 8, 2024
Cycle News Archives
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Factory racer to factory trainer Gary Semics (aka Dale Burton) is indeed a motocross legend
By Kent Taylor
What more is there to say about former MX star Dale Burton? A hard-charging farm boy from Ohio, Burton was one of the top MX stars of the ’70s, riding for numerous factory teams and competing in both National and World competition. When his career was over, he began teaching at his own motocross schools, helping the likes of Jeremy McGrath understand the importance of physical conditioning and proper training. Dale Burton is truly a motocross legend.
Gary Semics was a member of several factory MX teams through the 1970s and ’80s but is probably best remembered when he rode for Kawasaki.
He is also a fraud. Because if the AMA pro racing officials had just peeled away the glued-on photo on Burton’s license way back in 1971, they would’ve seen the real Dale Burton, a 33-year-old racer in cahoots with a youngster who was still a year away from the legal racing age of 18. The data belonged to Burton, but the man in the photo was Gary Semics, who would go on to have a highly successful career in motocross.
Semics was one of the early members of the powerful Husqvarna Team, which included MX pioneers like Bob Grossi, Billy Clements, Mark Blackwell and Gunnar Lindstrom. The riders were mentored by Swedish ironman Rolf Tibblin, a former World Champion who was a firm believer in physical fitness. Tibblin was known to train by running in the snowy forests of his homeland, weighted down with a backpack full of logs—which he had likely hand-chopped with a dull axe while shirtless.
“Rolf was our team manager,” Semics recalls, “but he was really much more than that. He was more like a big brother, and he really helped us, both mentally and physically. Everybody on the team looked up to him.”
Unfortunately, Semics’ time with Team Husky would come to an unceremonious end. He and teammate Grossi were play-racing on minibikes and both riders crashed. Grossi suffered a severe knee injury that would derail his career, while Semics injured his elbow. Healed up and ready to race, he drove to the St. Louis round of the 1974 Trans AMA series, only to find his former mechanic, Eric Crippa, wrenching on a bike for another rider, a Texan named Kent Howerton. Despite having won a 500cc National in ’74, Semics was off the team.
He would not stay in the MX unemployment line for long. Kawasaki’s new 500cc National Champion Jim Weinert had been lured away by Team Yamaha, leaving an open spot for Semics. Weinert took his number one plate with him. Two years later, Semics was in position to bring it back. It would come down to the final event in muggy New Orleans, Louisiana.
Do you remember who Jeremy McGrath’s trainer was? Yes, Gary Semics.
Truth might not always be stranger than fiction, but the story of the 1976 battle for the AMA’s 500cc National Championship was as good as it gets. In this novella, it is Semics and Kawasaki, versus Howerton and Husqvarna and any imaginative writer pens this thrilling conclusion: it is Semics who wins the battle, exacting revenge on his old team for wrongly firing him. On the final page, as the new champ pops the champagne, his former mechanic rages and spears his 17mm wrench into a giant berm.
Motocross racing, however, isn’t a Hallmark movie. “I was really nervous,” recalled Semics, “and I couldn’t concentrate. Kent came by and passed me. I stayed right with him but couldn’t get around him.”
Semics would come back strong to win the second moto. He would also win the overall on the day, but the points that Howerton earned over Semics in the first moto proved to be enough to secure the title.
After the race, Semics was visiting with Crippa, who revealed to him that Howerton’s Husky was barely able to even finish the moto. The countershaft on his motorcycle had split like a burnt hot dog and the thin circlip holding the sprocket in place lay somewhere in the red dirt of the New Orleans racetrack. How many more bumps, upshifts or downshifts would it have taken for the sprocket to jump off that shaft entirely, sidelining Howerton, who would then watch forlornly as Semics roosted away to win the National Championship?
“It [the title] wasn’t important to me because of what had happened with Husky,” Semics says. “I just wanted a championship.”
Semics might never have won a major AMA MX title, but he could win on any given day and did so quite often.
Even though Gary’s win that day would be his last major victory in AMA racing, he would go on to race for many more years, remaining a threat to win on any given day and on any brand of motorcycle. Riding for Team Can-Am, Semics led and nearly won the 1978 Superbowl of Motocross. In 1979, he finished third in the 500cc class on a Honda. He would later ride for Team LOP on Yamahas, have a go on his own private Suzuki, take another stint with Honda in the Grand Prix wars and earn a final factory ride with Team Maico, that was on the verge of bankruptcy at the same time. Maico had pitched a promising deal for Semics and buddy Billy Grossi, bringing both riders to Europe in 1983. But the dream blew up when the factory shut down. Fragile race bikes, promised money that never showed, made for a deal that wasn’t worth a pint of sauerkraut, and both riders packed up and headed for home.
Semics’ never lost his love for the sport and he continued his involvement, racing and qualifying for the Steel City 500cc National in 1990, nearly 20 years after his first AMA race. Along with coaching Jeremy McGrath and holding his MX schools, he produced a series of MX training videos. A great rider whose tree has branched out to influence many champions—made possible by a gift of identity theft! Many thanks, Dale Burton. CN
