COVER: JIM POMEROY, UNPLUGGED

1972 The Shot

Bill Petro’s Jim Pomeroy cross-up photo — arguably the most iconic motocross image ever

By Mitch Boehm

Remember what you were up time favorite shots.” The photo not only showcased to in the summer of 1972? He’s certainly not alone there. Pomeroy, the first American to win Whatever it was, if you were The image itself is a gem, a a motocross Grand Prix (the 1973 into bikes, and especially if you were perfect storm of perspective, Spanish GP), but our country’s a fan of motocross, you almost exposure, bike attitude growing power within the sport. The certainly recall this image and atmosphere. For a image’s staying power and heft was of a crossed-up Jimmie youngster like myself and is unprecedented, and it remains a Pomeroy strutting and all my buddies wonderful piece of motocross history to his stuff at the ’72 back home in North this day. 250cc Grand Prix in Ridgeville, Ohio If you’d like to buy a signed and Copetown, Canada. during the early- numbered high-quality archival print

You remember it and mid-1970s, all from Petro, and we recommend it because it’s very likely of us just getting highly, pay a visit to Petro’s Legends of the most-reproduced motocross image ever… certainly of the 1970s, Photographer Bill Petro into minibikes and trying to mimic our hero’s antics on our Canadian Motocross website at locmx. com. He says there are a few left from the first Limited Edition signed set, and and probably of the last five Schwinn Sting Rays over he’d be happy to send you one. Since the decades. After first appearing in a board-and-cinder-block ramps, guy never got paid for all the use and Bultaco ad (see inset), the image quickly Petro’s shot burned itself into our attention the photo got back in the day, became a hit, appearing on t-shirts, psyches. Over the years it has become it’s the least we can do, right? posters, coffee mugs, in other company an almost Iwo Jima flag-raising type of Nice job, Bill Petro. The motocross advertisements in magazines, etc., image for the motocross set. world owes you a big Thumbs Up! with later users never bothering to pay photographer Bill Petro, a Canadian college student just scrambling to make ends meet.

“It was the first picture I ever sold,” Petro told American Motorcyclist. “Somehow the ad agency in question tracked down my mother, cause they couldn’t find me. They paid me $125 for it, a lot of money at the time. And being a student…well, I was happy to take it.”

“I was looking at the scan a while back,” he added, “and remembering the day I shot it. People were talking about this guy Jim Pomeroy doing these beautiful cross-ups over a jump in the back section of the track, so I headed over to shoot him. These days, that sort of thing is no big deal. But back then it was very, very cool. It’s one of my all-

“People were talking about this guy Jim Pomeroy doing these beautiful cross-ups over a jump in the back section of the track, so I headed over to shoot him.”