PERSPECTIVES

PERSPECTIVES SUPERCROSS SPECTACULAR

BY MITCH BOEHM

Standing just a few feet behind the starting gate of the 250SX East-West Showdown Main Event at this year’s AMA Supercross finale at the University of Utah’s Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City as the riders clicked into gear and got the revs up, a surreal feeling came over me.

Not because I’d attended many a football game in this very place while a student at the U during the 1980s, or the fact that I’d worked out on occasion here as a player/athlete (running stairs, ’cuz our pitching coach stressed strong legs), or the fact that I’d had a nice conversation with motocross legend and AMA Hall of Famer Roger DeCoster a few feet away an hour before.

That stuff helped, of course. But the main reason was the utter spectacle of AMA Supercross itself, which is not only arguably the world’s most intense (and physically demanding) sport to participate in but also to watch, especially when viewed from the floor.

If you’ve been on the floor during practice or a race, you know. But if you haven’t, let me tell you that, as wonderful as watching from the stands or press box can be, it’s a whole different world down below.

It’d been a long time since I was on the floor of an AMA Supercross race, the last time being a Rose Bowl event in ’85 or ’86. But standing there behind Christian Craig, Hunter Lawrence and the rest of the 250SX riders as they blasted off toward turn one and pelted me with dirt clods, it was hard to ignore what an insanely visceral sport AMA Supercross really is — especially at this level.

You can’t really see this from the grandstands, but from ground level the jump faces, rhythm-section launches and even the whoops are shockingly, mind-bogglingly tall and very steep — nearly vertical in places. Standing there during practice, I remember thinking the only way I could get through some of those sections would be on a trials bike, and never mind a 60-horse motocrosser at speed. And that’s coming from someone who’s raced motocross for decades.

I shared the thought with AMA Director of Racing Mike Pelletier, an accomplished pro racer himself, and he agreed: “It’s definitely gnarly out there!”

I found myself wondering how these guys do it — how do they go out there and, very quickly, learn a track with skyscraper-sized jumps and whoops and rhythm sections… and get up to speed so quickly? It boggled the mind. Of course, AMA Supercross riders are the best in the world — so it makes some sense.

I was at the Salt Lake City finale ostensibly to shadow my AMA colleague Pelletier all weekend to generate grist for an upcoming Day In The Life feature story on what Mike P. and his team deal with during a typical AMA Supercross weekend. And let me tell you, it’s a veritable ton of stuff. From morning ’til night on both Friday and Saturday, Mike’s crew handles dozens of crucial items, from rules to tech inspection to team communications to medical stuff to timing-and-scoring to flagging to track safety and a large handful of other key things.

And that’s just the AMA side. You’ve also got promoter Feld Entertainment, who rents the stadium, sells tickets, hires the track-building crew Dirt Wurx (another story in itself), deals with 50,000-plus fans, manages the TV broadcast, handles food vendors and security, and does a bazillion of the other critical jobs that allow an

AMA Director of Racing Mike Pelletier, before the storm.

AMA Supercross race to come off without a hitch. Behind the scenes, the whole thing is absolutely mindboggling.

Highlights for me? A biggie was sitting in the control tower high above the track with Mike P. and his top people (along with Feld’s Mike Muye) while they monitored practice, qualifying and the races themselves. The back and forth ranged from track safety and flagger locations to track conditions, race stoppages for medical reasons and the always-present extracurricular (and sometimes overly aggressive) action during races themselves, which ended up happening in the 450 Main Event when GasGas’s Justin Barcia tagged Team Husqvarna’s Malcolm Stewart.

If you watched it on TV or read about it, you know. But if you were there, as I was, the entire day was a total spectacle. And as I wrote earlier, a whole different world. Be sure to check out the behind-the-scenes pieces in upcoming issues.

Mitch Boehm is the editorial director of the AMA

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