ONE DAY OF MAGIC

PART ONE

THE TIPPING POINT

A dramatic win at the 1980 USGP at Carlsbad not only propelled local privateer Marty Moates into the history books as the first American winner of the famed event, it helped Launch American riders into a leadership position they’d never relinquish

“This was a big deal, that an American had actually won a moto at Carlsbad, and was actually going for an overall win, which had never happened before.”

LARRY HUFFMAN

What had begun as excitement and hope that maybe, just maybe, Moates could hold on to become the first American to win at Carlsbad turned to bitter disappointment the instant Moates and his Yamaha YZ465 skidded off the track and hit the California adobe.

Luckily, Moates grabbed the clutch almost immediately after falling and kept the engine running, remounting behind Danny LaPorte and Hakan Carlquist, who’d scooted by as Moates scrambled in the dust.

“Most local boys are gonna give up,” said AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame motocrosser Bob Hannah. “No doubt. They don’t have the heart.” And as everyone who’s ever raced motocross knows, it’s very, very difficult to remount after a fall and regain the speed you had before; the fading adrenaline and fatigue are often too much to overcome. would ring in the coming years.

The 30,000-strong Carlsbad crowd, which had been crazy for Moates all race long, and who’d then cheered for LaPorte when he’d inherited the lead, went ballistic.

“Everyone rallied for those two,” remembered the late factory Kawasaki mechanic Steve Johnson. “It was crazy, especially with everyone waving American flags.”

Future 500cc world champ and AMA Hall of Famer Brad Lackey, who was behind the struggle up front, felt it just as strongly. “The crowd went nuts,” he said, “and it was cool. I said to myself, ‘well, they aren’t cheering for me,’ but it still looked good!”

But Moates wasn’t done, quickly passing LaPorte when the Suzuki superstar and future 250cc world champion lost the front end momentarily in a left-hander at the bottom of a downhill. “That was it,”

But Moates had heart, and did overcome, catching and re-passing Carlquist with an absolutely brutal inside move over Devil’s Drop and the following left-hander — all of which caused ABC’s Wide World Of Sports anchor Jim Lampley to utter some of the most powerful words in all of motocross history: “So now there are two young Americans at the front of the pack. Oh, how times have changed in Grand Prix Motocross…”

And oh, how true those words

“It was really tough to say who was gonna win that day. It coulda been Wolsink, it coulda been [Roger] DeCoster, it coulda been [Heikki] Mikkola. But Marty Moates? A total wild card.”

DANNY LAPORTE

LaPorte remembers. “I knew it was over…”

Suddenly, 23-year-old privateer Marty Moates, who’d led much of the race only to give it away with a mistake, was back in the lead. And the crowd, which had been literally shaking the hillsides with excitement, exploded. A few laps later and it was over, Moates punching the sky over Devil’s Drop and tossing his goggles into the cheering crowd at the checkers. “This was a big deal,” said legendary announcer Larry Huffman, “that an American had actually won a moto at Carlsbad, and was actually going for an overall win, which had never happened before.”

True enough, the Europeans had owned Carlsbad, winning every USGP there since the race’s official inception in 1973, when the late promoter Gavin Trippe first offered up his two-wheeled Woodstock to an increasingly eager U.S. motocross contingent.

Dutch dentist and sand specialist (go figure!) Gerrit Wolsink had won five Carlsbad USGPs, and despite the Americans’ increasing speeds and fitness during the latter 1970s, a USGP win in their own backyard — a race broadcast annually to millions of viewers on ABC’s Wide World of Sports — remained out of reach.

“It was really tough to say who was gonna win that day,” remembers LaPorte. “It coulda been Wolsink, it coulda been [Roger] DeCoster, it coulda been [Heikki] Mikkola. But Marty Moates? A total wild card.”

He was “the quintessential local boy,” according to Hannah. “Marty worked at the Honda dealership as a sales guy,” added Lackey. “Living in his car, had no house, had no money…”

Still, Moates knew Carlsbad. “Marty knew the track,” said Carlsbad owner Larry Grismer. “He’d been riding here since he started riding.”

“With the home-court advantage,” said Laurens Offner, owner of LOP Racing and a longtime Moates friend,

“You have 40,000 people waving American flags for you? Moates had never seen three guys wave American flags at him. That crowd gave him three seconds a lap. Easy.”

BOB HANNAH

After an opening-moto holeshot, LOP-sponsored Marty Moates (23) crashed and lost the lead to Danny LaPorte (16) and Hakan Carlquist, but kept the engine running and remounted to pass both riders, stunning himself and the crowd. Here he works on LaPorte.

“there was a reason to be more confident, to be more excited than normal.”

Bill Rychlik, Moates’s suspension tech, was also confident, actually taking bets on Moates’s performance that day. “I had several wagers going that Marty would win everything!” Rychlik said with a smile.

If Moates and his crew — and most of the other racers — wanted to win more than anything, Lackey, competing for a 500cc world title, just wanted to get points and survive. “I never wanted to win the race,” he said. “I wanted to get in there, get as many points and get the hell back to Europe where the ground was soft!”

Lackey wasn’t exaggerating. Carlsbad was arguably the nastiest, gnarliest motocross course in the world — hard-packed, slick, squareedged and blue-grooved nearly everywhere. Rumor has it that it never, ever got disked, because when it was tried once, the top couple of feet of terrain came off in massive flat chunks because it was too compacted and hard to be broken up.

“Yeah,” said Trippe, “it was a rough and gnarly piece of terrain. Of course, for me, the rest of the event was just as scary; it was an amazing mass of humanity that could’ve gone horribly wrong in so many ways.”

Between motos, tension was high, especially for Team LOP. “The hardest thing to put to the side,” remembers Offner, “was the exhilaration. You know, you have to do your job so he can get back out there for the second moto…and hopefully do it again.”

“I don’t think any of us really believed he could come back and win the second moto,” said sponsor Tom White. “But we all had a hope and a prayer!” Moates’ brother David was

“I never wanted to win the race, I wanted to get in there, get as many points and get the hell back to Europe where the ground was soft!”

BRAD LACKEY

sanguine: “It could have been a fluke,” he said.

But it wasn’t, at least at the start, Moates pulling another superb holeshot from the extreme inside of the gate and leading the pack away from the start.

“Marty Moates, for the second consecutive time, has come off the line and taken the lead!” —ABC’s Jim Lampley, 1980 Wide World of Sports telecast

The fans exploded once again, many thinking they might be witnessing a miracle in just 45 minutes’ time. But if the pressure was high before the second moto, it was unbearable now that Moates had gotten the lead again — especially with Lackey lurking not far back after passing Jean-Jacques Bruno for second. “Brad was really coming on strong,” remembers David Moates. “I can’t imagine the type of pressure Marty was under,” said Offner. “And pressure was Marty’s weakness.”

“It was just a matter of time until he caught Marty,” added David Moates. “You could see it happening.”

“The local boy may win there every week of the year,” said Hannah of the situation. “But when the big boys are there they’ll eventually overpower him.”

Slowly but surely, Lackey did just that, catching and passing Moates at the bottom of a nasty downhill. Suddenly, some of the air seemed to escape from the Moates victory balloon. The crowd, hungry for an American win of any flavor, remained rabid for the two Americans, waving the thousands of flags furiously in every corner and down every straight.

“I thought maybe he was tired,” remembers Lackey of the pass, “and

“The crowd literally went insane when it was over, It was the biggest thing I’d ever seen at an outdoor motocross event.”

LARRY HUFFMAN

Moates’ LOP-modded Yamaha YZ465 was supertorquey and set up relatively soft to absorb Carlsbad’s nasty whoops and rock-hard adobe, and he used it to good effect, outlasting the entire field and showing serious speed.

Moates’ second-moto holeshot whipped the Carlsbad crowd into a froth, especially when he lost the lead to Brad Lackey and then regained it. It was nuts.

that was all he had.”

But it wasn’t. Moates quickly caught and repassed the future world champion on another rutted, downhill section, and the crowd, already screaming, seemed to bump things up a notch.

“Marty Moates, for the second

time today, has lost the lead and regained it, and he’s just done it against the man that many regard

as the best in the world.” —ABC’s

Jim Lampley

Suddenly, Moates was back on top, and the anticipation of a possible double moto win by an American rider began to reverberate through the hillsides. “You have 40,000 people waving American flags for you?” said Hannah. “For you? Moates had never seen three guys wave American flags at him. That crowd gave him three seconds a lap. Easy.”

“You could feel the crowd pushing him along,” said brother David.

“This guy,” remembers factory mechanic Mike Guerra, “he could do it. You could feel it.”

“We all thought,” said White, “‘maybe he can do it. Maybe he can hold on.’”

Lackey helped Moates’s cause by crashing in the same spot in which he’d passed Bruno and Moates, his bike jamming under a fence. “That good passing line bit me in the butt,” Lackey remembers with a laugh. “Why couldn’t I have just not slid all the way under that stupid fence!” Lackey waved Moates by the next time around, knowing how that must have felt and genuinely wanting him to succeed.

“All the sudden,” said Offner, “there was no longer this horrible anticipation of something bad happening.”

And suddenly, it was over, Moates once again punching the sky and throwing his goggles skyward at the checkered flag.

The crowd literally went insane when it was over,” said Huffman. “It was the biggest thing I’d ever seen at an outdoor motocross event.”

“This is unprecedented perhaps

in the whole history of grand prix motocross...for an outsider such as Marty Moates to win both motos

of a race of this significance...” —

ABC’s Jim Lampley

Really well put.

Many regard Moates’ win that sweltering June day just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean as a turning point — a tipping point, if you will — in motocross history…a point at which a handful of top American riders, who’d won national AMA titles and here and there on the international scene, could finally see what could be accomplished on the world stage, and understand that, hey, this could be done, and that they, too, could do it.

What could be done was a load, too. Moates’ win set the stage for Chuck Sun’s USGP win the following year, along with a Team USA’s first Motocross des Nations win (and twelve more in a row afterwards!). And then came Lackey and LaPorte’s 500cc and 250cc world championships in ’82…and the rest is history.

We know from the race’s outcome and the amazing ABC Wild World of Sports footage that’s contained in Todd Huffman’s outstanding Carlsbad USGP 1980: One Day of Magic documentary (get it on Amazon) that Moates’ LOP Yamaha was fast. But without superb suspension and chassis setup, little of that flexible power could get routed to the slick but hard-packed California adobe — and the LOP Yamaha was solid here. Up front were 38mm magnesium-slider Simons fork legs filled with 7.5-weight oil and held by alloy from-billet triple clamps and steering stem. (Interestingly, Steve Simons would build the revolutionaryat-the-time inverted fork that Lackey

Marty Moates (right) and LOP chief Laurens Offner at a 500cc AMA National during the 1980 season. Their YZ was seriously competitive.

would use to win the 1982 500cc World Championship on his factory Suzuki.)

In back was a specially built shock from White Brothers, with co-owner Tom White recollecting things this way: “We built the shock for Marty’s YZ that year. We changed the shock dramatically, lengthening and revalving it. My brother Dan, working with our suspension expert Bill Rychlik, developed a double spring system for a plusher initial ride with good bottoming resistance, and we also added a huge reservoir to control heat. Many hours went into suspension testing on that LOP YZ465.”

The bike was set up surprisingly soft, with lots of sag and very light damping settings. And that was no accident, either, as the soft suspension literally took the edge off the hundreds of sharp-edged bumps at Carlsbad, and also allowed the bike to corner securely, since the extra sag allowed it to sink into its travel and be lower to the ground and easier to control.

“My wife and I were sitting about halfway up the Carlsbad Freeway,” White remembered, “one of roughest sections of the track on that June day. Watching our rider — Marty — become the first American winner of the Carlsbad USGP was one of the proudest moments of my life.”

The Yamaha’s engine was also special. Aside from the increased displacement (493cc vs 465cc stock), the engine featured special Offner porting designed to not only make the bike powerful but easy to control — a key part of going fast on Carlsbad’s slick, hard-packed surface. The LOP bike was also very light, with liberal use of aluminum and magnesium.

No wonder, then, that Team Yamaha rider Rick “The Lumberjack” Burgett was heard grousing during the 1980 AMA 500cc National series that the LOP Yamaha was blowing his OW41 works bike off on the straights, and maintaining that advantage in the corners. A privateer bike running with — or better than — full factory works machines? That simply did not happen — unless, of course, you

Documentary creator Todd Huffman hosted a DVD release party at a Carlsbad theater back in 2010, which attracted many fans and industry luminaries — AMA Hall of Famers David Bailey and Broc Glover included.

were Laurens Offner and Marty Moates.

AMA National Motocross champion, AMA Hall of Famer and industry CEO Mark Blackwell reflected thusly on Moates’ dramatic win: “I remember that as a watershed event. Like when Mary Tripes won the first Supercross in 1972, or when Jim Pomeroy won the Spanish GP. Of course, by 1980, the Americans had made significant progress against the Europeans, but Marty’s remained a breakthrough performance. Moates surprised many of us that day with his speed but also his smoothness. I remember thinking, ‘there is no way he can keep this up,’ but lap after lap he did, and then came back in the second moto equally strong.”

Motocross Action’s Zap Espinoza put it this way: “Marty Moates on a privateer Yamaha? Not supposed to happen.”

But it did.

And while Marty Moates is gone, his legendary efforts on that sweltering June day in San Diego County provided a tipping point for not only an entire cadre of top-level American riders, but for an entire industry and country. Nicely done, Marty Moates. AMA

The AMA off ers a variety of card types and designs for members. In addition to our standard card, we off er a number of themed cards that identify you as belonging to a specifi c group or speak to your passion as a motorcyclist.

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54 JEFF KARDAS AMERICAN MOTORCYCLIST • SEPTEMBER 2022

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