PHOTOS: Christophe Desmet
PHOTOS: Christophe Desmet
rom its original U.S. contingent of superstars—David Bailey, Ricky Johnson, Johnny O’Mara, and Broc Glover, all now AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famers—through the nineties era of Jeremy McGrath and Jeff Emig, the Paris SX at Bercy was a must-attend event. Things began to change when Ricky Carmichael ascended to the top of the sport early in this millennium and shied away from off-season overseas races, preferring to rest and heal before beginning his preseason boot camp. Ryan Villopoto and Ryan Dungey would later follow Carmichael’s career path, and getting AMA Supercross Champions on the starting gate in Paris was no longer a sure thing.
Take the 2019 version of the event, for instance. No AMA Supercross #1 from the past decade signed up for the event, nor did perennial contenders Eli Tomac, Ken Roczen, or France’s own Marvin Musquin. In fact, of the eight U.S.-based riders who went to Paris this year, only two—Justin Barcia and two-time champion Chad Reed—had ever won a 450SX main event. The lack of current superstar power forced the event promoters to get creative. Rather than throw their entire budget at one or two big names, they decided to invest in a more balanced field of world-class talent—just not current world champions.
I’ve been going to this race for a while now, first at its original locale in Bercy, a Paris suburb, then to the northern city of Lille for a couple of years, and now at the new La Defense Arena. I can’t tell you how many texts I get from quality riders wanting to know if I can make a call or send an email to the Paris promoters to try to get them in—this is still the one race you want to get into above all others. But most aren’t factory guys, at least not anymore.
In talking to some of the key people behind this race, it seems that between the rising price tags of elite riders and the growing concern of the OEMs about letting their athletes race overseas during the off-season, we should start getting used to these lesser lineups. Which is fine—so long as the racing is good.
When Anderson did come last year, he had a rather easy time of it on his way to the King of Paris crown, as did Musquin in his previous, just-as-easy triumphs. They may have brought star power to Paris, but they drained the event of any real drama because they were often in a class by themselves.
or 2019, parity ruled in Paris. Without one standout talent ruling the field, the Parisian fans saw four different race winners in the main events and several last-lap passes. The whole weekend left the crowd, and even the announcers, exhausted from the up-and-down emotion of it all.
To add to the fun, we even had some old-fashioned Bercy-style bar-banging when Ferrandis, on the last lap of the first semifinal race, cleaned out Stewart’s new teammate Justin Hill. By the last race of the weekend, the euphoria of the French fans was off the hook, despite the fact that their guys didn’t win.
o are the days of the elite racing Paris over?
“Top guys make too much money, so it doesn’t make sense to come here,” all-time King of Paris David Vuillemin, now a coach for Ferrandis, says. “They make 150K, 200K per win back home. It’s tough for the promoters here to pay $200,000. They paid that for James [Stewart] back in the day, but that’s tough to do it now. I don’t think [the stars] want to come anymore. They don’t want to come, so you have to pay them a huge amount of money, which you can’t really justify.”
“I don’t think this race needs the huge stars,” offers Paul Malin, MXGP commentator and former top GP competitor. “We saw the racing that it’s kind of producing, which is very good, because the one thing that it does do is it attracts mostly the same level of guys. In this field and this event, I think this weekend, we’ve got a good mix, a good caliber of everybody, and that produced good racing.”
David Vuillemin came into the race as a co-favorite with his Yamaha teammate Jeremy McGrath, but this one was no contest. DV rode amazing all weekend long, sweeping every main event and almost blowing the roof off of Bercy’s Palais Omnisports.
Further back, a young Chad Reed, riding a Jan de Groot Kawasaki and fresh off the GPs, came into the weekend riding aggressively and showing that he would be a factor in the U.S. in the upcoming year. He made a dicey pass on McGrath that left the King of Supercross on the ground, leading the two to have a chat afterward in the pits with everyone watching. It was Reed’s arrival on the world stage, and proof that he didn’t care who was in front of him.
Also from 2001—and I don’t know the whole story behind this—but Jean-Michel Bayle, retired from moto since 1992, rode practice on a Suzuki RM250 and was thinking about maybe even racing. It was the enigmatic JMB, so who knows? I remember he was faster than some pros at the time but elected not to race. Still, it was cool!
Of course the Alessis would come into this, right? I won’t go into all of the specifics, but Mike Alessi and Steve Boniface came together and crashed in one main event. Then Jeff Alessi and Boniface collided, and both guys went down. Eric Sorby waited in the tunnels of the Palais Omnisports to hold Mike up, allowing Sebastien Tortelli to ride by. The gong show continued with Jeff then rolling around on the ground, fighting another rider. It was peak WWF-meets-the-Alessis, and it made for a grand old time in the City of Lights.
Honda’s Justin Barcia crashed off the start and waited for hometown hero Gregory Aranda to come by—Barcia blamed Aranda for his crash. Bam Bam then took the Frenchman to the outside of a turn and cost him a win. This move had the fans raining down boos, whistles, and even garbage on the American. Aranda circled back to chat with Barcia and things got rowdy from there. Justin Barcia always delivers at this race, whether in drama or straight-up wins. 
“Yeah, I think they’re fine. They always come. It’s the biggest race of the off-season in Europe,” Vuillemin says when asked if the fans will keep coming, even if the sport’s elite don’t. “It’s been going on forever. I think it’s better to have good racing than having a Tomac that wins everything, or even me back then. When I was coming and winning all the races, I don’t think people were liking it. Because you start first, you check out, you ride by yourself. . . . If you bring somebody that’s a step above, then it makes a boring race. Nobody wants that.”
do believe this new arena—it’s the third time now we’ve been here—is good,” Malin adds. “It provides good racing. The start straight is long, the circuit is long enough—you can get a lot in it.
“Traditionally, this race, when it was in Bercy, was more like an arenacross,” he adds. “Sort of an overhyped arenacross, but people still came. The riders still came—they all came. But we have to look at rider commitments now: how many races they’re doing during the season, sponsor commitments with these riders, and time out and time on the bike and getting ready for what their bigger goal is. We already know a couple riders that you would have probably expected here before that didn’t show up at the Motocross of Nations. Probably again, political reasons, team reasons. . . . Maybe that comes into play here, even though one of their sponsors [Monster Energy] is quite well-branded here.“
e’re at a different junction in the sport compared to the days when Jeff Stanton, the multi-time AMA SX/MX Champion, made more money doing European races than his base salary from Honda. The once-thriving Euro SX circuit that had major races in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Geneva, Milan, and more has been reduced to just Paris and Geneva.
So while this race didn’t feature elite superstars, it did give the assembled masses what they wanted: action. Whether it’s Musquin or now Ferrandis, it’s more important to this race to have a top French rider than a top American.
“I always liked to come here and made good money,” Vuillemin says. “Maybe $50,000, $60,000 to come to this race in 2000 or something. But it’s more because we’re French. We like coming here. It’s home. When we race in the U.S., we have fans there, but the majority is not for the French guys!
“When we come here, it’s like a confidence booster. We see people we want to know, they take pictures, want autographs, scream for you. I think it’s important as a racer to feel like that sometimes. For a French guy, it’s kind of tough to always race in the U.S.”
It’ll be interesting to see if the promoters reach deeper into their pockets to bring the elite 450SX winners back to Paris or if they’re happy with what they saw this year. I know where my vote would be, as the 2019 edition of the Paris Supercross was by all accounts one of the best ever. 
