wenty years ago, it didn’t seem like a big deal, but in hindsight, it was. The 1999 Paris-Bercy Supercross at the Palais Omnisport is most remembered for being the first time that French hero David Vuillemin won King of Bercy honors as the best overall finisher in the three nights of racing. Le Cobra edged out AMA Supercross Champion Jeremy McGrath for the honors, much to the delight of the partisan crowd. But it’s what happened a little further back that would become much more significant in the history of Europe’s biggest stadium race, as well as the sport in general.

Ricky Carmichael, then a three-time AMA 125cc National Champion, was paid $50,000 by the event promoters in start money to attend Bercy for the first time. Then a Kawasaki factory rider, he had already moved up the 250 class in AMA Supercross, but he was not yet considered one of the elite riders like McGrath, who was paid twice as much as anyone to race Bercy. As a matter of fact, Carmichael had yet to even reach a podium in the 250 class.

The ’99 format called for two motos per night on a track where the leader’s average lap time was about 40 seconds. McGrath, riding a Chaparral Yamaha YZ250, started out strong, winning the opening race over Vuillemin and Honda of Troy’s Mike Brown. In the second main, however, McGrath suffered a broken carburetor needle, dropping him back to 13th while Vuillemin rode away with a popular win. Jeremy would not lose another main for the weekend, but that opening-night DNF cost him the King of Bercy crown.

Carmichael’s weekend was a washout. On Friday night he crashed out of the opening main and then finished third the second time out. In practice on Saturday afternoon, Ricky crashed over the bars, breaking his collarbone. His Bercy SX debut was finished, his preparation to become a full-time 250cc rider put on hold.

So what happened that was so significant? When Carmichael went home to Florida, he and his family and longtime advisor Johnny O’Mara decided he needed to hire a trainer. O’Mara knew Aldon Baker from his cycling days and invited him to Florida to work with the slightly overweight Carmichael and whip him into shape. Together they worked on his fitness and diet, as well as his racing, all of it focused on winning championships. They also made the calculation that the Bercy SX payday—or any other payday, for that matter—wasn’t worth the time away from training, let alone the risk of injury.

The next season, a trimmer, fitter Carmichael got his first AMA Supercross podium at the third round in Phoenix, then scored his first 250 win at Daytona. One year later, he would usurp McGrath as AMA Supercross Champion, winning 14 of 16 rounds. In the following years he would add four more AMA Supercross titles to end his career with five, as well as ten straight AMA Pro Motocross titles. He also blazed a different trail in how top athletes conduct their careers, choosing training and rest in the off-season over those easier paydays in Europe.

“Can you believe that at the peak of my career I was turning down as much as $200,000 for one overseas race?” Carmichael says today. “Think of all of the off-season races there were at the time and the money I left on the table. . . . If I could go back in time, I might have done things a little differently.” When it’s pointed out that all of the major championship bonuses—12 after that fateful ’99 Bercy SX—were worth much more than all of those overseas races together might have paid, the GOAT just shrugs and says, “I still can’t believe I turned all that money down.”