Reason for Being
Davey Coombs
Reason For Being
By Davey Coombs
Davey Coombs
Reason For Being
By Davey Coombs
W

hen Junior Scarborough’s WW Motocross Ranch on the edge of Jacksonville, Florida, made its Lucas Oil Pro Motocross debut in June, it marked the first time in 22 years that the Sunshine State had been a part of the series. The last outdoor national held in Florida took place at Gatorback Cycle Park, and it marked the opening round of that year’s AMA 125/250 National Motocross Championship. Obviously, a great deal has changed in the nearly two dozen years in between Gatorback ’97 and WW Ranch ’19.

Gatorback Cycle Park '97
This was the first brushstroke on the masterpiece that would be his professional motocross career
Back in March ’97, motocross actually overlapped with the supercross calendar, as the race marked the kickoff of dirt bikes as part of Daytona’s Bike Week. Bill West was the promoter back then, and he was constantly having to make the argument that an outdoor race in Florida could only work at the beginning of March, because it would be too hot to draw a crowd otherwise. Bill would know—he was also the promoter of the old St. Petersburg National, which Gatorback would replace in ’83. St. Pete was a couple hours south of Gatorback and last ran on May 2, 1982. The day was smoking hot and didn’t draw many spectators, though the ones who did go saw a moment of motocross history as Brooksville’s Kenny Keylon, a Honda support rider, became the first Floridian to ever win an outdoor national.

The ones who came to Gatorback in ’97 also saw some history, though few of them probably realized its significance at the time. The 250 Class (now 450 Class) was won by Kawasaki’s Jeff Emig, the defending series champ, in front of a decent-sized crowd. He topped the Suzuki-mounted Jeremy McGrath in both motos, with Manchester Honda’s Damon Bradshaw third on his Honda CR250R.

Even more memorable than the results was the fact that the race also marked the debut of the game-changing Yamaha YZM400, a prototype four-stroke that Doug Henry piloted to a modest eighth overall. Two months later, Henry and the 400 would change the course of global dirt bike racing when he won the Las Vegas Supercross finale.

Yet Henry wasn’t the only four-stroke in the field. There was also a KTM 620 that Tom Moen had converted to a 550 for Lance Smail. Smail was doing pretty well in the first moto before the bike bogged out, and I actually ended up interviewing him for ESPN2. Lance finished the second moto in 11th place, the same position Henry finished in the first moto, but no one really talked about Smail’s race—it was Henry’s Yamaha that got all the buzz and ultimately led to the sport’s massive paradigm shift from two-strokes to four-strokes.

That day’s 125 motos would also have some significance that wouldn’t manifest itself until years later. Team Honda’s Steve Lamson, the two-time defending 125cc National Champion, was the heavy pre-race favorite, and he responded by winning the first moto. The second moto, however, went differently. Lamson and the rest of the field were upstaged by a rookie from Havana, Florida, who was riding in only his second outdoor national. Seventeen-year-old Ricky Carmichael, riding the #70 Splitfire/Pro Circuit Kawasaki KX125, absolutely obliterated everyone the second time out to win the overall, his first outdoor national win. This was the first brushstroke of the masterpiece that would be his professional motocross career, as Carmichael would go on to add 101 more outdoor national wins as well as 10 consecutive titles.

Ricky’s success was also the beginning of a shift in the balance of power in American motocross from the West Coast to the East, as Carmichael and his team decided he would live and train in Florida, bucking a system that had long required factory riders to set up in California. Now the vast majority of top riders base themselves in the Southeast rather than the Golden State.

And yet the outdoor national series did not follow Carmichael’s lead. Instead, besieged by requests from the factories and criticism from editors like Jody Weisel, who famously called Gatorback “the orphan national,” Bill West decided to turn his Gatorback MX date into the Tampa SX the next year. It would take all these years for the series to return, though it wasn’t at Gatorback, nor was it in the middle of supercross. No matter, the new outdoor national at WW Ranch was a big success, and hopefully pro motocross is back in Florida to stay.