Too much too young?
Published: 10th April 2008
Author: Words by Steve Matthes Photo by Steve Cox
Pro programmes and factory wages at an early age are producing a white hot crop of young guns - but is it at a price worth paying?
“You say you want a revolution, well you know, we all want to change the world…” So sang the Beatles a while ago. They were probably not talking about the young riders coming up into the world of professional motocross racing but they could’ve been. The revolution is that in the last few years we’ve seen an incredible amount of very fast kids come into our sport and show us they are ready for prime time.
Years ago in the ’80s a guy like Guy Cooper travelled the circuit for three or four years before finally getting that elusive factory ride, nowadays if you are on the circuit that long and don’t get a ride you’d better be applying at Starbucks. If riders like Coops are a slow cooking pot of stew, these kids are the microwave oven dinners - no seasoning needed, just pull straight out of the amateurs and watch ’em go!
Yamaha’s Josh Hill has actually won a SX this year when he had all of 11 career 450 races under his belt to go with his other podiums in his rookie year in the big boys Supercross class. Rockstar/Makita Suzuki’s Ryan Dungey went from the ‘B’ class to winning Mains and he got a second in only his third ever 450 race! Torco Racing Fuels Trey Canard has come out in his rookie year and dominated the East series and he’s easily handling another young superstar Ryan Villopoto in the process. Monster Energy/Pro Circuit’s Austin Stroupe has come out and won his first supercross in his first year. Makita/Rockstar’s Nico Izzi has been a presence on the podium in his first year as well. These kids are supposed to learn the ropes for a bit, then step up. What they are doing is showing veterans like David Vuillemin, Josh Grant and Brett Metcalfe how it’s done.
So why are these kids so freaking fast? Well it’s simple really, the money that is in the sport drives the riders to push harder than before to make sure that they are running a ‘pro’ programme well before they get to the pro ranks. The salaries of the top riders coming out of Loretta’s is at least 100K. Consider this, when Ricky Carmichael came out as the winningest amateur rider ever he went straight onto what was and still is the best Lites team there is - Pro Circuit. RC’s salary? Thirty thousand dollars! That wouldn’t even cover the ‘travel stipends’ that some of the top amateur riders receive from the factories today.
Former factory Suzuki rider and two-time Japanese MX champion Ronnie Tichenor trains a lot of the top amateurs and continues to work with Izzi as he starts his pro career. Ronnie reckons that it’s the fact that the kids of today are well coached from an early age. “From nine to 16 the kids are doing corner turns and learning how to go fast. We never did that when I was coming up, we just rode laps. The only guy I ever saw do corner drills and figure eights was RC and look how that turned out.
“I think that the kids at a young age have people like me that used to race pro and can steer them the right way. Just to help them avoid the mistakes that all of us guys did back in the day. We can get them on the right track as far as training and riding for what it takes in the pros. The kids are having a pro style education already. We’re making them go two 40-minute motos because that’s what the pros do. These kids are ready and raring to go. They’re even practising scrubbing like James Stewart!”
But at what price are they paying going so hard at such an early age? The parents of these kids are investing heavily into their sons’ and daughters’ careers but for every Trey Canard and Josh Hill there are more examples of kids who were just rushed into the pros early and could never adapt to the demands and pressures. Homeschooling is becoming all the rage as more and more kids get into trouble at school for missing classes. The amateur motocross scene is just like the riders, getting bigger and better. There are two Texas races, Loretta Lynn’s, Ponca City and the World Mini Grand Prix in Las Vegas just to name a few. Homeschooling is a way for the kids and parents to still travel to these big races and somewhat keep their children learning and growing off the track.
“All these kids have riding coaches and some have trainers,” adds Tichenor. “I just really think the homeschooling thing stinks, it robs the kid of a normal education and all the social aspects of being in school. There’s no way around it, the school’s funding is based on attendance and there’s no way a rider can keep going to the big amateur races and still have good attendance.”
We really are seeing something special in our sport right now, a complete takeover by some really fast kids that has me thinking that if you’re a rider such as Josh Grant - someone that once was a hot young thing and hasn’t won a title yet - your window might have closed. I really hope that we can see some sort of ‘pullback’ from the factories on these development deals that are being handed out with some kids being locked up at the age of 14. This process makes the parents think that they’re on the way to the factory gravy train and they may well be but it’s a far from certain thing. The homeschooling is not far away after this whole process starts. I know that we in motocross and other sports love to hype and celebrate the accomplishments of the young athletes but there’s a tendency to forget just how young these guys really are.
There are whispers that maybe the minimum age of these kids should be changed from 16 to 18 - that’s only two years in age but may as well be five in maturity levels (well, for most of us anyways). Davey Coombs, the editor of Racer X, agrees with that idea as he’s seen the results of too much at too young of an age in all his years covering the sport.
For myself I really think it’s a double-edged sword seeing all these kids doing well. I’m one of those guys that think we need parity in our sport - when the fans don’t know who’s going to win, that’s when the excitement kicks in. The young riders that are so full of enthusiasm and gumption can only push the malaise that has seeped into the 450 class. The Lites class has become a safe haven for riders as with the new rules that kicked in last year they only get one shot at the Supercross class before they cannot move back down. Why not stay in the class as long as possible? It’s smart business for a professional motorcycle rider. The rider turnout is so low for the Supercross class that there’s no qualifying, heck in the LCQ at Minneapolis there were only 14 riders on the 22-man gate!
Supercross series promoters Live Nation are looking at ways to get more guys into the 450s, they know as well as we do that the Supercross class needs a kick in the butt to stir the interest. Maybe these guys like Hill, Dungey and Tommy Hahn doing so well in the 450s will make some of the lifetime Lites riders move on up.
But the downside to that is that every parent will think that their son can be just like Trey and Josh and Ryan and maybe they can. But what happens to them if they can’t?