Carlsbad Raceway. 1977 & 1978 US Motocross Grand Prix World Motocross Champions Roger De Coster, Heikki Mikkola, Andre Malherbe, Brad Lackey, Hakan Anderson, Graham Noyce. Gerrit Wolsink, Jim Pomeroy & more. 8mm home movies
These Champions of THIS era are so much greater than todays motocrossers. It's really not the same sport is it? These giants of the sport had to make insufficient machinery work and THEY DID that so well. You can visually SEE the difference from this era to today so clearly. Guys like Mikkola, DeCoster and Lackey and a few others are supermen, and now history's immortals.
Seeing this brought back a lot of memories as a little kid watching ABC's Wide World of Sports. I remember thinking, "this is the coolest thing I've ever seen!
Went to a race at Unadila in july '77 . Believe it was a Trans Am. Sunday morning , massive hangover, pouring rain but we drove over 6 hours to see this race and i was determined to see some racing. It was still raining hard when they dropped the gate. Can't remember who grabbed the hole shot but I didn't follow MX that closely to care who won so was going to walk around the track and find a jump , tight corner or other interesting spot to watch the race from. . Believe they raced counter clockwise here and if i walked around the track that way it would require me to go down and up this steep canyon. Still suffering with all the Genesee Cream Ale i drunk the night before i walked clockwise from start/ finish line because there was a path that was much flatter. Heard the bikes coming toward me climbing the far side of the canyon but could only catch a glimpse of them through the trees. When they reached part of track that went doan my side of the.canyon it was somewhat weird. On this first lap you could hear the raunchy caunaphony of a few dozen two strokes still tightly packed on this first lap and then , almost right in front of me it suddenly got a lot quieter. Not totally quiet but it no longer sounded like a swarm of hornets. Saw one bike. It was Rodger DeCoster on his Suzuki smooth as silk even in the pouring rain. Seemed like minutes later and i heard the sound of the only 4- stroke of 600 plus cc that were allowed to be much bigger than the 500 cc limit of the open class two strokes. Finally reached the area where the rest of the field was. They were all bunched up on a part of the course i believe they called " gravity cavity " . It consisted of a sharp left that went straight down but not all the way down this canyon and a180° off camber turn and right back up almost the way they went down. Well in the pouring rain on a track like Unidilla which really isn't a track 99% of the year but a cow pasture which is nice loam including some cow poop just to give iit that authentic country smell and be really annoying when your body, bike and goggles are completely covered with it. So there i was at the top of this little detour watching America's top motocross riders as they repeatedly attempted to get back up this hill and no one but Roger and the Brit on the four stroke could manage it. Bob Hannah, Jim Pomeroy Brad Lackey and even the other Europeans couldn't get up this hill from a dead start. At first they tried to keep their cool but it quickly got ugly. A lot of the Americans were from Southern California where the song claims it never rains. Well Unidilla is northern New York and it was really pouring. I would have normally been somewhere dry when it rained this hard but you couldn't have dragged me from this spectacle. Guys starting their bikes and fishtaling wildly trying to get their bikes pointing up hill until they were thrown off and their bike flying into ropes and then tumbling end over end to bottom. Some riders wheelieing out but with same result . Bike tumbling or sliding right back to bottom. The bikes were so covered with sticky mud that the riders got confused on what bike belonged to who and some riders, probably frustrated by the situation , got into minor scuffles. Smarter riders tried collaborating but it was to no avail. None but the previously mentioned could navigate that part of the track. Some riders gave up and slipped their bikes under ropes and quietly slipped back to the pits. And that was it. Twenty minutes were up. Race over. Cleared up and second moto they just eliminated that part of track by moving some ropes and most spectators and racers were much happier. I enjoyed the second race but not as much as i enjoyed watching the mayhem of the first. Really separated the men from the boys.
It started before. suzuki put out an 186 lb 500cc 2 stroke for r/d in the early 70’s. It was so far advanced the euro brands complained to the fim and the weight limits were raised. Suzuki had already delivered the works bikes to the belgian teams who had to add balast to conform to the minimum weight. ‘73 maico debuted moved up shocks that willy brewer came up two points short of knocking r/d off. It went from there ‘till now.
Wow! What a time warp. 56 years old now but remember in '77 & '78 when I was 11 & 12 years old watching these races on tv. Had a KX80 when I was a kid. Offroad motorbiking, what an incredible sport.
