One-Two-Five Heroes
ONE-TWO-FIVE HEROES
Yesterday's champions meeet today's 1255s on the Track of Dreams
JIMMY LEWIS
"IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME." It was a subconscious, almost holy voice in my head, like something from a movie.
“Give them new 125s with full tanks of premix,” the voice continued. “Arrange for a perfectly groomed and watered track. Bring a photographer and some sandwiches. And put number ones on the bikes’ plates, for respect.” Early one morning, at the fittingly named MX Compound northeast of San Diego, we unloaded the
1999 Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha 125s from the Cycle World box van and set them on stands. All four were painstakingly set-up with virgin Dunlop 762 knobbies front and rear, pristine FMF 909 handlebars and grips, and the requisite Factory Effex number-one plates. The track, too, was in ideal condition, doused by an overnight rain. The only thing left to do was sit back and wait for our heroes to emerge from the chapparal and manzanita lining the course.
It was then that we noticed the deep voice from above wasn’t there anymore...
All of a sudden, the port-a-john door burst open and Mark Barnett emerged-to no one’s surprise, really, since I’d picked him up earlier that morning. Edging in on the dirt entrance road was a smooth-looking white Chevy Suburban carrying none other than Broc Glover. Sliding in a few seconds later came a jacked-up, fat-tired 4x4 with Marty Smith at the controls. And a few minutes after that, Jeff Ward arrived in a racy-looking Lincoln Navigator.
No introductions were necessary. With eight of the first 10 AMA 125cc National Championships between them, these riders had met before. And they apparently were anxious to resume their past rivalries, or at least just roost around the track: Quicker than you could recite their collective accomplishments, they were suited up and stabbing at the bikes’ kickstarters.
“Hold it-photos first!” I proclaimed, overcoming my desire to just sit back and watch. Before the quartet soiled their duds, we forced them to work for a minute or two, winking at the camera lens. But as soon as the shutter snapped,
the imaginary
starting
gate dropped and the four 125s exploded from a standstill, singing their 12,000-rpm songs as one of the most talented groups ever assembled began circulating the racetrack.
As the 125 heroes rode, we stood trackside, reviving old memories. Photographer Kinney Jones recalled the 1977
Hangtown National, where he was a fledgling Pro trying to qualify alongside Smith, Barnett and Glover. For Honda technician Eric Crippa, it was horrific memories of bad hotel beds, two-lane roads and hoofing it from national to national with then-riders Kent Howerton or Chuck Sun in the Team Husqvama van. For me, it was being glued to the fence at a Golden State National at Saddleback Park, where I’d talked my dad into staying over ’til Sunday to watch the Pros do some pre-season testing on fresh works bikes. Though the bikes and gear have changed by leaps and bounds, the silhouettes of these four riders, their style, their stature and most of their speed still remain.
Looking at Marty Smith, you’d find it hard to believe that he was winning races 25 years ago instead of just 10. Hardly showing his age, the 42-year-old still rides every day while
conducting his MX clinics, and credits his youthfulness to riding. “I have the same drive and enthusiasm to ride now as when I was winning championships,” he said. “Like any athlete will tell you, you have to have that drive. I got hurt real bad and lost that drive, so I finished up my contracts and got out. Now I’m back,” he added, as if he were going racing again.
Featured in countless Honda promotions through the 1970s, the one-time “Teen Idol” drove a Porsche to high school and was arguably the first American MX superstar. So popular was Smith and his #522 Honda that entire 125cc amateur starting grids were populated with number 500something Elsinores painted fire-engine red.
For old times’ sake we put Smith on the ’99 CR125, and he cut laps on it as though it were his own. Though the Honda has an Expert’s edge, it didn’t bother the two-time 125cc champ one bit. “I love the new 125s, especially the Yamaha,” he declared, displaying no brand loyalty whatsoever. “People ask me to do vintage stuff all the time, but I hate it. There’s no (suspension) travel. I like to look at (the old bikes), but that’s as far as it goes.”
On the Yamaha, it was the familiar face of Broc Glover.
Still fitting the blonde,
SoCal-surfer image to a tee, the former “Golden Boy” of MX is aging well. “I’m 29, at least for my Hollywood career,” he jibed. “But after riding, I’ll feel at least 40!”
Now 38, Glover is PJ 1 Oil’s brand manager. And although he is heavily involved in the motorcycle industry, he doesn’t get on a bike that often anymore. “I only ride a tank-and-a-half a year,” he admitted. You couldn’t tell from his speed around the racetrack.
“These bikes are so forgiving; they’re twice as good as what we had back then,” Glover reported after a stint aboard the YZ-this coming from a guy who debuted some of the trickest bikes of the era. “It was cool to have something that no one else had, but sometimes when we got the new works bikes, I just wanted to cry. They were that bad. Yamaha was famous for racing production bikes against the works bikes, too,” the three-time 125cc champ continued. “I wish the production Yamahas were as good back then as they are nowadays.”
Mark “The Bomber” Barnett and his screaming yellow Suzuki aren’t far removed from their glory days,
either. “I don’t get to ride much during the Supercross season,” explained Barnett, who with Dirt Werks builds 15 of the AMA’s 16 indoor tracks, “but in the off-season I ride a bit, mostly on 250s now.”
Benchracing with Barnett and Glover, we heard more stories than it would be possible to re-tell. “I remember you guys lapped me at the last national the first year you got number one,” Barnett relayed to Glover. “I remember thinking,
‘How do they go that fast?”’
“I remember the first time seeing you, #322, at Petersburg. You were going good,” rebutted Glover, and the mutual respect of dueling champions went on, moto by moto, tum by tum. And as we dug through some photos from the CW archives, there were plenty of shots of Glover leading Barnett. “I got used to riding with ‘The Bomber’ right behind me. It was every week, twice, for 40 minutes,” recalled Glover.
“I would just wait for him to make a mistake, but he never did,” responded Barnett.
“Our bikes were good ’cause they were light,” remembered Barnett. “I had bikes that were 15 pounds lighter than everyone else’s. These guys (today) don’t have to worry about breaking nothing, either. If we hit something hard every lap, we’d break a wheel or spring off the track.” “Especially on a 175-pound Suzuki,” added Glover with a sneer, recalling the 215pound, liquid-cooled, radiator-onthe-handlebar Yamaha he spent a season de-bugging.
True to tradition, the RM125 still feels lighter than the other eighth-liters, and it’s flickable, too. “We used to ride a lot more over the back of the bike, hunched over the front, where today they stand up over the front with the bars way forward,” Barnett said, comparing the difference in style. “I couldn’t go back to the old bars we used.” But the three-time champ can still rail a berm like nobody’s business, and even hooked-in the ultra-rough uphill section of the MX Compound track, just for the punishment.
“I like my bikes to have good low-end and midrange,” said Barnett, fairly describing the RM’s power characteristics. “Today, the bikes come set-up. We had to do motor work, and you couldn’t just come in and do a shock clicker. You had to change the whole shock or the spring.”
Finally, we had Jeff Ward, now a bonafide Indy Racing League driver, looking right at home on the green Kawasaki. Though the ’99 KX125’s engine is worlds better than the ’98 model’s midrange-only screamer, Ward wasn’t as impressed as the rest. “My 1984 works bike was just as fast, and maybe even lighter than today’s bikes,” he declared. “Maybe today’s bikes handle the bigger jumps better...”
Some will claim that “Wardy” is just as fast, too. Earlier this year, just for fun, the 37-year-old entered the 250cc Pro race at the season-opening CMC Golden State National, and led until a gust of wind took him out over a jump. Nursing a tender knee as a result, Ward still was ripping around the MX Compound racetrack. Unfortunately, the KX bogged up the face of a double-jump, prompting Ward to press the Eject button and park it for the day. Not that the bike was totally at fault: “It’s been a while since I’ve been on a 125,” admitted Ward.
Though he’s busy racing Indycars, Ward still keeps tabs on the MX scene. “I see the outdoor tracks on TV, and I see the same bumps and berms and rocks in the same spots, almost,” he said. Comparing car racing to motocross, Ward noted, “Mentally, the hard work involved is the same. On the track, it’s the same. You have to think as much about what the guy next to you is going to do as what you’re doing.”
Ward stretched out his MX career for a long, long time, eventually becoming the only rider to win the 125, 250, 500 and Supercross titles. “I upped my level every year, but I went through a lot of competitorsBamett and Broc, Hannah, then O’Mara, Lechien, Johnson, Stanton, Bradshaw. There was always someone coming up who was young and fearless...guys like Barnett,” he said. “In practice, it’d be hot and I’d get tired, wondering what I was going to do at the 45minute mark in the race. Then I’d see (workout fanatic) Barnett, and he’d be chewing on nails. I learned from that. I just trained harder.” Hearing this and realizing his mistake, Barnett said,
“I shouldn’t have shown everyone that I was training so much.”
Glover nodded, then added another observation about modern racing. “The guys today practice jumps, where we’d go and practice berms. It’s just different.”
Another thing that’s different today is the increased number of races on the schedule-a fact that frustrates the old guard as they watch their records being broken. “When we were racing, the 125 series was six or eight races in a year. If you were lucky, you’d get five national wins in a season,” recalled Barnett, who nonetheless stands atop the 125cc alltime-winners list with 25 victories.
“They should do it by percentages. That would be the fair way,” added Glover.
Listening to these 125 heroes, I thought about what they meant to our sport. Smith, Glover, Barnett and Ward all got into motocross before it was trendy-before there even was such a thing as Supercross-and helped pave the way to today’s million-dollar salaries. Modern-day superstars like Jeremy McGrath and Ricky Carmichael owe a debt of gratitude to these pioneers.
As the day wore on, however, past memories gave way to present realities. Ward had to pick up his son from school. Ditto Smith. Glover’s cell phone was out of range, but his pager was bouncing off the rev-limiter. Heroes or no heroes, the real world was demanding their return.
Later, I sat alone with Barnett, who had played hooky from building the Anaheim Supercross track and didn’t need to be anywhere anytime soon. As I looked over the deserted MX Compound, ‘The Bomber’ picked up his head from a stare at the Suzuki and, fresh as ever, asked, “You ready for a moto?” Hell yes, I was.
