40 Years of Supercross: 1997

Roger DeCoster of Suzuki sensed an opening and pounced. Between DeCoster, Suzuki of Troy dealer Phil Alderton, and McGrath, the switch (in late-December!) was made to Suzuki.

In an interview with Cycle News before the season started, McGrath summed up the switch. “It wasn’t about money; it was the politics of the contract. I was always happy at Honda, but the terms of the new contract were getting really technical and I wasn’t ready for that. I don’t need that kind of pressure and those kinds of rules.”

The deal was a little different. MC was on a factory bike but got to keep some of his own sponsors, like 1-800-COLLECT, and the Suzuki of Troy dealership was also a big part of the program. But he would ride out of the factory Suzuki rig with teammates Mike LaRocco, Greg Albertyn, and Mickael Pichon (who would go on to miss the entire indoor series after breaking his leg in the opening round). The team also had the Tim Ferry for the 125 East Region class. McGrath also lost his long time mechanic Skip Norfolk, who decided to step away from the travel grind. Jeremy went with former factory Honda and Kawasaki wrench Wyatt Seals.

In other news, Damon Bradshaw moved on from factory Yamaha to his own Honda-based MHR team, Doug Henry recovered from his back injury and was ready to go on a factory Yamaha, and Mike Kiedrowski had come out of retirement to rock the #100 for Honda of Troy. And some team called Moto XXX showed up and weirded things out for a while. Read this for a complete history of Moto XXX.

Southern California was also deluged with rain during the off-season, which made getting time on the Suzuki tough for McGrath.The series would kick off with the first two rounds right where supercross was born—the LA Coliseum. Anaheim Stadium was undergoing renovations and would be off the schedule for a few years.

If you had Greg Albertyn winning the opener for his first (and only) supercross win and McGrath getting fifteenth in the main in your supercross pool then step right up because you’re the winner!

In a bit of foreshadowing, McGrath got together with ex-Honda teammate Steve Lamson in the first turn of the first main event and went down. Amazingly, Lamson and McGrath would hit again on the first lap. Jeremy went down a total of three times in that first lap, and according to Cycle News, he would spend the rest of the night with his goggles around his handlebars just circling the track.

“When you fall, get taken out or whatever, three times on one lap, it’s like God, what do you think?” he told Cycle News after the race. “But I love my bike. I got an excellent start and it was just my time to have some bad luck.”

Albee passed early leader Jeff Emig and withstood the pressure of Henry to take the win. Larry Ward finished third on the Honda of Troy, fresh off of an injury. How fresh? After the race he showed Cycle News reporter Kit Palmer the screw that had been taken out his ankle earlier in the week. One day we’ll do a “Larry Ward Stories” column on Racer X. Here's the first round and the second round. 

The next week Henry got his second career supercross win with McGrath scoring a third. It appeared that he was warming up at this point. Here's the second round in LA. 

In Tempe the next week, McGrath was second behind Emig, and Kawasaki’s Ryan Hughes was third. Also, privateer hero Ty Birdwell was eighteenth in the main on his Steve Matthes-tuned KX250 (just in case you were wondering).Here's the Phoenix round. 

The next week in Seattle, where McGrath had previously been successful (though, where hadn’t he won?), he finished second behind a resurgent Doug Henry. 

Yamaha’s gamble on Henry and his broken back was paying off big time. After he crashed at Budds Creek in 1995, he didn’t come back to Honda, and Yamaha gave him a bargain-basement deal. He missed the first half of the 1996 supercross season and only won one moto during the 1996 outdoor nationals. No one expected this type of torrid start to the season, as Henry, with the two early wins, led the points.

“I never start off seasons this well!” Henry told Cycle News. “So I’m just as surprised as anyone else.” Henry led the series by 13 points over Ward, who went third in Seattle (no word on whether Larry was still carrying around his screw). MC was fourth; he had gotten two podiums in the first four races and was still adjusting to his Suzuki.

A highlight of Seattle for me was Albertyn calling himself “a wanker” in Cycle News for his uninspired riding.

Emig won the next week in Indianapolis, and McGrath struggled with clutch issues and finished ninth. Emig’s teammate Damon Huffman would win his one and only premier-class supercross the next week in Atlanta. Huffman was looked upon as one of the future stars (in fact, three of Cycle News’ writers had picked Damon as the runner-up to McGrath in the points before the season started), and this win validated that. Unfortunately, Huffman crashed on the Monday after Atlanta and broke his ankle.

Emig captured another win the next week in Daytona, and now Jeffro, who had broken Jeremy’s streak the year before, was inching his way into contention for the title. McGrath got another third. Henry was still the points leader at this point and was riding well. Here's Daytona 1997. 

Finally, McGrath got on the board with a win the next week in Minneapolis, a city that he absolutely owned throughout his career. The #1 Suzuki got the start, put in ten hard laps, and cruised to an easy win. These are all Jeremy McGrath trademarks. Don’t look now, but The King is heating up. Here's Minneapolis. 

The first turning point of the 1997 series came the next week at Houston when Chaparral Yamaha’s Jimmy Button tangled with Henry early in the main event, which resulted in a broken hand for Henry. He was now out of the title hunt, and Emig would get his fourth win in the Astrodome. More importantly for Emig, he was now the points leader, and McGrath was in second.

Yamaha’s Ezra Lusk took his first 250cc supercross win in Orlando with McGrath second and Emig third. (What a team Yamaha had in Henry, Lusk, John Dowd, and Kevin Windham, right?)

McGrath won his second race of the season the next week in St. Louis, and Emig finished second. McGrath’s undefeated streak had ended in the same location a year before. Lusk was now feeling frisky and finished third.

Lusk won again in Pontiac the next week, with Kevin Windham and Larry Ward rounding out the podium. McGrath led eighteen out of twenty laps in Pontiac, he gave up the lead and the win after a small tip-over. It was a shocker because McGrath never, ever tipped over and gave wins away like that. From someone who was sitting in the stands and right there when he fell, it was a strange sight indeed.

“This feels great,” Windham told Cycle News. “Especially for me coming back from injury. “And I’m happy for Yogi (Lusk) and Yamaha. We’ve been working so hard.” Windham was on his way to another 125 West SX title and was using Pontiac as a warm-up race after an injury.

McGrath finished fifth and was lucky to make up points on Emig, who never quite got into the groove and would finish seventh. With three races left, the gap was just 2 points, but McGrath was just two laps away from opening up a 7-point lead on Emig. Still, most people thought the title was MC’s for the taking. He had the most podiums and was one win behind Emig.

Pontiac was also the same location that Mike LaRocco didn’t show up to race for Suzuki and asked to be let out of his contract. (His request was refused.) LaRocco was unhappy with the lack of works parts for his RM250, but some of the same parts he requested were on McGrath’s #1 bike. After his request was turned down, the Rock came back the next week and finished the year with Suzuki. For 1998, he’d go his own way on a privateer Honda with a little-known suspension shop named Factory Connection. Hmmm, you think that will work out?

Charlotte was the series’ next turning point. Lusk and Windham would dominate again, but the order was reversed. Windham (a 125 rider) won the somewhat-muddy main event. It was the first time a 125 rider won a 250 race. The event was held at the Charlotte Speedway, not the old downtown stadium.

“I’m not used to those last five laps and I was definitely watching Yogi catch me,” said Windham to Cycle News after the race. “I had to dig deep to win this.”

McGrath was second behind Windham for most of the race when he came around with a flat tire—very rare in supercross.

“Another night of bad luck,” said McGrath after the race. “Actually I was more mad last week (Pontiac) because that was in my control. This, there was nothing I could do.”

MC would hold on for a ninth but Emig finished just off the podium in fourth and opened up even more of a points lead. The lead was six points, in fact, with just two races left.

By the way, if you’re Damon Bradshaw fan (who isn’t?), he had a decent supercross season on the Honda, but the old magic just wasn’t there. The Beast from the East only got one podium indoors (Vegas). As a mechanic that year, I can remember many practices and qualifiers where Damon would be very upset at other riders, so even though there weren’t any wins, he was still very much “Bad-Shaw.” 

The title was effectively decided the next week in Dallas. Heavy rains made the track a quagmire, and McGrath could only manage to get a fourth after a crash and the sloppy conditions. This wasn’t bad, but Emig grabbed the holeshot and took off with a convincing, and dare we say it, clutch win.

“I knew that when I came here I had to be mentally strong, and when it rained some people wanted it canceled, but I thought ‘Come on, let’s do it,’“ said Emig after the race. “I was confident that I could get some points, but you never know with Jeremy. I wouldn’t be that confident with a 24-point lead, never mind 13!”

Thirteen points—that’s a lot, and then again, maybe it’s not. Emig had the pressure on him going into the last round in Las Vegas while McGrath could hang it out and hope for the best. The race was a bit anticlimactic. Emig rode around for an easy fifth and McGrath ended up seventh. McGrath didn’t have much of a shot, as he had actually cut his foot in a household incident the week before the race, and wasn’t 100 percent. Jeff Emig had officially dethroned four-time champion Jeremy McGrath and taken the 1997 250 Supercross Championship,

“I was so damn nervous,” Emig told Cycle News after the race. “Everybody told me to do this or do that, and I was trying to focus and the pressure got to me. That’s why I give a lot of credit to Jeremy for handling the pressure so well for four years.”

It’s also important to note that Henry came back from his injury and won his third main event of the year. That wasn’t really the big news; the big deal was that he rode a works Yamaha YZM400 four-stroke machine. With the dry, slick, blue-groove Vegas track suiting the power delivery of the four-stroke, Henry won his heat and walked away to the first-ever win for a four-stroke on a supercross track.

We didn’t know it then, but it was just the first of many for a thumper. Yamaha and Doug Henry were ahead of the curve.

Meanwhile, in the 125SX classes we saw Yamaha’s Kevin Windham walk to an expected 125 West SX title. Robbie Reynard on the Primal Impulse Honda team gave him a run here and there. Frenchman David Vuillemin raced a few events and won one, showing that he was going to be a player if he ever came over full-time (he did eventually). Even Moto XXX’s Brian Deegan won a memorable second round at the Coliseum. But it was “Windstorm” who proved to be the best of the best and set himself up for a great 1998 250SX rookie season.

In the East Region, Pro Circuit Kawasaki’s Ricky Carmichael made his supercross debut. He was certainly one of the biggest-hyped amateur riders ever and had made his official pro debut at the last national in 1996. Wearing #70 for the ’97 season and riding with the throttle pinned and his jersey hanging out the back, Carmichael showed a ton of speed by winning three races, but also showed his inexperience with a ton of crashes along the way to end up third in the series.

Suzuki’s Tim Ferry wouldn’t win a race but would withstand the wins of Carmichael, John Dowd, and Stephane Roncada to take the 1997 125 East Region SX crown. Making the podium in every race but two, Ferry rode consistently and allowed the other riders to make mistakes. He’s still a champion in many people’s eyes for his incredible riding. And he may or may not be a good friend of mine.

The Dave Coombs Sr. East/West shootout in Las Vegas was highly anticipated for a possible battle between Windham and Carmichael. And early in the main event, that’s exactly what happened. Windham would catch and pass Carmichael to take the win in a nice ride, but it wasn’t without a big battle. Both riders would be rivals for the next seven years indoors and out.

Big things lay ahead for 1998. McGrath’s Suzuki experiment hadn’t worked, so The old King would switch brands again. And the defending champion would struggle with the weight of the number one, but that’s another story for another day. How about tomorrow?