To make matters more confusing, the European rounds would count for the new FIM World Supercross Championship, but not the traditional AMA Supercross Championship. Daytona would count as part of the AMA Series, but not the World SXGP. Any rider who didn’t race in Europe was not eligible for the World SX GP title. In Las Vegas, two separate champions would be crowned.

Carmichael and Honda elected not to do the December rounds in Geneva, Switzerland, and Arnhem, Holland. Yamaha, eager to get the SX title back, did participate, bringing its powerhouse lineup of David Vuillemin, Tim Ferry, and 250 rookie Chad Reed overseas. Jeremy McGrath was no longer part of the blue crew. Yamaha gave him what he considered a low-ball offer so he walked. KTM saw an opportunity to finally be a winner in supercross, so they signed McGrath’s team to a big-money deal.

During testing McGrath crashed and dislocated his hip, as painful an injury as they come. That seemed to sap the enthusiasm from the seven-time champ, and it was also becoming clear that the KTM was not ready for supercross. When McGrath arrived in Europe he was off the pace, crashing, and struggling. A few days after returning home, he shocked the world with a retirement announcement. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Here’s the Arnhem event, which also includes a recap of Geneva.

Those Euro rounds were the beginning of something, however. The rookie Reed had made waves with some cocky statements the year before, and quickly made his presence known at the Yamaha test track, too. He was not intimidated. He was fast but crashed out of contention in Geneva. But he returned to win in Arnhem. Teammate Vuillemin took Geneva, so Yamaha had a ton of momentum for the Anaheim AMA SX opener.

Reed ran with that and took off for an easy win. Here’s the race. He’d notched his first AMA 250 SX win in just his fourth start. He also continued to show swagger on the podium. Carmichael had suffered a terrible start and finished fourth. Reed said, “We won tonight but we didn’t beat Carmichael straight up, and that’s what we’re working on.”

Them’s fighting words, but Reed really planned to back them up.

At round two in Phoenix, Carmichael started horribly again while Reed got into the early lead. Then came a rejuvenated Ezra Lusk on a Kawasaki. He and Reed put on a tremendous fight, and Lusk took the win, the twelfth and final SX victory of his career. Lusk will go down with riders like Vuillemin and Kevin Windham as one of the fastest riders to not win the SX title. Blame racing against MC and RC for that.

Good thing Lusk was there because other favorites were struggling. Travis Pastrana tantalized and frustrated in his typical fashion. After a solid off-season of training and testing, he blew it all trying to jump a huge leap for fun just weeks before the opener. He blew out his knees and came into Anaheim 1 weakened. He started the year with 19-12 finishes and then packed it in to heal up.

Carmichael restored order at Anaheim 2, finally getting a start and winning over the ageless Mike LaRocco and Suzuki’s Sebastien Tortelli. Reed crashed fighting through traffic and finished sixth. It cost him the series’ points lead. Carmichael won again the next weekend in San Francisco, but Reed put in a huge charge after a bad start and even closed up on the champ. The story was the same the next weekend at Anaheim 3. In San Diego, Carmichael crashed and Reed went on to win.

In 125 West, everyone knew sophomore pro James Stewart would be hard to top, so once again Factory Connection Honda’s Travis Preston wasn’t getting much attention, even though he was carrying the number one plate from his 2002 championship. Preston had his magic working again at Anaheim 1, as Stewart got a terrible start and Preston jumped out to the early lead. The champion hung on for the win, later joking that even with the number one plate and the victory, “Nobody takes my picture.” No doubt, Stewart was on everyone’s mind. Here’s Anaheim 1’s 125 coverage.

After a shaky Anaheim 1, Stewart reeled off five wins in a row, beating back Preston and a promising MotoWorld Suzuki talent named Andrew Short.

The first East round was in Minneapolis, and Reed, Carmichael, and Lusk hooked up in a tremendous battle. Click here for part one, and go to 3:58 to see Reed throw a block pass on Carmichael—it was practically unheard of these days for anyone to pass RC. A lap later, Reed took the lead from Lusk. A lap after that, Reed went down. Two laps later, Reed would crash again! He wrecked so much that the seat came off of his bike, but he pressed on, even seat bouncing off of his frame rails, to finish sixth. If you wonder why we talk so much about rookies in the big-bike class, it’s because even Chad Reed, one of the most consistent riders in supercross history, couldn’t avoid mistakes in his first year.

Carmichael was putting all together from there. He held just a 4-point lead after San Diego, but after winning Minneapolis, Atlanta, Indy, and Daytona, his lead had stretched over the magic 25-point mark. 

Also, injuries and illness were beginning to take a toll on most of the field. Vuillemin and Ferry were out for Yamaha. Honda’s Nathan Ramsey had broken his femur before the season. Suzuki had lost Pastrana, Tortelli, and Stephane Roncada. In fact, by the second half of the season, just four full-time 250 class factory riders were still competing: Carmichael, Reed, Lusk, and Ernesto Fonseca. The rest of the field featured privateers, support riders, and 125 racers moving up for the weekend.

Reed finally put it together to win in St. Louis. Then he did it again in Houston. Pontiac was another great ride, as he rode error-free on a technical track with Carmichael behind him. That made it three in a row. Dallas might have been the best battle of all, as CR and RC started together and fought for the full twenty laps. Click here to watch; the main starts at the 27:00 mark.

Reed came out on top, straight up, for his fourth win in a row. They were also very respectful of each other, racing clean the whole time.

“Those two were killing each other with kindness there,” said ESPN color commentator David Bailey. “This is just a psychological battle here, that’s all it is.”

Reed had the points lead whittled down to 13, but Carmichael was finishing second every time, and with the injury-thinned field, there weren’t any buffers to help Reed gain points. That’s why Tim Ferry’s return to the series at the penultimate round in Salt Lake created so much drama. Behind the scenes, Reed and Ferry’s friendship had cooled, but Carmichael’s camp thought Ferry was returning from illness to get in Ricky’s way. As luck would have it, Ferry, normally a terrible starter, grabbed the holeshot, and Reed and Carmichael were left fighting behind him. Within one lap, Carmichael passed them both but also got run into by Ferry; then Reed made a block-pass and knocked Carmichael down. Here’s the clip; the action starts at around two minutes.

RC finished second but was livid after the race. “I’m just trying to protect my points lead,” said Carmichael to ESPN pit reporter Cameron Steele. “Chances are if everything goes right I’m going to finish first or second. So their only defense is to try to take me out, and they’re hoping that something will go wrong. I need to not subject myself to that stuff.”

“I was just riding aggressive,” said Reed. “He left the door open and I just wanted to make the pass. I didn’t mean to take him down. I felt like I had some really good lines and I wanted to get out front and not eat dirt. I didn’t take him out intentionally. I’m not that kind of rider. But if you really want to talk about it, from the US Open, I’ve still got bruises on my legs. What goes around comes around.” Reed was referencing a hard take out by Carmichael during the US Open the previous October. The respect shown in Dallas was beginning to wane.

You can watch Reed’s interview here starting at 7:49, and you can also herald this clip as possibly the worst job of closed captioning ever.

Now, only the Las Vegas finale loomed, and Reed won it to end the season on a six-race win streak. His eight total wins were the second-best-ever for a rookie (topped only by Jeremy McGrath’s magical ten-win 1993 season). Carmichael would take his third-straight AMA Supercross Championship by 7 points. Reed was crowned as the first-ever champion of the World Supercross Grand Prix, thanks to his rides in Europe back in December.

Stewart would lock up the 125 West Region title as expected. The 125 East Region Championship was a dogfight between Suzuki’s Branden Jesseman, Pro Circuit Kawasaki’s Mike Brown, and Yamaha of Troy’s Brock Sellards on the controversial YZ250F. Jesseman edged them out to win the title, taking a nerve-wracking sixth at the Pontiac finale while Sellard’s engine blew. For the star-crossed Jesseman, his two-month run to the title would mark one of the longest stretches of his career without injury. He broke his arm before getting to race the Las Vegas East/West shootout with his #1E plate, and was also out for the entire 2004 season with injury.

The East/West Shootout was nuts. Stewart led and then crashed, which led the always-prescient David Bailey to say, “This is where James needs to be careful. This is where he gets excited and says ‘Uh Oh, I need to get back up there.’” Seconds later, Stewart went over the bars and bailed out in mid-air over a jump, his KX125 bouncing into the mechanic’s area. It was scary. Here’s the race. Go to the 31:00 mark to see Stewart’s crash.

Andrew Short of MotoWorld Suzuki picked up the pieces to take his first professional win. Stewart sustained a broken collarbone.

The whole season was a bit of a jarring. It might have been the worst ever in terms of injuries. Due to the thin field, Reed, Carmichael, and Fonseca landed on the podium in the exact same order at the final six races. Plus, you had the confusion of Reed winning the new World SX Grand Prix but Carmichael winning the AMA Supercross Championship. McGrath was retired, and stars like Pastrana and Kevin Windham were missing. Soon, injuries would catch up to Carmichael, too. Supercross would go on, though, as the economy was booming, the stands were packed, and teams were spending more than ever. Before long, we’d be talking about stacked, deep, wide-open, loaded fields again.