20 Team USA Moments: 1981

And then despite a very game effort at the ’78 Nations by Hannah to beat Mikkola, America’s best rider at the time decided to stay home in 1979 (before the leg-shattering water-skiing accident that knocked him out for an entire year). That in turn caused other dominos to fall, as top riders decided to pass on Team USA too. It got to the point where we could not even field a team in 1979, and then again in 1980.

It was at that point that a few industry friends who knew how important the MX and Trophee des Nations really were in the whole big scheme of things started to work together. Bel-Ray’s J.J. Hanfield, Hi-Point’s Larry Maiers, JT Racing’s John Gregory and Motocross Action editor Dick Miller all decided to join forces and try to get Team USA back out there. They campaigned to the riders, pledged money, raised money and just put the idea front and center. But they still seemed more interested in supercross, which by that point had knocked the Inter-Am Series out completely, and had the Trans-AMA/USA Series losing prestige by the year.

That’s right about the time that Roger De Coster, Dave Arnold, and Team Honda entered the picture. De Coster had retired the previous year, after five 500cc world titles, and moved to America to work with Honda. No one knew the importance of the race better than De Coster, who had been on 16 winning versions of Team Belgium as a rider. Honda had four young riders at the time: Donnie Hansen, Danny Laporte, Johnny O’Mara and Chuck Sun. Between the four of them only LaPorte and Sun had won anything as professionals—LaPorte was the ’79 AMA 500cc Champion and Sun won the same title in 1980. No matter, they committed to go to the two races in Belgium and Germany, reviving Team USA after two years of being no-shows on the biggest stages in European motocross.

Fast forward to sandy Lommel, Belgium, site of the first race, which was the Trophee des Nations for 250s. They all wore matching white JT Racing gear, their matching red bikes sequentially numbered #46 (Sun), #47 (LaPorte), #48 (O’Mara), and #49 (Hansen). The Europeans did not seem one but impressed, probably because they’d never heard of them. They thought of them as a “B team.” Forty minutes and two laps later, the Europeans were trying to figure out what the hell had just happened, as the Americans finished 2-3-4-8 in the first moto. Only Belgian sandmaster Andre Vromans had managed to beat them.

The second moto was practically a repeat of the first. Vromans again won, but the Americans went 2-3-6-11. Throwing out the two worst moto scores, Team USA totaled 20 points. The mighty Belgians, the home team and heavily favored, had nearly double the score at 37. Just like that, Team USA was on top of the world.

But was it a fluke?

One week later everyone switched to 500cc equipment, and the venue went from sandy Lommel to hard-packed Bielstein. There was no way the Europeans would be caught by surprise again. Despite the fact that O’Mara had never even raced a 500 before, the young Americans were confident they could do it again. They would wear #53 (Sun), #54 (O’Mara), #55 (LaPorte), and #56 (Hansen).