Insight: Opening Round Oddities

From 1994 to '96, Team Honda's Jeremy McGrath also won all the series opener all three times, with all three races held in Orlando. (From '93 through '96 Anaheim served as the third round of the series, and McGrath won it all four times). That makes McGrath and Barcia the only riders in SX history to win the opening round three straight times. (And it was at the ’94 opener in Orlando that McGrath debuted his new trick, the nac-nac.)

In '97 the series opener moved back to California—but not Angel Stadium, which was undergoing renovations. The Los Angeles Coliseum subbed in for Anaheim for two years. In both of those years, an international rider with at least one FIM Motocross World Championship to his name won the race: South Africa's Greg Albertyn and Frenchman Sebastien Tortelli. It was the only AMA Supercross win for either man.

Albertyn and Tortelli are two of only three riders whose only premier-class win in AMA Supercross came at the opening round. The other is Josh Grant, who won the ’09 opener for the late Coy Gibbs’ JGRMX Yamaha team.

McGrath added two more opening-round wins in 2000 and ’01 when he was on a Yamaha, making him the all-time leader in SX opening round wins with five.

Four non-Japanese brands have won the opener: GasGas ('21), KTM ('18, '14), Husqvarna ('16), and Can-Am (1975). Japanese brands won every year from 1976 to 2013.

There were two different opening-round winners in the first AMA Supercross Championship, which took place in 1974 (and was actually called the AMA/Yamaha Super Series of Stadium Motocross), as the two classes—250 and 500—were considered pretty much equal. The race took place at Daytona, and the winners were both foreign riders: Dutchman Pierre Karsmakers (250) and Belgium’s Roger De Coster (500).

From 1976 to 1984 there were nine different winners of the series opener, as no rider was able to repeat:

1976 Tony DiStefano (Suzuki)
1977 Bob Hannah (Yamaha)
1978 Jimmy Ellis (Honda)
1979 Jim Weinert (Kawasaki)
1980 Mike Bell (Yamaha)
1981 Kent Howerton (Suzuki)
1982 Donnie Hansen (Honda)
1983 David Bailey (Honda)
1984 Johnny O'Mara (Honda)

Finally, in 1985, O'Mara repeated as the winner, but with a catch: 1985 was the year of the two-moto format in AMA Supercross, and O'Mara went 2-2, taking the overall from Yamaha teammates Broc Glover (1-3) and Rick Johnson (5-1), which left a lot of fans confused. The format was ultimately scrapped before the '86 season. But if you count each of those two motos in ’85 as separate “main events” then you would have 11 different winners in eleven opening-round main events!

In 1986, the night of the famous Anaheim '86 showdown between new Honda teammates David Bailey and Ricky Johnson, the defending series champion, Kawasaki's Jeff Ward, failed to even qualify for the main event due to a crash in his heat race and a broken throttle cable in his qualifier, which ended his night. Back then the rules said you had to finish the heat race to even make the semis and LCQ. Ward left the track before the race and stopped at a nearby Del Taco drive-thru to get something to eat. He could hear the cheers from his car as Bailey and Johnson battled it out in a race for the ages.

One year later, Ward avenged himself by winning the Anaheim opener while Johnson, the defending series champion, suffered a DNF due to a concussion. Ward would go on to win his second AMA Supercross title that year. 

Nineteen eighty was the one and only season that AMA Supercross started out with a weekend doubleheader (February 9 & 10). The races were held in Seattle at the Kingdome and counted as separate rounds. The winner of both nights was Yamaha’s Mike Bell, who would go on to win the 1980 championship.

The first time Anaheim hosted the opening round was 1981. That race was won by Suzuki’s Kent Howerton.

In 1975 the series started at Texas Stadium in Dallas, with a two-moto format, as well as two classes. Can-Am’s Jimmy Ellis went 1-1 to win the 250 class, while Maico rider Steve Stackable won the 500 class with 3-1 finishes. Defending AMA Supercross Champion Pierre Karsmakers was not there after injuring his knee in the preseason.

Kevin Windham won the "perfect storm" opener of 2005 aboard a Factory Connection Honda CRF450, marking the first time the series opener was ever won by someone on a four-stroke. It was an umbelievable mud race. This was a pivotal year: after 2005, no two-stroke would ever win an AMA Supercross again, and the last man to actually win a main event a 250cc two-stroke was Yamaha YZ250-mounted Chad Reed at the '05 finale in Las Vegas. 

Reed won the opener three times, all on Yamahas, but twice on a two-stroke YZ250 (’03 and ’04) and once on a four-stroke YZ450F (’08), making him the only rider to have won on both 2s and 4s.