The AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame induction ceremony took place in September in Pickerington, Ohio. Five inductees—Rita Coombs, Barry Hawk, Grant Langston, Ryan Dungey, and Travis Pastrana—made up the Class of 2023 as they received their gold jackets, becoming the latest to join the prestigious hall. A few members of our Racer X staff were on hand that night, including Jason Weigandt, who penned notes on each of the five inductees.
1. Rita Coombs: I wasn’t sure, as Rita headed up to the stage for her acceptance speech, if people knew what to expect. Rita is now in the 80-plus class, and she stays behind the big scenes, so aside from the longtime friends and family in the room who know her well, or anyone that sees her each weekend in the GNCC sign up line (which she still works), many had to be wondering if she had anything to say at all. But I knew there wouldn’t be a problem. Back in my early days in this industry, road tripping to GNCC races, I got to know Rita very well through all-nighter road trips to get back to the Morgantown office from some far-flung location, or late nights at the office trying to sort, organize, pack, or solve a problem. Many great conversations with one of the greats. Rita is hilarious. Rita is energetic. Rita is a storyteller but also a great listener. She is also unfiltered and not afraid to say it like it is. Most importantly, she’s just fun. There are so, so, so many stresses running a business like this. For a second, take a step back and realize what an epic responsibility she has for both the employees of the company (think of how many moving parts and people it takes to run a traveling road show like GNCC, or a massive race like the Monster Energy AMA Amateur National Motocross Championship at Loretta Lynn’s Ranch) and all the families that choose to make this sport their form of recreation. When you have that many people doing that much stuff on the road, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Rita never seems stressed though, because even the wild moments make for a good story, and damn does she love a good story. At the end of each jam-packed worked day, we’d often end up exchanging all the tales from throughout the hours, always with a laugh. Really, if I had a motto of everything we do around here, it’s work hard but have fun. I believe every newer employee here, even those who have barely ever spoken to Rita, understands this. That’s her influence. That’s the way this sport needs to be. It’s motorcycle racing, and it’s hard. None of it really makes sense if you tried to pencil it out on paper. But when you begin to factor in the relationships, the stories, the friends, the families, the camaraderie, it starts to make sense. Rita has lived this since the 1970s, and she still works seven days a week now. Think about that.
Rita’s speech, which she told me she wrote without anyone else’s help, was the longest of the night. No worries about her not speaking! She described the humble roots of her and Big Dave in the motorcycle business, sprinkling in the funny stuff, like how Dave always found a way to hold races where he could also play bass guitar in his band. She explained how other promoters like Bill West and Paul Schlegel helped them. She told great stories of holding arenacross races in the winter, and how theft, vandalism, and snow convinced Dave to get out of the indoor racing business. She talked about the small town of Davis, West Virginia, coming to them to ask about holding a race, because they believed it could have a great economic impact on the town. That race became the famous Blackwater 100, which birthed what is today’s GNCC Series, and Rita spoke fondly about the economic impact all these GNCC races have had on all the towns they visit. And that’s why they get invited back. These motorcycle people are good people. These aren’t the Hell’s Angels coming to town. The family-friendly aspect of GNCC and Loretta’s and such can never be overstated. It’s what this sport is built on. Rita will never lose sight of that.
She’ll also probably never stop working. Rita is the best, and I have proof: the other four Hall of Fame members of 2023 all used events she helped create as part of their journey to greatness.
2. Grant Langston: GL is my guy. We spent eight years announcing the AMA Pro Motocross Championship together on TV. We probably did good work, but I really don’t think too much about the TV side. To me, talking dirt bikes for four hours is the easiest part of my week. It just happens naturally. What I love most about GL is the person that he is. Grant has had his ups and downs in life and racing, but through all of that he’s emerged as one of the wisest people I know. He’s lived four lives worth of stuff in the time any of us have lived one. He’s also one of the few people left on this planet who can have a strong opinion and be completely outspoken on something but also not completely come unglued when someone disagrees. If we could all do this like GL, the world would be a better place. GL is not a drama guy, he’s not a look-at-me guy, he’s not a let-me-tell-you-how-important-I-am guy. During our eight years together, he was more likely to end up hanging out with random local fans than some important industry person or superstar rider. That says a lot about someone who accomplished enough to make the Hall of Fame.
As a racer, GL won titles. He just figured out a way to get it done, even if he was struggling. GL’s loss of the ’01 125 National Championship due to a broken wheel was heartbreaking, but life paid him back with the ’03 title when the final round was canceled, and he was in the points lead. His career was always like that—massive highs and huge lows, again and again. He said Mitch Payton hired him at Pro Circuit to win outdoor titles, but he ended up with two Supercross Lites titles instead. His first season on a 450 was shaping up to be a disaster until it suddenly wasn’t. After missing most of supercross with a broken collarbone, he and Team Yamaha were struggling huge early in the 450 Nationals, and GL was sixth in points. Ricky Carmichael retired, James Stewart got hurt, then Langston got an improved bike and suddenly caught fire down the stretch, besting the three remaining title contenders in an epic comeback. He was sixth in points at one point!
The luck continued with a wild U.S. Open win a few months later. Then, as before, the high ceded to a massive low just months later. Experiencing blurred vision, he was diagnosed with eye cancer, and the treatment left him with reduced vision. He tried to keep going, but he wasn’t the same.
Langston’s induction into the Hall isn’t just because of his racing, because in truth his career got cut short with plenty of wins left on the table. He never got a 450 supercross win, for example. But GL and his family opened up a dealership and rode out the Great Recession (another low!) by grinding. Now Langston Motorsports is plenty successful, and he had a great run as a broadcaster. He’s certainly lived a full life in motorcycling, and it’s great that he gets to share that with us.
For his speech? Well, GL just started crying immediately. That’s what it meant to get in.
3. Barry Hawk: Barry Hawk, while telling his story, got everyone’s attention with this factoid: He was already the king of GNCC ATV racing on four wheels, dominating the races on Saturday. To get in more training, he started racing the bike races on Sunday. This meant Barry would race a quad for two hours on Saturday and then a bike for three more on Sunday. Five hours a weekend! He did this for years. That fact, alone, pretty much sums up how tough Barry Hawk is.
Barry didn’t start as a quad guy. He said he started on a Honda XR75 and convinced his dad to let him race a local fair race, which, ironically, was promoted by Rita and Dave Coombs. He rode anything he could get while growing up. When he finally got a race-ready new quad, he started winning quickly and then moved into the pro class to battle legends like Bob “Ironman” Sloan. At 18, Barry was already becoming the fastest ATV woods rider in the world. He kept dominating on four wheels, to the tune of seven straight championships.
But while the motorcycle thing on Sunday started as just extra training, it morphed into something else. Barry was getting faster, becoming the top amateur in the series. A move to the pro class beckoned. Randy Hawkins, who runs Yamaha’s factory GNCC team, took a chance on Barry, and Barry finally parked the quad, retiring on top. Still, very few expected the “quad guy” to ever win on a bike. It was so doubted, that when Barry was leading the Mathews Farm GNCC in 2001, a rival team figured he must be cheating, so they flagged down one of their support riders, told him to go a lap down, and follow Barry. Turns out Barry wasn’t cheating, he had just gotten fast enough to win.
By 2003, Barry had the full package dialed in on bikes, and he won the GNCC Championship. Lest someone think GNCC titles are somehow easy to get, Barry did his best work when the GNCC Series might have been its most loaded, back before the Great Recession, with the series overflowing with factory rides and big-name stars importing into the series. In fact, the main thing that stopped Barry from winning a bunch more titles is KTM finally importing their European off-road GOATs, Juha Salminen and David Knight, who edged Barry from 05-08. Barry was the only one who kept them close, consistently, and over a five-year period, no one won more GNCCs than Barry Hawk.
When Barry retired, he joined the GNCC track crew, and then got a job as Coastal Racing GasGas Factory Racing Team Manager. The other day I asked him about that day when was getting followed to make sure he wasn’t cheating. Barry actually told me that as a team manager, he’d have been suspicious too!
The quad guy was the real deal on a bike. Heck, he showed up for the High Point National twice and just barely missed the points in the motos. The ultimate compliment? When Travis Pastrana hit the stage, he joked that he struggled his whole life to finish even one GNCC. Barry was doing two per weekend!
4. Ryan Dungey: You all know what Ryan Dungey did. He came from nowhere to become one of the best ever, with eight AMA National Championships throughout motocross and supercross, including a run of three-straight AMA Supercross Championships to close his career (besides the brief return last summer). The “from nowhere” part is what makes Dungey’s story so appealing. In his speech, he told the details of meeting Roger De Coster and getting a chance at a try out at Glen Helen Raceway, then crashing immediately and assuming it was over, his only chance ever at a factory ride already gone. So, Ryan figured, if it’s going to be his only day on a factory bike, he might as well enjoy all the laps he could. So, he just kept riding. And riding. And riding. He never slowed down and never got tired. De Coster explained, while introducing Dungey, that this was when he and right-hand-man Ian Harrison knew they might have something special here.
We know the greatness he went on to achieve. Dungey/De Coster/Harrison went on to engineer maybe the biggest breakthrough for a brand in the history of this sport. They took KTM, always trying but never finding any success in supercross, and turned it into a powerhouse. Dungey’s impact on the KTM brand is as large as any rider’s impact on anything, ever.
Along the way, it was mentioned that Ryan owns the all-time record of 31-straight supercross podiums. Just think about that for a moment. Thirty-one straight podiums! That’s classic Ryan Dungey right there.
He’s giving back, via his foundation, which not only supports St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, as it always has, but through All Kids Bike, which gets Strider bikes into schools so kids can learn the fun of two wheels. There’s Dungey, making an impact again.
5. Travis Pastrana: Is there anything Travis Pastrana can’t do? As an athlete and showman, he is not just one in a million but probably more like one in infinity. No one else could dare replicate what Travis dares to do. There isn’t even a category for Travis Pastrana, in so many ways. He didn’t get into the hall as a racer, anyway. He was elected under the “ambassador” category, because really, has any motorcycle rider outside of Evel Knievel ever been more famous? Has anyone outside of Evel Knievel been more mainstream with motorcycles?
That’s just the half of it though, because Travis’ personality is just as amazing as his talents. To that end, Travis bounded up to the stage with his usual kid energy and started his speech with, “Hey, good to see Roger [De Coster] here. I know you really came here for Ryan [Dungey], but good to see you!” Then Travis basically filled most of his speech with stories for his all-too-brief motocross and supercross career, mostly as a giant, hilarious public apology to De Coster. Indeed, Travis’ racing career certainly did not work out like Dungey’s. In fact, Dungey’s 31-race podium streak makes him the exact opposite of Pastrana, a fact that Roger still joked about back at Chicagoland Speedway at the SuperMotocross World Championship (SMX) race two days later. But here’s the thing: while Travis spent a good 15 minutes cutting down his own racing career, he did it in a way that actually only reminded everyone of how good he was. Yes, folks, there was a time on this Earth when Travis Pastrana was a hell of a racer, and he won races and titles. He also dove into his history of battling Langston tooth and nail, and the stories were hilarious, and quite fitting, seeing as they somehow ended up inducted as part of the same HoF class.
In the moment, it was frustrating to see Travis not hit the heights he seemed destined for as a racer, but with 20 years to look back on, it actually seems like a gift that racing ever had him at all. In his speech, Travis revealed something that he has never said before: that racing was too hard. That got some attention, but I’m not sure I believe it. Travis was all in and I believe, more than willing to do whatever it took to win. He just also wanted to do everything else. Commitment and effort were never a Pastrana problem. He wanted to do all the right things. His talents, though, knew no bounds and had no bounds. We’re all lucky to have had Travis Pastrana in our lives. Yes, even Roger De Coster.