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Decal Works Presents Monday Gate Drop Part 2

mxp gate drop

Hello and welcome to what I’ll call Tuesday Gate Drop, or Gate Drop Part 2. After reading the thread last night on Mxforum.com regarding the safety of our sport, I began to do some more thinking and will continue to add to the discussion. As I mentioned yesterday, Kevin Windham was the person who kicked off the discussion last week in the USA after he was touched by the tragic event in Texas. In our own backyard it was none other than Brett Lee who took Windham’s words and expanded on them in his own article last week. All of this talk is awesome and well-timed as few things have ever been accomplished in the world without discussing it first. However, while all of this talk about keeping crash statistics is a must and the part of the future of our sport, this type of stuff takes time and doesn’t help make the sport safer today, or tomorrow or even next month. To accomplish this, there has to be some things we can come up with right now.

To help ensure our spring riding season is as safe as possible there are two areas that I believe we can focus on. The first is with regards to rider education and the second has to do with the tracks that we’ll be racing on in the coming months, and trust me these both overlap in many ways. Let’s begin with the tracks.

While spring riding conditions are tricky at the best of times, in some cases the tracks have only been open for a few days. The tracks obviously have an obligation to do the best they can in making the conditions as safe as possible. I believe they all do a great job of this as anytime I’ve attended an early season race, the tracks are in great shape. I think we all can agree that today’s bikes are faster than ever before, and the way most riders ride these days is more efficient than say twenty years ago. So when you combine these two things, the average racer is travelling around each track quicker than we ever thought possible. Four-strokes and modern day techniques have helped make the speed of this sport increase by leaps and bounds.

Since the speeds have increased I think it’s impossible to maintain the tracks the same way we did years ago. Let’s face it, while all of us old schoolers love to talk about how rough the tracks were two decades ago, the times have indeed changed and so have the need for everyday tracks to be so rough. While I do think that a track’s speed needs to be kept as low as possible, I think this should be done by corners and more small jumps rather than letting it get 1980s rough. A less choppy track may not quench our thirst for making men out of our young riders, but it may keep one or two big crashes each race day from happening. Now I realize that there are a few narrow minded people out there who think there’s very little that can be done. However, think about this. If we can somehow prevent one or two crashes from happening at each race, to me that’s a big deal. That’s two of our riders that don’t have to go home beat and sore.

dallasruts

At the amateur level at least, the days are gone when we allow the tracks to get extremely rough and dangerous for the speed of the sport today. photo by James Lissimore

Here’s something to think about when comparing new and old. In Ontario, we used to have a track in Mono Centre that would only run once a year, usually in April. This track was a throwback to the 1970s with its large uphills, downhills and natural terrain layout. Everyone seemed to love it at the time and entries would always be high for this once a year event. Since the track was all natural and pretty much roped off the day before, there was no equipment on site to maintain it and the surface was allowed to get incredibly rough throughout the day. The last time the Mono Centre race took place was in 2002 so over the years this event was only run on two-strokes. I can’t tell you the number of people that come up to me and talked about how much fun this race would be today on a four-stroke. While I do agree with this statement, it does come with some reservations and it’s true with all tracks.

Even back then the Mono Centre track got rough, really rough!! Of course with no equipment there to groom the track during the day, the choppy bumps started forming in practice, and then throughout the day they would multiply and get deeper. Although it was miserable, on a two-stroke the track seemed manageable because the speeds would never get that high. Even then, however, there were always injuries throughout the day, some small and some big. I remember Ryan Gauld hit one of these bumps in 2000 and it catapulted him over bars and into the hospital with a broken femur. I can guarantee you that if the Mono Centre track was still in operation today with four-strokes, under the same circumstances (no track grooming), there would be so many crashes in a day of racing that an on-site hospital would have to be built. My point is that with the way the sport is today, the practice of letting tracks get super rough at the provincial level as a means to slow the sport down is a bad idea. Now I can only speak of the tracks in Ontario that I ride now, but all of them have a done a great job of adapting to the ways the sport is today. The more track grooming that can be done during the day the better, as far as I’m concerned.

daybaker

At each round of the Monster Energy AMA SX Series every rider and team member take the time to walk the track. photo by Frank Hoppen

The second item I mentioned earlier was rider education or riders taking more responsibility for their own safety. Now I’m not suggesting for a second that the events in Texas were caused by rider error, however as we move forward I think the everyday rider can do more to ensure he or she has a safe race day. The things I’m talking about are preparation and time management. Now we’ve all been guilty of this, but how many times have you showed up to the track late, rushed yourself through sign up, riders meeting and boom you’re on the track for practice without any mental preparation at all. This is not the way to start your race day. Even though most times you get away with this, sooner or later this lack of preparation is going to catch up with you and you’re going to have that dreaded practice crash. Now this is not the fault of the track or the modern day four-stroke, this is something that is totally in the rider’s control. I know it’s not always possible but try to give yourself time by arriving at the track as early as possible. These days the race schedule is very tight and we all know this. Arrive early so your day doesn’t begin in a rush.

Another thing, and this is something we can adopt from the past, is the age old pre-practice track walk. When I was younger, we did this at each and every race and I’m not sure what happened to it. Do the races begin earlier now than they did 30 years ago? If you don’t have time to walk the entire track before riders meeting then maybe everyone should try to come up with a hybrid track walk to accommodate the busier than ever race schedule? Even if it’s a track you’ve been to a hundred times, before you do one lap on it on race day, go to a decent vantage point and take a look at the track. If you’re on the line already for practice, watch the riders that are already on the track to see if any sections are causing problems. This will at least give you something to watch out for as you do your first few laps. Also, as the race day goes on, try and watch some races and pay particular attention to how the track is changing. Does a certain jump now have a kicker on one side of the take-off? It’s sure a lot better to know it’s there before you come around in an opening lap battle. Being aware of something beforehand is very important in preventing accidents.

Safety is something we all need to be concerned about. No one, God forbid, wants to see what happened in Texas ever happen again. But we also don’t want to see those days at any race track where the front gate is like a revolving door for the ambulance. Keeping this current discussion going is very important as we head into this 2015 race season and beyond.

Before I say goodbye for the week, I’d also like to change the subject completely and send a huge congratulations to Dave Gowland on his new job. Over the years Dave has been a mechanic, he’s helped run the Richmond/ Gowland Kawasaki Team, he’s been the man in charge of the Team Green program at Kawasaki USA, and most recently he was the Team Manager for the Rockstar Energy Husqvarna Team. Well, Dave has now moved on to become the Director of Motorsports at Monster Energy in California so we all want to send our best to one of Canada’s great motocross gentlemen. Again, I hope everyone has a great week and if you have any thoughts on safety please email me at chris@mxpmag.com.

15.01 final cover

Check out this Chase Dunivant shot of Tyler Medaglia for our first cover of 2015.

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