Monday Gate Drop

Good day and welcome to Gate Drop on this first Monday of the Fall of 2013. Here in Ontario this past weekend it sure felt like Fall as the warm temperatures of last week were washed away with some heavy rain on Friday night. It rained so much that Walton Raceway was forced to cancel their race on both Saturday and Sunday. It was a shame as everyone was looking forward to the final event of 2013 at the famous track. Let’s hope that the same doesn’t happen for the double header next weekend at Moto Park or at Sandstorm at Gopher Dunes the following weekend.

Today is the day that Team Canada leaves for Germany for the 2013 MXON. It should be a great experience for everyone that is going and hopefully it’ll be a memorable one for our riders. As I mentioned in my Team Canada story last week, I think it’s great that the team is meeting in Toronto today to fly out together. Tomorrow morning the plane will land in Frankfurt and the fun will begin. When I looked at where the track in Germany was I noticed that the nearest large city was Leipzig and it got me thinking of the first time I ever raced overseas back in 1996.

Here JSR is trying to keep me awake after practice in Leipzig. As you can see I wore my best leather jacket to Germany and strangely enough I was riding for the MXP Yamaha Team.

Way back in January of 1996 I received a call from then super agent and photographer Jean Guy Rollin. During those years, Jean Guy was handling all of JSR’s overseas races and he found room for one more Canadian rider at the Leipzig Supercross. Jean Guy said that the promoters would pay all of my expenses to get there and get me a bike to ride. All I had to do was get myself to Leipzig on the Thursday before the race. Since it was my first time going over there I didn’t have too much negotiating power so I agreed and off I went.

When I started looking at my possible travel plans, I decided that I would fly to Frankfurt, and then instead of flying to Leipzig, I would take the three hour scenic train ride through Germany. Well, sometimes the planning of a trip works out better than the actual trip itself; I didn’t really think about a few small details. First, back in 1996, there weren’t cool things like gear bags that had wheels so when I landed in Frankfurt I had to drag two big bags through the airport to one train station, get on a small train to the main station in Frankfurt and then finally onto another train for the three hour ride, all of time having to deal with a huge language barrier. Although I had bought the cheapest train tickets available, I think I ended up sitting in business class just because I didn’t know any better. I was completely exhausted but I was scared to fall asleep and risk missing my stop, so I forced myself to stay awake thinking the fresh scenery would help keep my eyes open. That was also an issue as on that January day in Germany it was dense fog for my entire train ride. All I saw was the occasional house as we blasted by.

Obviously my mechanic didn’t understand that I wanted him to come to the starting line with me. As you can also see that my team gave me their own gear to wear.

When we finally arrived in Leipzig, I muscled my bags through the train station and into a cab. Lucky for me, Jean Guy had given me the name of the hotel we were staying at. For everyone that travels overseas you know the golden rule is to try to stay awake that first day so you can have a good sleep that night. I tried my best but after being awake for so long, the moment I walked into my room and saw my bed I could hear myself screaming “Timber!” and I collapsed onto it. I woke up five hours later feeling great and went out for dinner. After dinner I walked around in the fog trying to do some sightseeing before returning to my room for bedtime. Although I went to bed at 10pm, since I slept the day away I saw 11pm, then 12pm and so on and so on until I finally fell asleep around 5am and was woken after three hours by a knock on my door and a smiling JSR.

It was Friday morning and we had to get to track to sign up and practice since the race that weekend was Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. I was a little concerned for the three day race since I hadn’t even ridden yet and I was already so tired, but like any motocross racer, the moment we rolled into the track the adrenaline took over and I was excited to get racing. Jean Guy had secured a YZ250 for me to ride for one of the smaller German teams. Although my mechanic didn’t speak a word of English, we seemed to communicate just fine through hand signals and nodding of our heads.

With it being my first time over there I was not prepared by just how loud the crowd was during the evening with their horns and cheering. They were crazy and they certainly loved their supercross. At that time, there was a lot of good riders racing the German SX series from the USA – names like Doug Dubach, Ron Lechien, Mike Jones, Kyle Lewis and Mike Craig just to name a few. Throw in some good Euro riders and the Canadian contingent of JSR, Doug Dehann and myself and it was a pretty tough line up of riders trying to make the twelve man main event.

Elbow’s up, even in Germany!

I won’t bore you with the race details because I don’t even remember them. All I remember is that Friday night I did really bad, Saturday night Mike Jones took me out in the LCQ and then finally on Sunday I made the main but finished last. All in all it was a great weekend but with all the travel and racing, I think it took me a week to recover. I must have done something right though because I got invited back three weeks later to the Hanover SX. Even though my results weren’t great, it was still an awesome experience racing overseas and it really helped me with my racing in Canada during the 1996 season.

Team Canada will be racing just 30 minutes from Leipzig this coming weekend. I’m sure for each team member this trip will be as memorable as mine was some 17 years ago. I hope everyone enjoys their week, and next Sunday, let’s all wake up and chant Go Canada Go!! That is all.

Medaglia Family pride.