Monday Gate Drop

Good Morning and welcome to this Thanksgiving edition of Monday Gate Drop. I hope everyone had a great time doing whatever you did this weekend and I really hope you had some special time with family. As we do every year, we spent our Thanksgiving at my parent’s house with a number of my cousins. It was a great time, and since one of my cousins used to race, the talk always ends up being about motocross.

While we were out in my Dad’s shop, we ironically noticed a massive sign that still hangs on the wall. The sign read in big letters OMA, or Ontario Motocross Association if you don’t care for abbreviations. The sign is left over from 1989, the year that my Dad, John Nelson, Chris Lee, Gary Hartman and Frank Randall decided they’d seen enough and wanted to start an association to help Ontario motocross. The model they wanted to use was that of the USA where the AMA allows each State to run its own district, for instance motocross in Michigan is considered District 14. Each district is responsible for what happens at its own race tracks, however it’s still under the AMA umbrella for rules, insurance and if needed, it can rely on the AMA for lobbying for the rights of motorcycle riders in their State and in Washington D.C. It really is a great system and other than a few hiccups, it has worked very well for a long time.

Well, since we raced in Michigan quite a bit in the mid to late ‘80s we were quite familiar with how well things worked there, so the OMA boys wanted to adopt the same in Ontario. Basically, they would look after everything and just use the CMA for sanctioning, etc. It was a great idea and since motocross was dying in Ontario at the time, the OMA actually had a lot of support. For trivia buffs out there, the OMA held one race; it was the amateur day at the 1989 Toronto Supercross. It was a great day of racing in the SkyDome and everyone had fun; at the end of the day there were prizes and five foot trophies for the winners. After that race the future was looking bright for the OMA.

I can’t remember the exact sequence of events after that first OMA race, but there wasn’t another one as in the end the CMA refused to relinquish any control of regional motocross and the OMA was over soon after it began. Of course, we all know what happened a few years later when the CMA dictatorship was run out of town and the CMRC was born. At that time the riders in Ontario were so thirsty for change that when Mark Stallybrass introduced some new and fresh ideas, people gravitated to it in droves and it was bye bye CMA.

So fast forward to a week ago and it seems in some ways we’ve come full circle. I say in some ways because motocross both nationally and regionally in Canada is ten times healthier than it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Also, the CMRC is definitely not what the CMA was back in those days. Proof of this came last week when it was announced that AMO would be taking over the day to day running of motocross in Ontario for the CMRC. This will allow the CMRC to continue to oversee the racing in Ontario (the way it does in other Provinces) while AMO will ensure that it gets the attention the region deserves. Riders will still need to get a CMRC license and the races will still run under CMRC rules, however scheduling, promoting, and the daily running of each race will be left up to the newly formed AMO.

Will this work in a province that has recently seen its amateur racing become more and more fragmented? Well, in my opinion, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t. This is the AMA model and it’s not far from the model proposed in 1989 by the OMA. The national sanctioning body (CMRC) will still be the mother bear in charge, while the AMO will look after what happens in their own backyard. The next few months will be very interesting and exciting once AMO’s 2015 plans are rolled out.

The Rockstar Energy Drink OTSFF Yamaha Team will be using Pirelli Tires in 2015.

Now, let’s move on from regional news to national news and this week’s signing of Pirelli Tires to the Rockstar Energy Drink OTSFF Yamaha Team for 2015. This is great news for both parties as Pirelli is really trying to put their mark on the sport both in the USA and in Canada. Two months ago, Pirelli began their relationship with Chad Reed’s Two Two Motorsports Team. This means that next year Pirelli Tires will be fitted to not only Reed’s team but also to the BTO Sports KTM team and the JGR Yamaha team. Now with the OTSFF team running the same tires in Canada, it shows that Pirelli is very serious about winning championships in both countries.

Speaking of Pirelli and its new commitment to racing, this coming weekend, Pirelli has hired me to travel to Las Vegas to document their riders at the Monster Cup. From my arrival in Vegas on Thursday night, MXP will be given VIP access to Pirelli and its teams at the Monster Cup. Obviously, I’m very excited for this opportunity as it will be a great chance to see the behind the scenes workings of the teams that will using Pirelli Tires; also, it’s been a few years since I’ve visited the City Of Entertainment so I’m pretty excited about that. Going to the Monster Cup will also give me a chance to see some of our young Canadian riders like Casey Keast, Tanner Ward and Preston Masciangelo compete on the hybrid and super cool MC track. As we say to our son when something exciting is coming up, only three more sleeps and I’ll be strolling down the Las Vegas strip.

So that is it for me this week as I must go and prepare for Vegas and one more turkey dinner today. As I said earlier, I hope everyone is having a great weekend and I hope you all have a lot to be thankful for. Hopefully, with the Fox Sports television package, most Canadians will still get to watch the Monster Cup live on Saturday, although it was tough when Fox took over halfway through SX last season. Either way, Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at MXP Magazine. Have a great week

Can James Stewart make it two in a row this weekend in Las Vegas?