AMA Supercross, circa 2004.

On Saturday night, January 3rd, I attended my seventh consecutive opening round of the AMA Supercross series. As a diehard motocross fan, I think it is a MUST to attend the first race of the indoor motocross season. This year, I cut my East Coast vacation short just to make sure I was back in California in time to make the short drive to Edison International field in Anaheim, California to see the world’s best supercross racers hit the track for the first time this year.

It was a great race. The current World Supercross Champion from Australia, Chad Reed, took the 250 cc Main event on his factory Yamaha, suprising many since he is just coming back from a recent shoulder injury. And the 125 cc Main was won by New Mexico’s Ivan Tedesco on a new Kawasaki 250 fourstroke. Yeah, for the uninitiated it will seem strange that a 250 would be allowed to compete in the 125 class, but that’s old news to MX fans, and I’m not even gonna get into it here. Google it if you need to know more.

So the folks at Clear Channel Entertainment, the promoters of the series, got my disposable entertainment dollar for another year, and once again I think they missed a few great opportunities to make a good event even better. If anyone cares, here’s a few things that bugged me about the event:

Spectator access to the stadium. I still don’t know why they only let spectators exit and re-enter the stadium through one gate. There are bag checkers and pat-down people at every entrance, so why do we have to herd around one gate to get back in? We spend a long day at the race, and the parking lot scene is part of the draw, with a large number of people having tailgate parties with their friends. How is security enhanced by limiting exit/re-entry to one gate? I think that stadium management is trying to make exit/re-entry too much of a hassle, in order to discourage tailgate parties and force people to pay for the overpriced stadium food and drinks. Dream on guys, it’ll only happen if you find a way to make it illegal to bring food and drinks into the parking lot.

Parking fees. Seems like they’re just getting higher and higher. Blame it on inflation if you want to, I think it’s just opportunism. $10 is starting to get extreme. Make people happy and cut it in half. We’ll be more willing to buy your souvenir yearbook if you can save us money on the parking.

The souvenir yearbook. Hey, I buy this every year, religiously. I buy it as a keepsake, something to look back at over the years. I also buy it to get a listing of the racers’ names and numbers (not phone numbers…bike numbers). But in recent years, they only list the top 100 racers. CCE, we need to get a current listing of ALL riders competing in the event, especially the three-digit pros who struggle in the qualifiers. A good portion of the audience shows up early enough to see these guys fight it out in the afternoon portion…at least you could tell us who they are. A simple one page print out, handed out with each souvenir yearbook, is all you need. Heck, charge a buck for it ($6 total for the package), and then dedicate 50 cents from each sale to a special top non-qualifiers purse. At the very least, tell the kids you employ to sell the damn things that they are NOT selling “programs” to the night’s event.

Non-creative use of downtime. Guys, hire a band or something. The KTM Junior supercross event is not enough. Give the audience something to see between races. The bullshit “interviews with sponsors” are not appreciated. The Mickey Thompson award presentation was surreal…and not in a good way.

The KTM Junior supercross. Sure, they’re cute and if I had a kid I’d want him or her to ride this event, but there’s too much time given to this mini-spectacle. I was quite surprised to see them ride the entire track (that in itself says something about the difficulty of the track), but I was NOT surprised to hear the interview questions of the winners. Like most in the stadium, I used that time to go take a leak. This little race doesn’t have to go away, but it doesn’t deserve the pressure of being the ONLY between race entertainment.

The monster truck “preview”. I get that it’s a business, and it’s another series promoted by CCE and they will actually be in the very same stadium next week and all of that jazz. But if you’re going to promote the event, the DO it. I found it interesting that the field officials used BULLDOZERS to block off sections of the track, to limit where the monster truck guy could drive. Tease. You could tell who the real motocross fans were in the crowd…they were yawning when the truck was pulling wheelies. The people cheering for the truck…more power to them. They can see more next week…after they shell out $10 for parking, of course.

Blah, blah, blah. The announcing was more subdued this year, much to the credit of the promoters. Same lame team, though. None of it mattered up in nosebleed; we couldn’t hear most if it, especially when there were bikes on the track. It just seemed strange that they would play music right before the start of each main, AND try to talk over the sound of the music and the revving engines. Maybe one of these days the organizers will figure out why people go to see races, and then re-format their announcing structure to support that.

Fourstroke noise. Now, this is not the promoter’s fault, but the sound of the 125 events have changed the nature of the game for the worse. Gone are the days of the “ring ding” and the sweet smell of “castor” oil. The little 250 thumpers are just as loud as their 450 big brothers, if not as “deep” in tone, and their interminable drone made me miss the sound of twostrokes. I actually found myself daydreaming of a twostroke-only class.

Wow, that’s actually not a bad list of gripes. The truth of the matter is that CCE is doing a pretty good job of putting on what is actually a very tough event. And the audience left the stadium smiling, which is really what it’s all about. It’s just SO CLOSE to perfection, that it’s a shame that they don’t go all the way. One day I hope they will. All I know is that I will be there.

More later…
Paul