Seeping Matter

James Stewart has been referred to as the “Fastest Man on the Planet” (although that is pretty much just referring to the Supercross racing crowd – certainly anyone in a Bugatti Veyron is faster).  But his 2011 season will be most remembered for crashes, not wins.  In 18 main events this year, Stewart crashed in fully half of those main events and a total of eleven times (twice in a couple of races).  It’s bad enough when you crash once out of every two times you race, but the real problem with James Stewart is that he frequently is taking someone else out along with himself.

I did some quick research on RacerX’s website last night, glancing over this year’s race reports.  Here’s the list of people Stewart collided with in 2011 main events:

• Houston – Chad Reed, Justin Brayton, Chris Blose.  Stewart came into the turn too hot, couldn’t make the turn, and plowed across the field, taking Chad Reed and the other listed riders out with him.
• Houston – Jason Thomas.  Later in the main event, as Stewart was trying to make up ground, he jumped his bike right on to the back (literally) of Jason Thomas, taking Thomas out of the race.
• Atlanta – Chad Reed.  With both competing for the win on the final lap, Chad Reed dove inside the leading Stewart in a 180 degree right hand turn, taking the line away.  But Stewart tried to take the line anyway, and both Reed and Stewart went down.  After the both got up, Stewart forgot about racing and tried to take Reed out again, but this plan backfired on Stewart as Reed found a way around for third.  Stewart went from first to fourth on the final lap.
• Jacksonville – Michael Byrne, Matt Goerke.  On the first lap of the main event coming into the first rhythm section, Stewart was, in my view, too committed to jumping through the rhythm section when he was bumped by Michael Byrne.  Stewart shot clear across the track from the right to the left, collecting Matt Goerke in the process, taking them both out of the race.  It seems like some other riders were also involved, but the race report doesn’t say for sure.
• Toronto – Ryan Villopoto.  After a poor start by both Villopoto and Stewart, Stewart and Villopoto both got together in a 180 degree right hand turn, and both riders went down.  This crash was oddly like the Reed/Stewart incident in Houston, yet it wasn’t on the last lap for the win, yet nobody was getting up in arms over Stewart’s “dirty riding” tactics for this one, unlike how things went for Reed.  At least not yet.
• Dallas – Chad Reed.  Stewart was trailing Reed coming into a whoops section.  Stewart came through the whoops fast and eventually out of control, crashing into Reed in the turn at the end of the section.  Reed was sent over the top of the berm and crashed onto the concrete.  Stewart went on to take 4th.
• Las Vegas – Kevin Windham.  Having taken the lead from Windham just laps ago but still under intense pressure by Windham, Stewart went into the whoops section, lost control, and crashed in the whoops right in front of Kevin (who, despite popular belief, was NOT following Stewart’s line through the whoops – Stewart crashed into Kevin’s line).  It happened so quickly that Windham had nowhere to go other than to run right into Stewart’s bike.  Both Stewart and Windham were out of the race.

These were in addition to his crashes in Los Angeles, Daytona, and Salt Lake City (twice) where he somehow managed to not hit anyone else.

So, Stewart crashed eleven times involving at least ten other riders besides himself, three of those times involving Chad Reed.  It was odd that Reed was so criticized for his pass attempt for the win at Atlanta, in an agressive but legal move.  Yet this pass only cost Stewart one position; Stewart’s stupid antics for the remainder of the last lap cost him more points and more positions than the crash with Reed.  What people don’t remember is that Stewart also crashed into Reed on two other occasions, along with Villopoto, Windham, and others.

Somehow, when a rider under control makes an aggressive but legal move for the win and a crash ensues, that rider is a dirty rider, especially if the rider is Chad Reed and the rider being passed is James Stewart.  But when a rider is riding out of control and crashes people out of the race, it is not dirty.  I don’t get that.

It isn’t my intent to suggest that Stewart intentionally crashed into all those people.  You don’t win a championship that way, and Stewart wants to win.  It’s just that the guy rides out of control, assumes he can do whatever he wants, and cares so little for the safety of other people in the race that it doesn’t matter to him if he hits anyone else or not.

To make matters worse, of the ten other riders he crashed into this year, at least three of them — Thomas, Goerke, and Windham — paid a visit to the hospital as a result of their crash with Stewart.  The first two had season-ending injuries, joining other riders like Ivan Tedesco and Chad Reed in the list of riders whose seasons have ended due to a collision with James Stewart.

All of this was in addition to his off-track problems.  He was arrested in Florida for impersonating an officer when he used flashing red and blue lights to pull another vehicle over on a highway, a vehicle which just happened to contain off-duty policemen.  Somehow, this felony arrest doesn’t merit any disciplinary action from the AMA, whereas Jason Lawrence got suspended for a year for his misdemeanor a couple of years ago.

I hate that Kevin Windham was racing so well in Vegas only to end the night at the hospital with internal bleeding.  But in a way, I’m kinda glad it happened.  Stewart rides without any respect for the safety of other riders on the track, and has done this for years.  I can’t recall any other top rider who has had more collisions involving other riders — even Ricky Carmichael is among the list of riders who have been victims of Stewart’s wrecks.  In the past this has seemed to get by without too much fan attention, but Kevin Windham is different.  He’s the most adored rider in the whole paddock.  And maybe, just maybe, this time it will incite enough ire from the fans to get the AMA to do something about it.  I hope they do, because one of these times he might be ending someone’s career.

It’s been called the greatest Supercross season ever.  That’s a statement that’s perhaps a bit tough to argue one way or the other.  There have certainly been great Supercross seasons in the past (e.g. 2004, 2006, and 2008), but 2011 was definitely one to remember.  Having a field where there are five or six riders capable of winning every time you race really makes for an exciting series, especially when the points battle was as tight as it was this year.  Every race, every jump, every corner, and every start counts in a season like that.  That’s what we had this year, and if you didn’t tune in, well, you really don’t know what you are missing.

With a season like that, winning the championship has to be that much sweeter, and so you gotta give it up for Ryan Villopoto, this year’s champion.  After horribly breaking his leg at St. Louis last year, he healed up, came into a fully stacked field featuring three former Supercross champions, and went out there and took the title for himself.  I mean no disrespect, but Ryan Dungey’s title last year was a bit by default.  Reed and Stewart were both out from the start of the season, Villopoto’s season ended in St. Louis, Canard wasn’t even racing in the 450 class, and Windham took half the season to find his groove.  This year, everyone was on it from the beginning, and all but Canard were in it to the end.  Villopoto reached out there for the title and took it away from everyone else.  It’s a well deserved title and he has to feel pretty sweet about it.

Of course, I gotta spend some time talking about my favorite rider, Chad Reed.  With just a few weeks to go before the season began, Reed still didn’t have a contract and ended up creating his own team, TwoTwo Motorsports.  He funded his own title campaign with very little factory support from Honda, and ended up taking second in the title chase, just four points behind Villopoto.  Reed is a very talented rider and a good sportsman.  It was great to hear him give credit to the other riders throughout the season, and particularly to hear him genuinely congratulate Villopoto on his championship.

Reading some of the online forums this year, particularly with respect to Reed, has been interesting.  There’s a lot of fans that think that Chad Reed is a dirty rider and are willing to carry that flag wherever they go.  Frankly, I’m just not seeing it.  There’s really only one rider that Reed rides a little bit harder than the rest, and that’s James Stewart.  There’s years of history behind that though, years of experience with Reed getting the raw end of the deal due to Stewart’s aggression.  I think a lot of these fans are either newcomers or have short-term memories.  I’ve been a fan for a long time, and trust me, whatever Stewart’s taken recently, he had it coming to him.

The one guy I would have liked to see win who didn’t this year is Kevin Windham.  He just may retire with the dubious distinction of being the best ever rider to not win a championship.  He looked like he had it in Houston and again in Las Vegas if not for some rotten luck.  I’ll tell you what, though — watching Kevin Windham in the opening ceremonies itself is worth the price of admission.  Nobody does such epic stoppies, and the transition jump he did in Vegas was just sick.  I heard it was about 120 feet in the air.

Unfortunately for Windham, he added himself to a pretty sizable list of James Stewart crash victims at Las Vegas.  James Stewart, the “Fastest Man to Hit the Planet”, seemed more about crashing than anything else this season.  But more about that in a separate post.

All in all, it was a pretty fantastic season.  I can hardly wait until next year.

Today’s post sparked by a comment on a RacerX article about last week’s Indy Supercross:

The lap chart only track [sic] the individual time for laps 2 – 20. With [James] Stewart having a bad start and [Ryan Villopoto] getting into first early we can safely say [Villopoto] had the faster 1st lap.

Uh, yes.  But why make it so complicated?  Since all twenty riders lined up next to each other at the start, but Villopoto was in the lead at the end of lap one, that pretty much should be enough to say that Villopoto had the fastest lap time on the 1st lap.

I don’t think you need to use deductive reasoning when you can rely on facts.

At round four of this year’s Supercross season, James Stewart was really upset that so many people were dissing on him for making such a big deal out of his sore wrist.  So much so that he dropped out of the series and had surgery on it just to save face.  Oh, the avarice!

So without Stewart and Reed in the series anymore, this makes it a wide open championship chase.

Despite my disappointment that Reed is out, this should make for a really outstanding series.  Awesome!

This also means that Ryan Dungey and Kevin Windham suddenly realized that, instead of just going out there and racing for fun, they now have a good chance to win the championship.  So of course this means that they had to tighten up and not race well.

If I had one Supercross-related wish, it would be for Kevin Windham to find his 2004-season speed and win a Supercross title.  Or if not, then Ryan Dungey can take it.  But both seem to race better when they aren’t feeling the pressure.  And it was more of the same in San Francisco; Dungey crashed while leading the main event and ended up fourth, and I think K-Dub ended up like 11th (!).

Dungey’s crash left it open for someone else to win, and Ryan Villopoto stepped up to take the victory, finally showing the speed we’ve been waiting for all year.  Josh Hill and Andrew Short rounded out the podium.  See what I mean?  We could have different winners every week!

In Lites, Jake Weimer lost his first race of the season when Trey Canard took the Lites main event win by not crashing.  Trey seems like a nice guy, but I just don’t think his podium speeches are sincere.

But the award for the all-time lamest podium speech now goes to Villopoto, who quite openly and stupidly promoted a jar of Mandingo Pickles.  Dude, please do not do this again.

Round three of the AMA Supercross season just ended almost a week ago.  So I’d better hurry and write my review before round four takes place tomorrow evening.

Here’s the rundown (no pun intended, Ryan Morais):

• Ryan Morais had a really brutal-looking crash in his heat race where he landed on the top of a whoop directly on his lower back at a high rate of speed.  I worried that he’d broken his back (it certainly doesn’t require nearly so vicious an accident for me to break mine), but it ends up he’s just really, really, really sore.  No major injuries, but he’s out indefinitely at this point.
• Jake Weimer won again.  Woot.  Go, sort-of-local boy.
• James Stewart announced at the beginning of the races, “I got a boo-boo on my little handie,” you know, in case he needed an excuse later for losing.
• Josh Hill was looking like he used to a couple of years ago, before he started hanging out with J-Law.  He showed Stewart how it was in their heat by tracking him down and beating him.
  • I know, right?  You’re thinking, “I thought the only thing Stewart’s teammate was supposed to do is take Chad Reed out, not win!”  Well, Larry Brooks explained that since Stewart did such a stellar job of taking Chad Reed out last week, now Hill is actually free to try to win.  Sweet!
  • By the way, isn’t it odd that Jason Lawrence would have the nickname “J-Law,” considering all the legal trouble he’s been having lately?
• The main event was an instant classic.  Stewart led early, followed very closely by Hill and Ryan Dungey.  After seven or eight laps, Hill finally made a move for the lead and was able to hold Stewart off for a while, but you could’ve easily thrown a blanket over all three of them at any point, the racing was so close and awesome.  Finally Dungey passed Stewart, and shortly thereafter he passed Hill for the lead, checked out, and took the win.
• After the race, when they interviewed Stewart, he wiped a tear from his eye as he said, “My wrist.  It has an owie.  I couldn’t win because of my owie.  Remember, I told you about this earlier.”  Of course, we remembered.  It was all Ralph Sheheen could talk about the entire race.

As a side note, this Stewart crap is really getting old.  Every time he loses he has an excuse.  It is never his fault.  He always wins unless the entire universe conspires against him.  Right?

Dude, shut up.  Two years ago Chad Reed raced with a broken shoulder blade and still did better than you did with your tender wrist.  Shut up and race already.

You know, the bad thing about being passionate about sports mostly rednecks follow is this:  Most of the people that follow it are rednecks.

I realize that sounds like I’m just repeating myself.  Seriously, though, most Supercross “fans” are complete idiots.  They haven’t followed the sport long enough to even know who Jeremy McGrath is, let alone people like Rick Johnson, Jeff Ward, David Bailey, or Bob Hannah.  They attend races, but they are so drunk by the time the main event starts that they don’t even know who is winning, much less notice when someone is suddenly taking a different line through that rhythm section.

Even worse, some of these people apparently become the heads of the sanctioning body, and they end up running the show, even though they obviously don’t have a freaking clue what is going on.

Let’s consider James Stewart here, self-entitled crybaby extraordinaire.

First off, let me be the first to say it:  Stewart is way fast.  The fastest guy on the track, without question.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, and we’ve already addressed the whiny crybaby aspect, let’s talk about another aspect of his legacy:  Crashing.  In particular, crashing into other people.

I can’t think of anyone in recent memory that has done this more often.  Off the top of my head, here’s the ones I can remember:

• James lands on top of Ivan Tedesco in Supercross practice, breaking his hand and ruining his season.
• James crashes at the bottom of the finish-line double, then remounts his bike and pulls directly onto the track at the foot of the jump directly into oncoming traffic without looking first, taking Travis Preston out of the race.
  • Interesting sidenote:  James finishes the race, but then collapses in “pain” at the end to avoid getting his tail whipped by Preston, who was waiting around to have a word.
• James jumps and lands on top of Ricky Carmichael.
• James crashes off the track in a whoops section, then pulls back onto the track (again without looking) right into Kevin Windham, crashing them both.

That doesn’t include all the times Stewart and Reed crashed into each other, nor all the times Stewart intentionally tried to take Reed out (for example, the time Stewart crossed lines in mid-air over a triple jump, trying to take Reed out about 20 feet above the ground).  And I’d also include the times where James and his team got his teammate to try to intentionally take Reed out in Salt Lake City last year.

So Phoenix was more of the same.  It started out in the heat, where James got a mediocre start, then crosses from the middle of the track to the edge (sound familiar?) in the first triple jump, and ends up right underneath Kyle Partridge.  Partridge was unhurt but did not finish the race or qualify for the main event.  Stewart stood up, made sure the camera was looking right at him, then limped around grimacing to make sure everyone knew he was really hurt.  Then came out and raced the LCQ like nothing happened.

Then the main event comes along.  Reed is riding behind Stewart, is riding faster than him, and is obviously carefully looking for the right place to pass.  Finally he gets a small window of opportunity and makes a block pass in the turn, taking away Stewart’s line.

This is a completely legal and legitimate move.  It happens in Supercross racing ALL THE TIME, in every race, in every event.  It is not considered a dirty move if you clearly take the line from the other rider.  Reed did not initiate contact with Stewart; he took the position.

Stewart, meanwhile, cut down early into Reed and crashed into him.

This part, while unfortunate, I can understand.  Things happen quickly in a race.  But, if you have this recorded in high-def, like my brother does, you should replay it.  As I’m told, if you watch the replay you can clearly see that Reed is going to get out of the turn until Stewart reaches out and grabs Reed, pulling him to the ground along with Stewart.

Well, Reed breaks his hand in the crash.  He’s lying there on the ground with Stewart and Stewart’s bike sitting there on his broken hand.  Reed pushes Stewart off of the top of him, mounts his bike, and rides directly into the pits (we found out much later; more on this in a minute).

Stewart, meanwhile, gets up and finishes the race in 15th.  Then, after the race, he storms over to Chad Reed’s pit and pushes Reed’s bike over.  I assume he wanted to have “a word” with Reed, and that Reed wasn’t there because he was at the hospital.

Meanwhile, throughout most of the racing evening all we’ve heard on TV is Ralph Sheheen going on and on and on and on and on and on and on about Stewart.  Some samples:

• “James Stewart is so fast.  So fast!  I mean, he’s so fast!”
• “James Stewart is incredible.  I mean, he is just incredible.  Incredible!”
• “James Stewart looks so hot in those tight pants.  Hot!  I mean, really, really hot!”

(Okay, maybe he didn’t actually say that last one.)

Post-race, here is the immediate fallout:  Chad Reed is suspended by the AMA and fined $5000.  James Stewart is given a warning.

Wait.  This can’t be right!  Let me restate:

• James Stewart:
  • Crossed the track in mid-air over a triple jump in mid-pack at the start of a race, directly into the path of another rider.  IN MID-AIR.  Causing a very dangerous collision.  Taking another rider out for the remainder of the evening.
  • Later, he cuts down into another rider that has already taken a spot away from him, grabs on to that rider and pulls him to the ground.  In doing so, he breaks that other rider’s hand.  This other rider just happens to be Stewart’s primary contender for the title, who is now out for half of the season.  So Stewart not only took yet another rider out of the race, he took this one out of title contention.
  • Later, he storms across the pits to have a word with this guy who had the nerve to pass James cleanly.  He enters Reed’s pit area and pushes over his factory Kawasaki Supercross bike.
  • For all of this, the AMA says, “Aw, James.  We know you feel sad.  You shouldn’t treat other people like that, okay?  There there.”
  • And Ralph Sheheen says, “Poor James.  He sure looks hot when he’s angry!”
• Chad Reed:
  • Passed Stewart cleanly, but was then crashed into by Stewart and apparently tackled to the ground.
  • He breaks his hand in the process, ruining his season.
  • He pushes Stewart off of his broken hand so he can get up and go to the hospital.
  • For this, Reed is fined and suspended.
  • And Ralph Sheheen says, “Serves old what’s-his-name right for hurting my sweetie-pie like that!”

This is so ludicrous it is beyond belief.  What race were these guys watching?

Stewart was only given a warning because this was his “first offense,” according to the AMA officials.  Hello?!?  Have you guys ever seen another race?  Stewart does this kind of crap ALL THE TIME!

Stewart does this all the time because of his self-entitlement problem.  He thinks that everyone on the track should just get out of his way while he rides to victory.  He considers the entire track to be his personal track.  He can take any line he wants, whenever he wants it.  He belongs at the front and will run over or through anyone who gets in his way.

It makes me wonder how many other guys there would be that could compete with him if they all had absolutely no respect for anyone else they race with and no regard for the safety of the others on the track.  Since Stewart is pretty much the only one, we’ll never know, unless the AMA does something.

They won’t though, and it has to do with the bench-racing forum-posting crowd.

Reading some of the forum posts after the race is something I can’t recommend.  I think it is dangerous to do; I think it will actually make you stupider.  These guys go on and on about how Reed “took James out” of the race.  Nevermind the fact that Reed cleanly had the position.  Nevermind the fact that last year, when Stewart took the position from Reed at Anaheim 1, then cut across the front of Reed and missed a shift, causing them both to crash, that it was these same people claiming that Reed took Stewart out again, in a crash that seems to be almost an exact role-reversal from last year!  I’m willing to chalk them both up to pure racing incidents, but if anything Stewart was to blame in both cases, not Reed.

Anyway, the problem is, it is these people that eventually become the main dudes at the AMA.  I guess I should cut them some slack about Phoenix.  Heck, the AMA officials were probably slobbering drunk at the race also.  That would at least explain what otherwise looks like obvious favortism that can only be rivaled by the BCS.

AMA?  Sheheen?  It is time for this Stewart favortism to stop.  You need to see it for what it is:  He’s a selfish, whiny, crybaby brat with a self-entitlement and lack-of-humility problem.  He’s dangerous to every other rider on the track because he has no respect for them.  And he’s dangerous to the sport because he makes it look like the only way to compete is to compete dirty, and there’s a lot of riders (not Andrew Short or Eric Sorby, but most of the others) who aren’t willing to be thought of as dirty in order to win if they can help it.

Besides, Ralph, he’s just not that into you.

The Phoenix round of the 2010 AMA Supercross season was certainly pivotal.  Here’s a summary:

• Jake Weimer won 250s again in convincing fashion.  Trey Canard rode like a madman to try to keep up, and then crashed.
• Ryan Morais looked pretty solid as he rode to second place in 250s.
• At the start of his heat, James Stewart jumped from the center of the track to the edge of the track in the first triple, in the middle of the pack, and was landed on by Kyle Partridge who, inexplicably to Stewart, just jumped in a straight line.  Stewart pretended to be very severely hurt in hopes to lure away Chad Reed fans, but we haven’t forgotten that Reed raced the same day he broke his shoulder blade two years ago.  Stewart, you have a long way to come to be the man Reed is.
• In the main event, Reed made a pass on Stewart and had the position when Stewart rode directly into Reed anyway, crashing them both out of contention and breaking Chad Reed’s hand.  More on this later.
• Meanwhile, Ryan Dungey showed that last week was no fluke as he proceeded to win the 450 main event.  It’s true that Reed and Stewart crashed, but it’s likely that Dungey would have won it anyway.

Reed was fined and suspended, presumably for first having the audacity to pass Stewart, and then for pushing Stewart off of the top of his broken hand as he tried to get back up.  Stewart, meanwhile, crashed at least two people out of their respective races by riding like a madman, then stormed across the pits after the race to Reed’s pit and pushed Reed’s bike over.  The AMA said, “Now now, James.  You don’t need to be so mean to your inferiors.”

Yeah, I’ll be talking about this later.

My deepest apologies for being a week late with this review.  Of course I realize that all of you who read this blog are big-time racing fans, like me.

So here’s a basic review of what happened at Anaheim 1, in case you, inexplicably, missed it:

• Ryan Dungey showed he is for real, leading most of the main event.  Even though he was passed by James Stewart at the end and ended up losing, he held him at bay for 17 laps and very nearly caught him and repassed him on lap 20.
• James Stewart, in typical James Stewart fashion, refused to give any credit to his competition and blamed his bike for not dominating the race.  This is because James is a whiny momma’s boy that thinks the world owes him something.  It’s also because he believes that you cannot be a James Stewart fan and also a fan of any other rider.  That’s OK James, I’m a fan of the other riders.
• Austin Stroupe, being bored and restless waiting for the Lites East series to start, came up to the big class, rode like a madman, took Chad Reed out of the main event on the first lap, and then talked smack about Josh Hill for doing the same thing to him.
• Jake Weimer pretty much picked up where he left off and dominated the Lites main event.  With no Ryan Dungey in Lites anymore, Weimer appears to be the clear favorite to win the Lites West title.
• And Trey Canard made several Trey Canard-style passes, which means that he banged into people and tried to wreck them when passing them even if he didn’t have to.

It should be an awesome season.

What was the first car you ever rode in?  You know, the car that brought you home from the hospital after you were born? In my case, it was a 1970 Boss 302 Mustang that looked exactly like this one.

1970 Boss 302 Mustang = Awesome

This ruined me for life.

There wasn’t too much I could do about this while I was growing up.  I couldn’t afford my own car (or motorcycle) even after I was old enough to drive.  So mostly I would just ride my 20″ Redline around, in full aero tuck down big hills until that time I lost my balance, crashed, and broke my fall with my face.

Now as an grown-up, or at least an adult, silencing this addiction is much harder.  I’ve been to supercross races, motocross races, NASCAR races, ALMS races, World Superbike races, and AMA Superbike races before the Daytona Motorsports Group ruined it.  I watch every Formula One, World Superbike, and MotoGP race that gets televised.  This helps but doesn’t fully address the problem.

So about ten years ago, I bought myself a used 1988 Honda CRX Si with my annual bonus from IBM.  This car was not pretty at all.  But it was fun to drive, and pretty fast.  This really helped my addiction problem. Then the CRX died.  That was a sad, sad day.

I bought my 1998 Kawasaki KX-250 to feed the addiction.  And boy, it works.  My adrenaline rushes every time I throw my leg over and kick it started.  I shift into first, crack the throttle about 1/4 open, and release the clutch and that thing will climb through the gears just about as fast as I can shift.  What can compare to motorcycle acceleration? Nothing.  Well, a Ferrari, I guess, or a Corvette.  But I can’t afford a Ferrari – not yet, anyway. So yeah, my motorcycle will address this problem, except I never get to ride it.  It’s too hard to get enough free time all together to go ride.

So my addiction is not getting fed again. Which is why I test drove this.

2003 Nissan 350Z Track Model = Awesome

Boy, am I in trouble. My only hope is that someone buys it before I break down and get it myself.

P.S. I stole that picture from Innovative Motors, I hope they don’t mind too much.

So I haven’t seen the Las Vegas Supercross yet (I have my reasons – I know, there is really no excuse). But before I see the end, I had to comment on the pre-race interviews the SPEED channel broadcasted, because it will make my comments more genuine.

SPEED started off by highlighting a race replay from the Salt Lake City race which very clearly shows Chisholm looking back, seeing both riders racing for position, moving out of Stewart’s way, and then immediately racing Reed to impede progress.  This is not just a smoking gun; in addition, there is gunshot residue all over Chisholm’s hand and his fingerprints are on both the gun and the shell casing.

Next they shows some interviews with regard to last week’s team tactics incident.  SPEED first tried to interview Stewart for his reaction, but he declined to be interviewed.  My guess is he knows he’s not a very good liar and he knows nobody is believing his story anyway, because it is obviously not true.

Next they interviewed Team Suzuki’s team manager, Roger DeCoster, and Chad Reed himself.  DeCoster said that after seeing the replays on TV it is obvious that Chisholm intentionally tried to impede Reed’s progress, and since this is out of character for Chisholm it seems likely that he was ordered to do this by the team.  DeCoster gave no indication of any retaliation planned or resolve to stoop to the level of the L&M Racing team in order to help Reed get the title – just that it was pretty apparent what had happened.  If you saw the replay, you can’t deny what DeCoster is saying – it is pretty clear.

But the best of them all was Reed’s interview.  He began his answer by saying, “You have to find your happy place.”  I wondered what he was talking about.  Then he explained that immediately after the race was over, he was fuming mad.  But instead of losing control of his emotions, he took a few moments of time-out by himself to find his happy place.  He said after he took a moment to himself, he was really fine with it.

Understand this – it’s big.  This guy is competing for the world title, and he’s fine with it.

His words were, “The joke is on them.”  How true.  Once he found himself, he realized that he’s bigger than one race or even one championship.  It’s more important for him to compete aggressively but fairly and to be true to himself.  He wouldn’t want a championship that he wasn’t proud of.  The joke is clearly on L&M Racing and James Stewart.

Later on, when he won his heat race (I did watch some of it), SPEED asked if they could expect any team tactics or retaliation, to which Reed simply replied, “You can expect a hard-fought, clean race.”

All of this made Larry Brooks all the more stupid when they showed his interview later, when he spent all his time talking about how Team Suzuki was whining and complaining about how unfair everything was and kept trying to deflect the conversation toward how Stewart is faster.  I’ve never heard anyone deny that Stewart is fast, so I don’t get what he’s trying to defend.  I do know, however, that before Chad Reed came along, Larry Brooks was nowhere – team manager at KTM, the clear afterthought factory team of supercross.  Whoop-de-do.  Their factory guys are rejects from many of the factory support teams.  Then Reed shows up and they form L&M Racing, and Reed gives them a supercross title, after which they get rid of Reed in favor of Stewart.  Or maybe Reed realized they weren’t really good sportsmen and wanted to align himself with a more respectable team.

Larry Brooks clearly needs a lesson in gratitude.  And humility.  And sportsmanship.  And intelligence.

But no matter.  I’m proud to be a Chad Reed fan this year.  He sets a great example for my son, who watches the races with me, in many ways.  He competes aggressively but fairly.  He is a good sport, always showing respect for his competitors.  He only worries about the things that he can change.  And he doesn’t lose sight of what is most important – in this case, being true to himself and happy with the choices he makes.  If he has to give that up, like Stewart did, to win the title, I’d rather have him lose it and continue to be that kind of man.