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We Went Fast's mission is to improve the sport of motocross through stories. Because better stories = a better sport. If you love history, data and details, you'll enjoy We Went Fast.
In early April 2004, I drove down to Cairo, Georgia and sat with Ricky Carmichael in the middle of one of his practice tracks. We riffed about his forthcoming return to racing.
This interview took place at the Goat Farm. But this was before anyone called it the Goat Farm. Carmichael was already the winningest rider in the sport but the GOAT nickname hadn’t caught on. He was just RC.
Carmichael was preparing for the 2004 AMA Pro Motocross championship and this would have been one of his first days back on the motorcycle. He’d been off the bike over four months at this point and had not raced since Oct. 2003, the US Open of Supercross. I asked RC ‘what’s the one thing you wouldn’t be able to do without in your program:
“Just the people I surround myself with, good, influential people, that tell me the right things and do the right things. Without those people, it wouldn’t be possible because they’re the ones who make it possible”
This story you’re about to listen only happened because of the people Carmichael surrounded himself with.
What started as a deep dive into Carmichael’s perfect motocross seasons turned into a saga about one of the greatest mysteries of our sport: How did Suzuki convince Ricky Carmichael to switch teams? How did Honda let him walk? The basic surface details of this story are not a secret. Carmichael has discussed it often over the years but during the reporting phase of this project, we learned that his memory isn’t perfect, even his knowledge of the deal wasn’t 100%.
Carmichael and I chatted on and off for over a year and his memory sharpened the more we talked. This whole thing became a completely different story than originally planned. And thanks to those aforementioned people above, we were able to unearth documents and communication from the time period that led to the most accurate retelling of a pivotal period in Carmichael’s life and career.
It’s called The Greatest Gamble because three different parties put everything on the line with their decisions. For Carmichael, it was his reputation as a winning machine. Suzuki literally bet the farm to retain Carmichael’s services. Honda gambled by drawing a line. And that line cost them the winningest rider in the sport.
Obviously, you’re listening to the audio version. For a more interactive experience that includes trivia questions, polls, infographics and photos, check out the print version at wewentfast.com
If you like what we’re doing here and want to join the Fast Family, hit up shop.wewentfast.com. In addition to We Went Fast branded products, we have officially licensed Ricky Carmichael merchandise. Our Carmichael swag is inspired by the GOAT’s dominance, including “The Art of Perfection”, an 18x24-inch illustrated representation of Carmichael’s 24 and 0 domination.
Please share this episode with a friend and leave a rating and review. That helps others discover We Went Fast. And if you want to help us tell more stories, visit shop.wewentfast.com. Every shirt, hat and piece of art we sell gets the same attention to detail as the stories do.
wewentfast.com. Join the Fast Family.
The Greatest Gamble in Motocross History
The untold story of Ricky Carmichael’s shocking switch to Suzuki.
This is Part 1 of a 2-part release
Ricky Carmichael’s phone rang. Looking at the name on the small display, he knew taking this call determined where he would spend the rest of his professional motorcycle racing career. Deep down, he didn’t want to make changes but that was before his agent found a lucrative, almost unrealistic, competing offer.
It was late March 2004 and Carmichael hadn’t competed in nearly six months. A knee injury forced him out of the AMA Supercross series and his chance at a fourth consecutive championship.
His reconstructed left ACL was almost ready for the abuse of training. Like everything in his life, a plan was in place for that. First, however, Carmichael had to pick a color. After more than eight months of discussions he had the choice between a red pill or a yellow pill. Red represented remaining with contented surroundings, impressive monetary opportunity, proven technology, spectacular historical records but a base compensation below what he wanted. Yellow represented a new challenge, unproven but capable technology, a guaranteed life-changing financial incentive and a desire to return to winning so great the company was willing to invest in one rider in a go for broke, bet it all, hold-my-beer-style gamble.
Carmichael walked outside, leaned against an oak tree, pressed the green button on his mobile phone and said hello to Ray Blank, the vice president of American Honda’s motorcycle division. Blank, an ardent two-wheel enthusiast, was the highest ranking non-Japanese executive in his department. Former co-workers use colorful adjectives to describe working with Blank: blunt, intimidating, tough, firm yet fair. Chuck Miller, a former desert racing champion, who spent 36 years working in various Honda departments, remembers Blank’s love for racing, winning and the creative deals he hammered out to keep Honda motorcycles on starting lines.
Miller said he once watched Blank work his automobile counterpart in the company smoking room. At the beginning of the meeting, Honda’s storied off-road program, which included many Baja titles, was in jeopardy. By the end of it, Blank had convinced the automobile division to help fund motorcycle off-road racing in a mutually beneficial relationship.
American Honda and Carmichael were deadlocked. Blank exercised Honda’s first right of refusal clause and forced Suzuki to show the offer they made to Carmichael: $4,700,000 in guaranteed base salary for the 2005 racing season, which increased to $5,300,000 in 2006 on the success of two championships (often called an accelerator clause). No race win bonuses. Nominal title bonuses. According to Carmichael, Blank called the Suzuki deal ‘unbelievable’ and congratulated Mel Harris – Blank’s equivalent at Suzuki – for pulling it off. But Carmichael said he really wanted to stay at Honda and made one more effort to get them to budge. In the end, Carmichael said it came down to him wanting another $300,000. But Blank’s response to this amounted to a negotiating mic drop.
“This is our final offer,” Blank said, according to Carmichael. The performance-bonus-heavy offer included $6,200,000 per contract year in potential earnings (potential because that was the ceiling if he won all the heats, mains, motos, overalls and championships). The guaranteed compensation of the Honda offer was less than half of Suzuki’s and, according to Carmichael, included an injury clause. Injury clauses vary but Carmichael didn’t like what he read. Suzuki’s contract had no such passage.
Carmichael usually struggles to recall granular details from his life. And he likes to move on quickly once decisions are made, but what he remembers Blank saying next is tattooed in his brain: “You can either stay here and be the Honda hero like Miguel Duhamel (road racer), or you can go try to be the great white hope of Suzuki like Jeremy McGrath was for KTM. And you saw how that worked out for him. I hope you choose wisely.”
Carmichael still hears those words. He was stunned and saddened, yet finally had closure and decisive clarity about what to do next. He thanked Blank for the call and told him, “Looks like I have a decision to make.”
In a text message to We Went Fast, Blank curtly responded to repeated requests to participate in this story: “Honda policy is not to discuss these issues publicly,” he wrote. He retired from American Honda in October 2012.
Today, Mike Gosselaar speaks of this moment as both “tragic” and “devastating”. Gosselaar, Carmichael’s race mechanic and a Honda employee since 1993, heard the whole conversation on speakerphone. Gosselaar’s own future was independent of Carmichael’s but he desperately wanted his rider to stay at Honda. For months he lobbied with management, “…just trying everything to get it to work,” Gosselaar says. “It was devastating when we found out it wasn’t.” Gosselaar remembers more emotion while standing under that tree and hesitates before admitting that Carmichael seemed to be fighting back tears.
“’Well, I guess we’re going to Suzuki,’” Gosselaar remembers Carmichael saying. “’Let’s go see what we can do with that bike.’ Only he used stronger language than that.”
With a decision made, he felt relief. He could now focus on returning to riding, racing and winning. He had six weeks to prepare for the 2004 AMA Pro Motocross season and the motivation to make it a championship nobody would forget.
To everyone outside the Honda/Carmichael orbit, the whole thing made no sense. Almost twenty years later, people still ask questions. Carmichael was just 24 and already the winningest rider in motocross and supercross history with 96 national level victories.
The deal didn’t blow up in one phone call. To understand where it all went sideways, let’s go back to a time when everything in Carmichael’s life was still green.
August 2000: If You Can’t Beat Him, Buy Him
Almost four years before Chuck Miller’s job was to keep Ricky Carmichael on a Honda, he devised a plan to get Carmichael to switch to Honda. The light bulb moment came while sitting on a hillside at Spring Creek Motocross Park in Millville, Minnesota. It was August 13, 2000, the 10th round of the AMA Pro Motocross Championships.
As the manager of motorcycle sports for American Honda, part of his job was personnel placement: find the right people to help Honda win. But Honda had not been winning. At least not enough to please the leaders of a company that won often since 1973, their first year in American motocross competition. Miller reported to Ray Blank and he could hear Blank’s voice in his head: 'Miller? What are you doing? We're supposed to be winning. What's wrong out there?' Sitting in the grass watching Carmichael dominate at Millville, Miller mused, ‘you’re not going to beat that guy. The only way for us to win is to just go get that guy.’
By that point in the summer, the AMA Pro Motocross championship was nearly a foregone conclusion. Carmichael already had seven overall wins and left Millville with a 40-point lead over Honda’s Sebastien Tortelli. On top of that, Tortelli’s teammate Ezra Lusk dropped out of the season after that race, his second withdrawal that summer.
Once again, the chances of a Red Rider holding up the number one plate looked bleak. In the Supercross season ended three months earlier Honda won a single main event (Windham). At Red Bud, Tortelli grabbed their only premier class motocross win of the summer. This was unfamiliar territory to all Honda employees. It had been four years since they won a Supercross championship and five since Jeremy McGrath’s 1995 AMA Pro Motocross title.
Miller went back to Torrance, Calif., presented a plan to get Carmichael and recalls Blank telling him to go ahead and figure out how to make it happen. Nine months later, at a Cheesecake Factory in Irvine, Calif. Carmichael signed his name to a 30-page-long document to ride red for the first time since 1985, the year he found a Honda Z50 under the Christmas tree.
The 2001 AMA Pro Motocross Championship hadn’t even started.
The financial terms were eye-popping, especially in a sport that still had no live television package. The Honda contract paid $1,500,000 in base salary in year one (2002) with championship bonuses of $1,000,000 for supercross and $500,000 for motocross. The race performance bonuses were equally as lucrative at $50,000 per win/overall, $5,000 for heat race wins and $10,000 for individual moto victories.
Carmichael had ridden exclusively for Kawasaki since 1988, when he was nine years old and they weren’t going to let him walk without a fight. Miller said Honda secured Carmichael’s services on a technological technicality. Kawasaki had first right of refusal and matched Honda’s financial offer but they couldn’t match the equipment; Carmichael wanted the option to ride a four stroke and Honda already had a 450 deep in development. The prototype hit the track in the summer of 2001. Kawasaki didn’t put a 450 on the professional series in America until 2006.
Carmichael’s Honda tenure started roughly. In October, the crowd booed him with vehemence during the opening ceremonies of the 2001 US Open in Las Vegas. That December he went over the bars practicing at home. He suffered a concussion, a tweaked back and a hole in his leg that required staples. The vivid details captured in an 11-photo sequence by Simon Cudby were kept secret for nearly a year.
Then, at round one of the 2002 AMA Supercross season, he crashed out on lap five in what looked like a season ending slam. He finished 20th. Miller got called into Blank’s office.
“What happened? I thought this was going to be different,” Blank asked him.
Miller said the team worked diligently on setting up the bike better for Carmichael. He returned at round two and finished 4th and then 4th again at round three.
From there, he dominated. For the first time since 1995 Honda won the premier class championships in both Supercross and motocross. In motocross, Carmichael did the unthinkable: he won all 24 motos. He swears he felt no pressure during the 2002 Pro Motocross season until he lined up for the 24th and final moto. “That’s when it hit me. And it hit me like a ton of bricks,” he says, 20 years later. “Going to the line, I went, ‘Holy s---, man. I have to win.’ I had never experienced pressure like that in my life, even with all the championships that I had won.”
Honda was back on top, in a big way, bigger than even they expected. Carmichael won 11 Supercross main events and 12 motocross overalls in his first year, triggering $2,950,000 in performance bonuses alone (heat races, main events, motos, overalls and championships). His moto win and overall bonus payouts for Pro Motocross in 2002 were $340,000 more than the championship bonus. Honda went from winning just two races in 2000, one in 2001 to all but three in 2002 (Honda-mounted Mike LaRocco and Nathan Ramsey each won a Supercross main).
And both championships. They even won the 2002 125 West Supercross title with Travis Preston. The two appeared on page one of Cycle News with their number one plates and the cover line: “Red Reign, Preston & Carmichael End the Drought”.
That 82% win rate by Carmichael caused a stir in the executive offices of American Honda. When manufacturers hire athletes, they estimate how many races a specific rider is expected to win and make a budget based on that forecast. They planned for Carmichael to win a bit more than 50% of the races. He blew that forecast and then some and his performance bonuses were double his base salary.
“We were WAY over budget at the time,” Chuck Miller says. “It was crazy. I’ll never forget at the end of the year I got in trouble.” Miller went from getting heat for not winning enough, to getting heat for winning too much. He got called into an office to meet Honda executives he didn’t normally interact with. Blank was also present but didn’t speak.
“It was the Japanese management,” Miller says. “And they were riding me hard [asking me], ‘How can you be so far over budget!?’
‘Well, we won every race,’ Miller remembers replying.
‘Well, your job is to win races, your job is to win every race. You should budget for every race.’
I remember thinking, ‘Well, nobody wins every race.’”
With the rise of Australia’s Chad Reed in Supercross and the return of Kevin Windham to motocross, Carmichael’s domination softened slightly in 2003. He still won both championships but he ‘only’ won seven Supercross main events and nine of the 11 motocross overalls.
At the halfway point of the 2003 Pro Motocross season, David Moorman, Carmichael’s agent, dropped a bomb on Honda with a proposal that, even 20 years later, is still unique and revolutionary.
July 2003: Fresh Thinking
David Moorman was good enough in his youth to attend Notre Dame on a golf scholarship. He graduated in 1984 and in 1987 earned a juris doctorate from the University’s law school. The Muncie, Indiana-born Moorman spent two years practicing law in Texas before he joined Orlando’s Leader Enterprises, an athlete representation firm. Mentored by legendary sports lawyer Robert Fraley, one of Moorman’s first clients at Leader was Payne Stewart, who won the 1989 PGA Championship. While at Leader, Moorman also represented players in the National Football League and Major League Baseball as well as multiple NFL head coaches, including Joe Gibbs.
Establishing a reputation as a tough negotiator who likes to rethink structure within corporate agreements – a structure that can better serve his clients – Moorman was strictly stick and ball, even after forming his own firm in 1997. His connection to motocross came from mutual friends seeking help. Grant Waite, a dirt-bike-loving professional golfer linked Moorman to Carmichael through Scott Taylor, who worked with both Oakley and Fox Racing. According to Moorman, Waite asked for a favor; in the fourth quarter of 2001, Carmichael needed help with endorsement contracts. Moorman declined; he was busy and didn’t want to over-commit. In early 2002, both Waite and Taylor got involved and Moorman reluctantly agreed.
In Carmichael, he saw a polite, highly determined and focused young man who kept his life simple and his circle small despite being the undisputed best at what he did. The Carmichael family’s honesty, closeness and clear strategy for success impressed Moorman. As for the contracts, he saw them as a challenge.
“I was drawn to the complexities of RC’s business agreements,” Moorman says in an e-mail. “His sponsor portfolio was pretty strong; however, the contracts were not clearly drafted and many terms (rights of the parties) were in conflict. Sponsors were confused. It was messy.”
He also saw a vastly underpaid athlete. In his opinion, an athlete who was a generational performer, an icon with a sky-high winning percentage, should be compensated accordingly. To Moorman, Carmichael’s compensation structure in many of his sponsorship agreements were lopsided. Too much of the compensation package was tied to performance bonuses.
He viewed Carmichael as being an independent marketing machine that should be paid as such. He didn’t like the piecemeal approach especially adhered to by motorcycle brands–$5,000 here, $50,000 there–for an athlete with such a record. A guaranteed compensation package would benefit both parties; in the case of Carmichael, Honda would be freed from forecasting for race wins and titles and Carmichael gets the lion’s share of the money up front. Plus, there’s the assurance that Honda is truly investing in Carmichael as a marketing partner and helping to build his notoriety and brand.
“We brought a new perspective and approach to deal making and negotiating in motocross,” Moorman says. “Some folks in the industry embraced our approach while others shunned our involvement. We were refreshing to some and others saw us as a menace.” Moorman employed the same philosophy he used in other sports and leagues: high-level performers commanded significant upfront marketing retainers. But Moorman was aware of the corporate philosophies at an OEM such as Honda and how complex and personal the relationships between a rider and manufacturer can be.
On July 18, 2003 – one year and 10 weeks before the end of Carmichael’s original three-year Honda deal, Moorman officially launched negotiations for an extension. He wrote a carefully worded and researched eight-page long memo for four Honda managers who didn’t need a reminder of this rider’s strengths and accomplishments.
The first two and a half pages of the typed, single-spaced document read like an extended trading card. Carmichael’s accolades, right down to winning percentages, were presented in great detail within an alphanumeric outline. In the middle of page three Moorman explained exactly why he was seeking a unique compensation structure, with no performance bonuses at all, unheard of in the sport then, and still today:
“We believe Ricky deserves to be paid as a champion,” Moorman wrote. The proposal then reiterated that Honda paid Carmichael an approximate total of $4,500,000 in 2002 and was well on its way to a similar amount in 2003. “Thus, from an empirical standpoint, we have determined Ricky’s future fair market value to be consistent with the money he has actually earned and received from Honda in the past…
“[Carmichael] wants a clear mind to focus on the job at hand – preparing for and winning titles – instead of exploring the marketplace for another deal.”
Moorman ended the defense section of his proposal with a request and offer to make his client more of a partner in licensing and team sponsorship activities, such as involvement in other Honda divisions. He then outlined term and territory, services, and compensation of the proposal.
He asked for the new contract to begin on October 1, 2003 and end on September 30, 2006, with a year four option based on performance. The ‘let’s get-to-the-bottom-line-number’ fell to the top of page seven under section III. Compensation:
A. Marketing Retainer: In consideration of the above-stated services, Honda shall pay Carmichael the following guaranteed marketing fees:
1. Contract Year One: $4,500,000 (Payable in twelve (12) equal monthly installments).
The ask for contract years two and three increased to $4,600,000 and $4,700,00, respectively. Under B. Performance Bonuses and C. Team Sponsors Compensation was the word “NONE”, meaning Carmichael waived the option of extra money for winning races and championships. Licensing and merchandising were proposed to be handled on a case-by-case basis.
Carmichael made it clear that he wanted to stay at Honda and says he knew Moorman was working on his behalf and in his best interests but didn’t get caught up in mulling over salaries, bonuses or guaranteed compensation; he was too focused on racing and winning. “It was kind of in one ear and out the other,” he says.
Moorman closed the memo with expectations of meeting in person to negotiate further and said his client was prepared to finalize the deal by the end of August, 2003. Moorman faxed the memo to Gary Christopher, Ray Blank, Chuck Miller and Erik Kehoe, the motocross race team manager.
Then they waited.
When told about the letter, one former agent, who represented elite level riders of the era, and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said, “Don't make the mistake of telling Honda how important you are. Honda never allowed an athlete to become bigger than the brand.”
Moorman says negotiating a contract extension that early was not all about the money. He knew he was working around a long-standing, rigid business culture and process. But he also believed deeply in his client. “If there was ever anyone in motocross who deserved guaranteed compensation it was RC,” he says today. “I felt justified and confident to argue for the same.”
What happened next is likely irrelevant to the negotiations but still an interesting coincidence; two days after the memo coughed out of a fax machine in Torrance, Calif., Carmichael lined up at Unadilla Valley Sports Center where he attempted to win his 22nd consecutive Pro Motocross. Instead, Kevin Windham handed him his first loss in 103 weeks. Windham rode a Honda CRF450R, the first AMA Pro Motocross win for the four stroke, which debuted over two years earlier.
One week later, Windham went to Washougal and did it again, handing Carmichael four consecutive moto losses for the first time since June 2000. Despite finishing second in all four motos and maintaining control of the championship, Carmichael still felt furious and frustrated. Honda’s crew chief, Cliff White knew exactly what to say. He had navigated the egos of two elite-level Honda riders battling for wins many times in his long career.
“There’s no way you could have ridden that two-stroke any faster,” Carmichael says White told him after Unadilla. “He beat you because he was on a faster bike. Don’t beat yourself up.”
Within weeks, Carmichael had a stock CRF450R in his garage.
September and October 2003: Finally, An Offer.
Gary Christopher spent 35 years working at Honda and literally saw it all as far as Honda’s involvement in motocross went. He started two years before Gary Jones won the 1973 Pro Motocross championship on a 250 Elsinore, the company’s first title in the USA. Christopher struggled to recall Honda’s immediate response to Moorman’s memo or what action they took through the final weeks of the 2003 summer, but he does remember the unique nature of the request.
“It was absolutely something that we had never dealt with before,” Christopher says of Moorman’s proposal for guaranteed compensation. “Never seen before, because all of our contracts in racing were performance based.”
Reading the memo over again nearly 20 years later stirred up a recollection of how the market was pivoting.
“You could see how the racing side of our industry was starting to recognize that there are far, far more benefits to the OEMs from racing than simple wins on the track,” Christopher says. “Guys like Ricky were starting to transcend the motorcycling side of things and become very important and famous in their own right.”
Carmichael finished the 2003 Pro Motocross championship winning five of the final six motos and the title, his fourth consecutive in the premier division. Five weeks separated the end of the season from the Motocross of Nations in Belgium. After a short rest, Carmichael flew to California to start testing for the 2004 Supercross season. Despite riding – and loving – the stock 450 at home, he still committed to riding a 250 two stroke in Supercross.
While testing fuel in Corona, California Carmichael’s left foot got caught in a rut and ripped from the footpeg. He instantly felt fire in his knee but the pain faded after a few minutes. He finished the test and watched his knee swell as his body cooled down.
An MRI showed a completely torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) but he waived off surgery for two reasons. First was prior experience; at 13 he tore his right ACL and put off surgery for almost three years. So he felt he could manage without an ACL again. Second, his contract extension still wasn’t complete. He made the decision to move forward with Supercross preparation but he planned to take off the following summer for surgery and recovery.
Carmichael said his knee popped out several times at the MXoN but, even with the King of Belgium looking on, it didn’t stop him from beating Stefan Everts in the one moto format final. Team USA lost the event, but Carmichael took individual honors. Just five days later, he raced in Las Vegas at the US Open of Supercross.
In Vegas, nearly three months after sending the renegotiation proposal, Moorman, Carmichael and Ray Blank met in the office of the Honda race truck. Looking back, Moorman now believes it was antithetical to Honda’s policy to re-negotiate the terms of an existing contract. “Honda never made that proclamation,” Moorman wrote, “However, we made no negotiation progress through the summer of 2003.”
Moorman is right. In the February 2005 issue of Racer X Illustrated, Ray Blank granted a rare interview to reporter Eric Johnson. He said Carmichael’s agent (presumably Moorman) originally requested a negotiating meeting in the spring of 2003. Blank said he responded to this request with “Why?... We have two years left to go on our current agreement.” Blank said he was told that Carmichael wanted everything finalized before the end of the [2003] season. “No rationale beyond this request to comply was given,” Blank told Johnson. In the interview, Blank did not mention the July 2003 memo from Moorman.
Carmichael and Moorman left the US Open with a single sheet of paper. On Honda company letterhead with the words “RICKY CARMICHAEL” center justified at the top, the ‘contract development worksheet’ was a one-page document filled with numbers in black and white. The contract years were for 2005 and 2006. The top number was the contract base fee: $2,300,000. Moorman had proposed a base of $4,500,000 (no bonuses) So, this was $2,200,000 less than the guarantee they sought.
Below the base fee was eight different opportunities for earning performance bonuses, including heat race wins, championships, moto wins, overalls and even $25,000 for each runner-up finish, which was not in his original contract. “Our ideas relative to restructuring the Honda/RC contract were not received well,” Moorman says. “The meeting fell flat.”
Blank saw it much differently. In the 2005 interview, he said Carmichael left the meeting “quite relieved,” a reaction that puzzled him. “It seemed as though he thought we somehow weren’t considering continuing into the future with him,” Blank told Racer X. “I couldn’t think of any reason that would have crossed anyone’s mind.”
Blank had confidence in Honda’s proposal. “The figures that we included in that offer were far in excess of the 2002-2003 amounts and commensurate with his incredible performance,” he said.
The amounts certainly increased but the phrase “far in excess” isn’t an accurate description. Carmichael’s original contract included a multi-championship trigger clause. So, his base salary for 2004 was already scheduled to increase from $1,500,000 to $2,000,000 because he won at least two championships in the first two years of the agreement. The way Carmichael saw it, he was only getting a $300,000 base fee bump for 2005.
The race win bonuses increased 20% from $50,000 per to $60,000 per (MX and SX) and the Supercross championship bonus rose 30% from $1,000,000 to $1,300,000 and the Motocross title rose 20% from $500,000 to $600,000. It was a lot of money but mostly based on potential. Although Carmichael won far more than not, he didn’t like to count those wins before they happened.
Carmichael finished third at the US Open and then returned to his routine of preparing for the following season. Six weeks later, it all came to an abrupt halt.
November and December 2003: Ricky Carmichael’s First Trip to the Sideline
Like that feel-good training montage scene from a sports movie, they all stared at their stopwatches with widened eyes. Then they looked at each other in surprise. Ricky was always on the clock. His people timed every single lap he rode, even when he wasn’t riding his own bike.
His mechanic, Mike Gosselaar, riding coach, Johnny O’Mara and his trainer, Aldon Baker huddled together, each holding a stopwatch in their hands. “That can’t be right,” one of them said.
“Did you get…?” another said.
“But it doesn’t look like he’s going that fast.”
They let Carmichael continue circulating. Same thing. It was November 21, a Friday afternoon, a typical warm, sunny Corona, California day. Carmichael and his crew had spent the week testing at Honda’s Supercross track high above the eastern side of the valley. For this important session, O’Mara lobbied hard to have the engineer who had developed the motor in Honda’s CR250R two stroke sent over from Japan. They wanted more bottom end out of the bike.
Carmichael thought he could find something because he had ridden Mike Brown’s Yamaha YZ250 earlier that fall and loved it. If he could get his Honda motor closer to that of the Yamaha, then winning in 2004 would be a hell of a lot easier than it was in 2003. He still had bitter feelings about getting beaten by Reed at the end of the 2003 AMA Supercross series. Even though he won the championship by seven points, Carmichael finished second to Reed in the final six races of the series. Reed, Carmichael and his Honda teammate Ernesto Fonseca went 1-2-3 at St. Louis, Houston, Pontiac, Irving, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas.
Honda of Japan announced the end of two stroke development that same year. Model year 2007, the company announced, would be the final year of two stroke production in its motorcycle line.
After days of swapping parts and settings, improvements did not materialize. They had reached the limits of that motor design. According to O’Mara, the engineer said, “It’s time to go to the four stroke.” As the sun dipped into the Temescal Mountains, Carmichael mounted Kevin Windham’s 450 and headed onto the dry and worn out track, hammered from the week of abuse.
“It was instantly faster,” O’Mara says. Their stopwatches all indicated that their rider’s lap times, on a track much rougher than it was earlier in the morning, were one and a half to two seconds faster.
“It was a big, like, ‘holy smokes, did I get my lap times wrong?” Baker remembers. “And it looked easy, too. It looked like he was hardly trying.”
Gosselaar was both giddy and groaning. They had confirmed all their settings and parts for a new season that started in six weeks. For him, it meant starting over. Few, if any, settings transferred from the two stroke to the four stroke and Gosselaar had spent 10 years working only on the former. Right there, Carmichael made the decision to race the Honda CRF450R in Supercross in 2004. He’d never say this out loud but, in his head, he thought it could be the easiest title he ever won.
He extended his California trip and scheduled another test session early the following week. For a change of scenery, he rented the track at Castillo Ranch, 200 miles northwest of Corona. Gosselaar spent the weekend building up a 450 for his rider.
O’Mara and Carmichael drove up to Central California together in a van and met the small gathering of Honda personnel. Flanked by rolling green hills, the postcard perfect track had been a featured setting in the riding videos of Carmichael’s youth. If any footage was shot on this day, it can’t be more than a few minutes long because the session ended before anyone had a chance to find the stopwatches.
During a warm up lap, Carmichael said his knee popped out while jumping through a rhythm section. He didn’t crash but felt unbearable pain and he rode back to the Honda box van in tears.
“I was emotional as hell,” he says. “I was crying, and these guys have never seen me crying.” He had to be lifted off the seat of the bike. Of the crew at Castillo, only O’Mara and Gosselaar were aware of the torn ACL and the plan to ride through it.
Carmichael confessed. “We’re done, boys,” he told everyone at the box van. “And that was it. It was just crickets.”
In addition to the physical pain, he felt horrible about the logistical consequences; the hours spent developing bikes and parts, planning schedules, the people whose working lives centered around helping him win. That immediately stopped because he already knew the problem, the solution and lengthy recovery period that followed.
“It was one of the heaviest things that I ever had to endure,” he says.
The 2004 AMA Pro Motocross season was less than six months away. Time was so precious that O’Mara arranged for a private plane owned by Oakley’s founder, Jim Jannard to transport Carmichael from California to Lexington, Kentucky where he was examined by orthopedic surgeon Dr. Rick Lyon. The meniscus was–there was no meniscus. The pain he felt wasn’t just his patella shifting around, it was his tibia and femur knocking together hard enough to destroy one another.
“I chipped the top of my femur bone off,” Carmichael says. “Imagine swinging a golf club and you take a divot out of the grass. I took a divot out of the top of my femur bone.”
The calendar Ricky’s mother used to keep track of her son’s whereabouts and where she made almost microscopic shorthand notes about lap times and training has two giant words written in pencil for Tuesday, November 25, 2003: “RICKY HURT.”
The next day, Honda announced Carmichael’s injury and withdrawal from the upcoming Supercross series. Carmichael celebrated both Thanksgiving and his 24th birthday at home in Tallahassee and waited for the swelling to subside in his left knee. He had surgery on December 9. In the moment, he was devastated. In hindsight, it was the best happy accident of his racing career.
“I feel that saved his career and extended it,” Baker says. “I felt like Ricky was borderline worn out. Never mind all those test days. They’ll wear anybody out.”
The forced downtime would have been a lot more palatable, however, if his future was secured. Carmichael and Honda still had not finalized a new agreement and now he felt his negotiating position was severely weakened.
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