Monday “Morning” Coffee

By Billy Rainford Brett Lee

Sorry to be late like this, but we’re doing something different this week for our Monday Morning Coffee column. I went to SMX Playoffs Round 1 at Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus, Ohio, with Brett Lee of Walton Raceway fame.

He mentioned that he thought everyone who works on the media/industry side of the sport should do what he did this past weekend – buy a standard ticket and see what it’s like to be a full-on spectator at a race and see what that’s actually like; watch a race from a different perspective. And that’s exactly what Brett did this week in Ohio. And now, here’a his side of the story.

Over the years, Billy has asked me to “jump in” and go to a National or Supercross with him to keep him company on the drive.

And that’s basically our deal. Drive there together. Get to the race. Go our separate ways. Find each other at the end of the day. Drive home. Not that we aren’t good friends, we are, but Billy is there to work, and at any race outside Canada…I am definitely not. So, off to Ohio we went. No hotel booked. No ticket purchased. No real plan whatsoever. Pretty standard.

I had agreed to look after the hotel [I would have simply slept in the van if I were solo on this over-night trip], so somewhere on the drive I figured I should probably do that. Mistake #1. Booking a hotel on your phone, in the car, while prioritizing price over absolutely everything else. Found one. Cheap. Booked it. Perfect. Except, I booked it for three weeks from now…

So, I called home and handed the problem over to someone far more qualified, Melody. She reluctantly found us something that met our very strict criteria of being cheap and having a roof. Her review was basically, “I found you something. It’s the best I can do for that price…but I wouldn’t stay there.” Perfect. Book it.

I can’t confirm the calibre of the pistols being fired during the night, but I can confirm there were some very unhappy people in the hallways who were not afraid to use their outside voices. Long night. But…the price was right.

Billy had to be at the track at 7:00AM, so the alarm was set for 5:30. Fortunately, thanks to the ongoing hallway discussions, we were already awake. Because this was a day race, the gates opened at 8:00AM, and what surprised me was there were already hundreds of people lined up. Then hundreds more headed straight to the pits to get into another line for autographs. American SMX is just a different beast.

About 8:30, the first CODE RED alert came across telling everyone to head to their cars or the stadium concourse because of weather. Of course, a bunch of people ignored it. Then the rain started coming sideways in sheets and suddenly everyone became a believer in the Code Red system.

And there I sat. For five hours. Billy was somewhere inside “working,” while I sat in the DMX/Dirt Care van outside Columbus questioning several of my recent life decisions.

During my five-hour parking lot sentence, I scrolled through photos and videos being posted from inside. It was dire. The track was basically a lake. I started campaigning pretty hard to point the car north and go home. Billy kept saying, “They’ll race.” I thought Billy had lost his mind.

Turns out, Billy was right.

What the Dirt Wurx crew pulled off to make that race happen was nothing short of a miracle. Looking at the track a few hours earlier, there was absolutely no way I thought we were racing. Somehow they got it done, and once the gate dropped there were a few Canadian connections I was watching pretty closely.

Dean Wilson had to make the Main through the LCQ. The recipe seemed pretty simple: get a good start, stay away from trouble, and steal a top-six spot. Well, poor Dean got bumped off the start, shuffled around immediately, and then collected in all kinds of trouble. No Main show. Not fair. Not right. But that’s racing. Sometimes the plan lasts about three feet past the gate.

Ryder Malinoski wasn’t great in qualifying. He looked like he was trying hard — and yes, maybe a little too hard. But when the main came around, he let it hang. And yes, it bit him. Still, you can’t say the words “going for it” and not think about the #9 in the Futures class in Ohio. There was no wondering whether Ryder was trying to make something happen.

Mitchell Harrison raced Canada for a bunch of years and, to be honest, I thought Canada was going to become his forever summer home. He loved the East Coast. He fit in. He made money. His U.S. options seemed limited, especially in 450 Supercross. I figured he’d be here for years.

Nope.

Mitchell Harrison has quietly made himself into a really solid 450 guy, and he looked as good as anyone in that Ohio mud. Watching him put in the work was a good reminder that self-belief and hard work still matter. He just kept at it, kept getting better and made himself belong. I liked watching that.

Dylan Rempel. Gosh dang it. He looked as good as anyone and was as fast as anyone. If I was going to be critical, I’d say he didn’t show enough urgency early to get away from guys who weren’t on his level. In conditions like that, the longer you stay in the chaos, the better chance the chaos finds you. And it found Dylan.

the longer you stay in the chaos, the better chance the chaos finds you

Brett Lee

If there was a crash, an out-of-control rider, a flying motorcycle or basically anything else that could possibly happen, it seemed to hit Rempel, splash Rempel or simply remove Rempel from his motorcycle. But the kid has the speed and skill to win. If he does it in LA, I won’t be surprised one bit.

Kade Johnson and Vincent Wey both had their time in Canada cut short this summer, and neither one is Canadian, but if you were one of the Canadian riders battling those guys this season, you probably watched Ohio with some interest. They were on it. Kade took the win and Wey was on the podium. If Rempel or Malinoski had been up there with them, we might as well have been racing back here at home.

And maybe that was a good reminder for me too. The racing here in Canada is good. We have talent here, and sometimes I don’t think we appreciate that enough until we see the same guys go somewhere else and do exactly what we watched them do all summer.

There were some things that happened during the day that made it a little less than what I hoped it would be. There are things I could grumble about, but I’ll leave that for someone else to burn through. My day ended pretty much the same way most of it was spent, sitting at the DMX car.

Eventually Billy showed up and insisted I sit on the bumper and have a warm beer with him. I wasn’t really feeling it, but I did. And slowly people from the industry started wandering by. Everyone was muddy, tired and looked about how you’d expect after the long day we’d all just had.

Michael Antonovich, formerly of Transworld and now with O’Neal, walked by. Billy offered him a beer, he accepted, and the three of us sat there talking about the day, Canadian motocross and racing in general.

And somewhere in that conversation, sitting on the bumper of the DMX car drinking a warm beer after a completely ridiculous day, I got a pretty solid reminder of what makes moto so good.

The people.

You travel all that way, sleep in a hotel Melody specifically told you she wouldn’t stay in, sit in a car for five hours, get soaked, watch a mud race, and probably spend more money than you planned.

And somehow, at the end of it, you’re sitting on a bumper with a couple moto guys, drinking a warm beer, talking racing…and it all makes sense again.

Billy and I finished our beers, jumped in the car and pointed it north. Another moto road trip in the books. And next time, Billy can book the damn hotel.