Posts
886
Joined
10/5/2012
Location
Saint Augustine, FL
US
Edited Date/Time
11/25/2015 4:58pm
A rider from South Africa has been life flighted out, please keep in prayers, I do not know his name. 250C division 1 rider.
I'll be praying for him. Any names?
The Shop
Prayers and good thoughts for the injured rider and his family.
as for the tracks, they are pretty safe design according to a couple riders I know there.
While your intent certainly was not malicious, posting a comment only to vaguely suggest a possible life threatening injury, but not actually say it, is very strange thing to do.
I think the big issue here is you have a lot of people now that assume someone has passed. Unless your certain, keep that to yourself.
Pit Row
According to Alex Hunter from the AMA:
" The AMA has a process for a death at an event. At this time, there has not been any death reported. I not saying there wasn't a serious injury and I hope the rider life-flighted was for precaution reasons only. My heart and thoughts go out to that rider. I don't have the exact details."
Danger is why its fun.
Hope the guy is ok.
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20151123/ARTICLES/151129847/1002/news
Following-in-Fast Father's-Bootsteps
Slugline Local---Sports---MX---
Publication Sunday
Date July 19, 2015
Section(s) None
Page Local---Sports---MX---Following-in-Fast Father's-Bootsteps
Byline
By STEVE DYE
News Staff Writer
Ten-year old Wispern Smith is one of the fastest minicycle racers in Oklahoma. Moreover, he’s one of the fastest mini racers at this year’s AMBUCS Amateur National Motocross Championships in Ponca City.
Unfortunately, he’s struggling just a little bit. It seems that he came into the week all scraped up, and not-so-fresh from a stop at the local emergency room.
Because, after all, motocross is a dangerous sport, right?
Well....
Back up the bus. No. It’s because Razor scooters are dangerous. As is, as often happens, being a kid. As is summer vacation. And when all those factors come together, well...
“Yeah. I am kinda banged up. It was about nine o’clock last Monday night. And I was on my scooter and doing tricks down by my house where there’s like a drainage pipe or something... and there was gravel... and it was slick... and I crashed. And I kind of got cut up... Here (he gestures to his shoulder) and here (gesturing to a sizeable bandage on his ribs) and worst of all here (showing a bare spot on his throttle hand). So we went to the hospital,” explains the slightly abashed but also somewhat proud almost fifth-grader.
“I guess it wasn’t that great a way to start the week.”
It’s getting better though.
On Saturday, a few days later, Smith is in a position to finish in the top-five overall in each of the four classes he’s competing in. And with the pre-race drama and an inconvenient interview put aside, Whispern Smith Junior puts on his helmet to race the second and deciding moto in the 85cc 9-11 class.
Smith is scuffed up, but he’s also determined. And ready to follow in his father’s footsteps — and with Whisperin Smith Senior as a father, those footprints loom pretty large.
Because said father, Whispern Smith Senior, is one of the very fastest motocross racers to ever come out of the state of Oklahoma.
Senior, like Junior, was also racing at a tender age. He was introduced to the sport through his own father, who rode in the very first motocross races ever held in the state. And the elder Whispern came to be a force to be reckoned with well beyond the state of Oklahoma. Smith won something like a dozen amateur national championships, maybe more. And at an age when most Oklahoma kids are getting their first farm-restricted drivers license, Smith had signed a full-factory manufacturer backed sponsored ride with Team Yamaha.
Smith would have considerable success as a full-fledged pro, but he didn’t have a storybook career as a professional. He did come ever-so-close, racing and finishing in the top 20 at the very highest levels of the sport. Now a driver with the Oklahoma City Fire Department, he looks back wishing he knew then what he knows now — and looks forward by providing that kind of guidance and support to his own son.
“It was different back then, as you know,” he says. “I was shunted off to California, lived with another rider, and I just didn’t know at the time what it was that I was supposed to be doing as far as riding and training and all that stuff. But now, with my boy, as soon as I get done at work at the fire station, I come pick him up and we go ride, or ride bicycles, or go train in some way. And I don’t know where it will lead, but I know I’ll do whatever I can to help him live his dream... which isn’t so much different than what mine was.”
The younger Whispern is actually ahead of the elder, at the same age. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, at the less-tender age of 12, that the Smtih Senior flipped the switch.
“When I was his age, I sucked. I was absolutely horrible when I was 10 years old,” dad explains. “My dad took me to races, and I got lapped, got put a lap down. But then when I was 12 years old, we went to a race in Oklahoma City, and man... I was taking a whipping, running in like fifth place, and I came in madder than heck. I said ‘I’m tired of being beat, I’m tired of getting dirty, and I want to do better. So I went back the next week, nothing had really changed... but I won against a bunch of older faster kids. Then I came back here (to the Ponca City Nationals) and won I think nine championships here.”
That puts the Smith father and son in rarified air. The term “little league dad” carries a stigma that most are familiar with, and is most often deserved. There’s a lot of fathers who never could hit a curve ball yelling at their kid down at the little league field. That’s not the case with the Smiths. At the same time, dad battles with expectations reined in by concern.
“I never tell him to do anything that I don’t know he can do,” dad says. “If there’s a double or some big jump that some other kids are doing, but I’m not sure he has the ability to do, I never push him to do it. I respect everything he does out there. I know how hard it is. I know how hard it is for a grown man, let alone a 10-year-old kid, to jump some big jump for the first time. In my day, there were times when it was late in the day and the track was blown out and slick and you had to click another gear and give it everything you had to get over some jump... and it wasn’t easy. I’ll never ask him to do something beyond his ability. I know what it takes to do this,
(See JUNIOR, Page 2
and this is not easy. I’m proud of him every step of the way for what he’s done. And I recognize his potential and look forward to him reaching it, but I’m not going to push him beyond what he’s comfortable with. I also know what he’s capable of and I want to see him achieve that... but at the end of the day, he’s my son and I’m proud of him.”
Sitting at the side of the conversation, occasionally interjecting quiet support for first Junior, and then Senior, is mom.
“Well, he (nodding towards her husband) eats, sleeps, and breathes this. And he (nodding towards her son) idolizes him,” says Becky Smith, nodding toward back towards dad. “And I’m stuck in the middle. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. This is time we spend together as a family.”
“All he thinks about is what he can do for our son. And our boy just wants to be just like his dad. Every mom, I think, is the buffer between her husband and her child. I feel really fortunate that they have this bond, and at the same time I feel like it’s my job to calm them both down. Some times it gets a little heated while we’re at the track. But on the drive home, it just brings us all closer together.”
A Family Affair—Motocross Is All About Family
Slugline A-Family-Affair-Motocross-Is-All-About-Family
Publication Daily
Date July 15, 2015
Section(s) Local Sports
Page A-Family-Affair-Motocross-Is-All-About-Family
Byline
By STEVE DYE
Mid-Week Editor
It’s not yet 8 o’clock in the morning, Wednesday, and it’s already on the hot side of 80 degrees.
It is also already on the humid side of Hades. Dante would be quite comfortable in the pits of the Jack Blevins Motocross Park on this fine sun-soaked morning.
The paddock area is just beginning to fill at the for the 40th edition of the Ponca City AMBUCS national motocross races. Practice begins tomorrow, and racing kicks off at 9 a.m. on Friday.
In one pit, with the 9-hour 600-mile drive completed and after a scant few hours of sleep grabbed en route, the kids are still asleep in the truck and the parents — having unloaded the racebikes, bicycles, scooters, and other assorted necessities of a big race — are already busily attending to one other integral part of set-up for the event.... they’re blowing up a 10-foot inflatable swimming pool.
The as yet unassembled canopy, blessed shade, lays in wait.
Johnny and Kristie Munoz are doing the heavy lifting. A second generation motorcycle racer, 13-year-old Brett Munoz, will slip sleepily out of the back door of the family’s four-door Dodge pickup in another half-hour or so.
“We left Houston at 8 o’clock last night, and we got here at 5 this morning,” says Johnny, already breaking a sweat in the early morning sun.
“The kids are still asleep in the truck,” Kristie adds.
The Munoz family is just one of hundreds that will spend their weekend alternately bearing the heat of July in Oklahoma and throwing themselves into the crucible of competition at one of the most advanced amateur motocross events in the country.
Happily, being from the Houston area, they are familiar with both heat and competition. And they are willing to take a break in swimming pool set-up to sit in the shade on the tailgate of their large enclosed race trailer and talk about what it means to take part in a true family sport.
A motocross track is sort of a post-modern ballpark, with a significant distinction. Down at the little league diamond, the basepaths are 60 feet long instead of 90, and parents are relegated to the stands. At most, they might take on a role as coach of the team.
But in motocross, sons and fathers — and sometimes fathers and daughters, or mothers and daughters — compete on the same field. Everyone gets to play the same game in the same park. It’s the same track for everyone, and no one is relegated to the sidelines.
“Well, I raced, and that’s where it starts. Then my son started riding when he was four, and his first race was when he was five, and we’ve been doing this ever since. We love motorcycles, and we love the community at the racetracks, and this is just something that we do... every weekend, really,” Johnny said.
The Munoz family is like many others that spend nearly every weekend at a race track somewhere. Sometimes it’s local to their area, sometimes it’s a longer trek to a bigger race. Brett is an accomplished racer, and in order to find competition that challenges him to continue to still improve, the family travels to at least two national-caliber racers a year.
Johnny and Kristie compare notes, and come to the conclusion that this is their fifth straight trip to the races in Ponca.
“We try to do two nationals every year. We do Oak Hill and this one every year. We have been to Loretta’s, and Mammoth is kind of on our bucket list, that’s something we talk about every year, and we’re going to go sooner or later,” he says.
Oak Hill is a national amateur event in Texas. Loretta Lynn’s Amateur National is the biggest of all amateur races, drawing in excess of 4000 entries each year. The race is held on Lynn’s dude ranch in central Tennessee. Mammoth Mountain is also a high prestige race, moreover held at high altitude among ski resorts at Mammoth Lakes, California.
Some families home school their children, and spend the year traipsing around the entire country to compete at all the national-level amateur races. Which is fun for some, and all too serious for others who are chasing a brass ring — a career as a professional motocross racer — that most will never reach. Although it can be a lucrative career for a handful of racers, there is only so much room at the top. There is no money in being part of the second-string team in an individual sport.
The aspirations of the Munoz family are more reasoned, and more reasonable.
“Brett is a good racer, good enough to race outside of where we are, where we live. But when we come here, or to one of the big races, we get humbled a little bit. All these kids here are maybe the fastest rider at their home track, and we also know we’re going up against the full-time kids,” Johnny said. “Except for a couple of times a year, we just ride on the weekends. Brett goes to public school, and we ride on Saturday and Sunday.”
If Johnny and Kristie keep their perspective at a reasonable level, the sport still represents a substantial investment. The kids are sleeping in “late” in a late-model pickup, big enough and powerful enough to haul their 26-foot enclosed trailer halfway across the country. Although Brett has begun to ride a 125cc machine, it’s at home. Still, there are two well-prepped 85cc machines sitting on stands. Brett will race the 85cc 12-13 age class, and in the highly competitive 105cc SuperMini class, which is open to kids up to age 15.
But that investment isn’t in chasing a professional career, or sponsorship, or even in chasing trophies or plaques. It’s an investment in family. And for the Munoz family, that pays for itself.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re not talking about being a pro motocross racer or anything. If Brett goes to the mall with his buddies, or goes and plays basketball with his friends, he doesn’t need me to do that. But he needs me to ride motorcycles. He loves it, but he can’t do it by himself,” Johnny says.
“People have always asked me, ‘What do you think you’re going to get out this? Where is it going?’ And we’ve thought about that and talked about it as a family. And what I’ve come to realize is that if we don’t get anything else out of this, what we do get is that when my son turns 18 or 19 and goes away to college... if he and I spend pretty much every weekend before that riding together and sitting on the tailgate together, that’s the win.”
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