Looking for my MX. Holy Grail, pictures or video of the 1973 Trans-Am at Arizona Cycle park.

Like the title says, I'm Looking for my MX. Holy Grail, pictures or video of the 1973 Trans-Am at Arizona Cycle park at 16th St. just south of the river bottom.

This was the very first Motocross race I ever saw, I was ten years old and memory's of it are very vague cloudy, I didn't start racing till 4 years later in 1977 at Bee line Motocross, by then the Arizona Cycle Park was long gone.

Some of my older racing buddy's have told me story's about the track and the two Trans-Am races they had there, but I've never seen any write ups in magazines or any picture from that race or any from just weekend races.

What I do remember was my Dad four wheeled his truck through the river bottom and up the side embankment and parked at the top embankment and you could see what I believe was most of the track. The part of the track that I could see all seem to be in a pit or valley below and then the rest of the track seemed to be up on top and on the other side of the pit which I could not see.

Some other things that I remember was the big drop off jump that from were I was watching ( and from a 10 years old first time at a MX race ) looked like it was the biggest drop off Jump ever conceived by anyone even to this day, but I'm sure if I saw the same drop off today I wouldn't think anything of it. But at the time it seemed pretty impressive, It also seemed to about half way down be inverted some what so that if you tried to just ride down it you would drop off and leave the ground no matter what.

There was also a pond or water hole in the middle of the track, and I remember a guy on a green Kawasaki loosing control and going into the pond, I've been told by different people that it was Brad Lackey, but not sure.

Also I remember seeing another bike go flying off the track and running into a bunch of spectators. A child hood friend and race buddy later told me that he and his friends were in that group , and that one of there girl friends was the one that got hit and hurt real bad, I've also been told by someone else that she later died of her injury's, again not 100% sure if true.

The only other thing I remember was right below were I was standing and watching there was a long sweeping curve that had some pretty nasty looking whoops that went all the way up to the upper part of the track that I could not see.

Here's the results from that day , I found them on http://vault.racerxonline.com/


1 Pierre Karsmakers

2 Tim Hart

3 Peter Lamppu

4 Rich Thorwaldson

5 Gary Semics

6 Steve Stackable

7 Mike Runyard

8 Gary Jones

9 Gary Chaplin

10 John DeSoto

11 Brad Lackey

12 Marty Tripes

13 Jim West


I did find this video on Youtube that shows some Phoenix MX tracks from the early 70s and if you look at about the 1:54 mark the track kinda looks like what I remember about the big ACP. down hill drop off and the right turn at the bottom. If any of you old AZ. MXers that were there that day or you use to race there a lot, could watch it and confirm that it is the original ACP. that would be cool.

Here's the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucEMSTWpwfI


Also the video shows what appears to be to other Phx. tracks, the first one I have know idea what track it is maybe ? 80 yard (not sure if that's how it spelled), that's also another track I would like to see picture or video's of. The third track looks like it is out by PIR, I know they had a MX track out there at one time, and they even had National event of some sort, when I looked in the Vault for some result I could not find anything under Phoenix International Raceway, but I found results for a 1976 Fastrack Motocross Park in Phoenix AZ. here are the results.

http://vault.racerxonline.com/1976-04-11/250mx/fastrack-motocross-park

Anyway if any guys have any memory's, info, pics or videos from ACP Trans-Am or any of the other tracks I mention here, please share them, I would love to see or hear anything you guys could come up with. I love hearing and learning about the History of Motocross.

Thanks Mike AKA. ''Donny O' Slow''