Remember when USA

Wayne Rainey and Schwantz were my two guys as a youngster. My room was covered with pictures and posters of them. I think Rainey was one of the best ever on par with Rossi.

I miss those 500's. 

Edit - Another dude that I idolized was Randy Mamola...man, that dude knew how to crash and often pulled of spectacular saves.

That was proper racing, those 500s were beasts and it took a combination of pure talent and balls to ride one on the edge.

I dont even like the look of the current motogp bikes. To much gadgetary to assist the riders nowadays. The moto3 class is great to watch..motogp not so much.

wasn't it Mamola doing a crazy save at 100mph that john madden used in one of his "best" highlight clips?

Don’t forget Fast Freddie…

Must have gone the way of the dinosaur after they disallowed cigarette and booze advertising 🤣

Next they won't allow hot umbrella chicks and trophy girls. Who wants to spend the night with the race promoter? Partying with piston samples. LOL

TM

Wasn't there some guy named Kenny R. that won a race or 2? Went to Europe and gave a little riding lesson? My small engine repair shop teacher raced cars and had a tz750 engine. Some how or other he got a Kal Cruthers modified one. Nobody could keep up.

TM

Yes Sir, Kenny Roberts...another Legend of Motogp.

Another dude that I liked was Wayne Gardener. Geez, so many great riders from the Goldern era.

Anyone remember Scott Russel?

Boomslang : " The moto3 class is great to watch "

Yes, yes indeed!

But, the 250 4T single  Madness IS going the way of the Dodo, soon. Well, in 2028

Going to  another  one Make  Engine class, FFS !

I think the FIM tried to get mfrgs to do 500 4t engines, but that didn't 'take'. So it will be a one engine make class - Yamaha - that is based around an : " extensively re-engineered, racing modified version of Yamahas 689cc CP2 parallel- twin 689cc production platform ".

 To repeat : FFS !

That only KTM and Honda really got serious about  250cc 4T engined bikes, with a few other engines / bikes at times?  Well, it still is more bloody interesting than a designated one make class. 

Moto 2? - one class such as that, well, first Honda, now Triumph - that's enough.

The new Moto GP '850cc' class will be starting next year, so, all change, I guess. It will be interesting to see how that shakes up. 

I think what happened was the withering of the U. S. feeder system of local short track and flat track racing that probably peaked in the early 70s with Spanish, Japanese and Austrian two-stroke short tracking producing a larger talent pool who understood traction dynamics on hard oval surfaces in a way that the best were able to translate to road racing. That training did not go unnoticed by their competition. I remember seeing a profile of Valentino Rossi when he started to dominate--his home/compound had a flat track and flat track-converted 450 mxers for him to work on those skills.

I don't think those days are coming back. I can remember when 1972 100cc Hodaka and Yamaha MX models in the U. S. came with rectangular AMA-style number plates for entry-level short track racing purposes. Looking back it seems like 1971 was right about the point where it became clear that MX was outstripping the AMA oval-track and road racing disciplines in popularity and accessibility in the States. But local oval racing on two strokes stayed relatively strong while air-cooling lasted, didn't it? Then tapered off when everyone ran Rotax 500s in the 80s. So the talent pool shrank while, as I said, the rest of the world learned to emulate what had produced the American dominance period.

This is from an era to be missed dearly. The factories seemed much more involved and there were major rivalries.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1UcEFH7bao/?mibextid=wwXIfr
 

Bloody Hell, Febvre just had a Crash and a Half!

Fellow MXer and TLD rider 💪🏼🇺🇸

And then the bike took a shit on the last lap. 

Can't leave out Bubba Shobert - I was at Laguna Seca '88 & '89 as a little guy with my dad when he had his big crash. 

Video of the incident :

Stupidity on Magee's part, and  Bubbas lack of attention , forward ( and Lawsons :  he was very lucky to not get involve din the disaster) .

# 1 : Don't stop in the near middle of a track, even when the race has finished. ( to do a f**king burnout, FFS!) 

# 2 :   Don't ride, side by side, talking / gesturing to another rider, even with the far slower speeds of a warm down lap - because those slower speeds, are still bloody fast, and you should keep your wits about you.

2 of my then favourite riders - With my being a Flat Track fan , and a fan of Bubba as he made a Great change to Road Racing, and through my knowing Magee since his Bob Brown Ducati days  - really got hurt that day. Bubba, far more so.

What good times! Here in Spain, speed racing was always very popular, and the American riders were very loved and respected by our fans and our riders.
Seeing Mamola, Lawson, Rainey, Schwantz...dominate those 500 beasts in Jarama, Jerez...that's where my love of sportbikes began...
In those years, the 80cc and 125cc two-stroke sportsbikes were very popular on our streets (and in regional races as Criterium)...they made us feel like real riders!!

Man it hurt just watching that video of Shobert.