"Nothing More Gnarly Than the First Turn at A1 with 20 Dudes...No Stunt is Scarier Than That" | Rich Taylor on Being a Stuntman 2

For many racers it's hard to figure out 'what's next' when their racing career is over. They spend so much time focused on the here and now of being at their best for competition that they don't look to what happens when that is over. It can also be a little scary. Rich Taylor is a former privateer that did not have that problem. Throughout his racing career he was always testing for Honda or Suzuki, doing magazine tests, he became a professional stunt man in the movies, and he started EKS Brand Goggles. I called up RT to get a small portion of his story. There's a lot more we could get into. Maybe in a future podcast. Hope you enjoy.

For the full interview, check out the Vital MX podcast right here. If you're interested in the condensed written version, scroll down just a bit further.

Jamie Guida – Vital MX: What's up, RT? You just got back from Seattle watching Richard race. How was that trip for you?

Rich Taylor: Yeah, Seattle's always cool. The stadium's small and the pits are indoors. That one's pretty cool. It's a good one to go to. It didn't rain, which is amazing because it is in Seattle. It was funny because I built roll-off systems for all of our racers and we're all ready to go. I just kept watching the weather and it's like, “The weather's going to be good. The chance of rain is very slight on Saturday.” I'm like, “It doesn't matter. It's for sure going to pour.” Luckily, I was wrong. Which is a great thing because we didn't want a mud race as a goggle guy. That's the one thing you don't want, right?

Vital MX: Yeah. It ended up being a pretty good race.

RT: Those guys were battling, man. The track was super rutty and really, really technical. That dirt in Seattle, even back when I used to race professionally, Seattle's always had this real sticky, soft dirt that ruts up. It's a whole new challenge. It's a different type of racing for sure. Which made for really good racing. 

Vital MX: That's a great segway because you made your pro debut in Seattle in 1988 with a 20th. How did that go?

RT: I think they only took 20 guys back then. So obviously it didn't go great. I was on the circuit from ‘88 to around ‘98, basically ‘99, and then went back on and did races here and there. I did it for a long time. It was a great way to grow up for sure.

Vital MX: You were racing consistently up until ‘98 but then you raced Glen Helen in 2004. What brought you back?

RT: I doubled one of the characters in a movie called Supercross with Channing Tatum. I actually was doubling him. I was Rowdy Sparks. So, I did Vegas Supercross and then we went to the National and did some stuff. It was pretty cool actually. At Vegas Supercross that year, I hadn't ridden Supercross in forever. It was me and (David) Pingree and Dave Castillo. We were the doubles and all three of us used to race professionally, but none of us had even been on a supercross track. We told the producers, “You guys need to pay us to go race. At least Salt Lake City.” Salt Lake was the week before. “Let us ride Salt Lake and then go into Vegas” and they're like, “No, we're not even going to do it at all.” Then at the last minute, they called us and they're like, “We want you to race Vegas Supercross. We're going to do a bunch of stuff before the race and a bunch of stuff after the race on the track. We also want you guys to race.” We all kind of looked at each other like, “Oh shit, this ought to be interesting.” So, we hauled ass up to Castillo Ranch. He has a big supercross track up there. Rob Hendrickson from RG3 Suspension threw some suspension on our bikes, and I rode a stock Honda 450. We rode one day of supercross and showed up at the race. I was pretty bummed because in the LCQ I was in second. They only took two, I believe, back then and I was in second. I may have even led it. I don't remember, but I was in second until the last lap and Kyle Lewis passed me. I was so bummed. I almost made the main years after I quit racing. It would have been pretty cool, but I missed it by one.

Vital MX: That would have been a cool story. Going through your racing career, what are some highlights that stand out? Not necessarily even finishes, but key moments that really stand out.

RT: I had a couple of years in the Nationals on a 500. I finished seventh overall in the series and that was pretty good. The crazy thing was I was in fifth going into the last moto of the last round. If I would have passed one more guy, I would have ended up fifth overall in the series. Because of where I finished, a couple of guys had a couple of better finishes than I did. Mike Healey, I think, and I don't remember who else. So, I ended up seventh. Just being able to do all the Supercross races and nationals. In ‘96 I was holeshoting some motos in the Nationals, which was kind of cool back then. The class seemed pretty stacked. I mean it's always stacked. I shouldn't say that, but it was just cool to be able to run up front with those guys that year. I had a good bike and help from Honda with some cool parts on my bike which allowed me to get some incredible starts that year. So, it's kind of fun.

Vital MX: The lowest national number you ever held was number 30 and you raced guys like (Jeremy) McGrath and (Damon) Bradshaw. You raced some bad dudes. 

RT: Yeah, it was tough back then. I was always in the premier class. I was buddies with all those guys, too. It just made it fun. It was a whole different day, too. We traveled in vans or box vans and even the riders a lot of the time were on the road. We'd stop in certain towns and go ride and have fun and do crazy stuff. I remember one time we were staying at Skip Norfolk's house in Virginia, by Budds Creek. McGrath was there and all the Peak Honda guys back then. Lance Smail and his brother, Cliff Palmer, (Travis) Pastrana, Josh Chisholm, and his brothers, and everybody were there. We had these massive barbecues and football games. A bunch of motocross guys out playing football, just going for it in the mud. It'd be raining and we'd be out there just covered in mud going for it, you know? Fred Andrews, I think, was there then, too. Just a whole different time. It wasn't like you showed up, got in your semi, went out and raced, and then went to the airport and flew home. Man, it was just all kinds of crazy stuff. Yeah, really fun times.

Vital MX: I can't really picture the guys doing that now. 

RT: Oh man, that particular week there were so many of us staying at Norfolk's house and he had all this property with a big, grassy hillside, slippery grass hillside. He had this Honda 50, an old-school one. The wheel bearings were gone. His dad went out and made wheel bearings out of wood for us. We had the Z50 nationals. It was crazy. All of us would get on it. You had three laps to do the fastest lap you could. We're talking mechanics, everyone you could imagine doing it. Dads were out there doing it. The thing is, you were on a hillside, and it was pure grass. It was like ice. Of course, all the motocross racers were not competitive at all. We're just going for it as hard as you can and just wadding up. McGrath is leading the championship, he's making a million bucks a year, and he's out there just trying to blow his knee out on a Z50. It’s pretty funny. Fun stuff.

Vital MX: Through a lot of your racing career, you were also testing for Honda. How did that gig come about? 

RT: So, I actually grew up in Sun Valley, Idaho. I ski raced when I was a kid. Bob Hannah lived up there and Danny Laporte lived up there. When they'd come up in the summer, I would just start moto’ing with them. I'd get to go to all the tracks we had. They weren't really local tracks, but they were tracks in the hills that these guys built or whoever built. They were gnarly high altitude, super steep mountain tracks. I would ride with those guys in the summer and then I would ski race in the winter. I always had the dream of being the pro motocross guy. I started going pretty fast just chasing those guys around. I went to a local race in Idaho and I'm like, “I'll just ride the expert class”, which was the pro class, and I ended up winning. So, of course, it was the best thing and the worst thing that could have happened because then I thought I was going to be the next Bob Hannah. I was 15 years old, winning an expert race in Idaho. Yeah, that was all it took. That's when I changed my whole program to trying to be a racer. I moved down to Southern California. My mom lived here in Southern California, so I moved in with her and just started going to the local tracks and stuff. Luckily, I was friends with Danny Laporte, and he introduced me to Karel Kramer, who was an editor at Dirt Rider magazine. It was funny because the day after I met him, he called me up. He's like, “Hey, do you want to come to do a photo shoot?”  I'm like, “Yeah.” I didn't even know anybody. That very first photo shoot ended up being a cover of Dirt Rider magazine at the end of ’87. Then he started using me for everything. He used me and a guy named Willy Simons, who's a local here in Simi Valley. He actually did some testing for Honda, some durability testing. That's where you'd go out and you'd ride three 30-minute motos and they'd take your lap times. They just wanted you to break these bikes. Hondas always had the reputation of ‘it's not going to break’. Back in the day that was the reason why. They did so much durability. It was crazy. They wanted fast local pros to hammer those things, trying to break them. So, I had met Willy Simons through the magazine stuff and he's like, “Hey, they need another guy to do Honda tests. Do you want to come to do it?” I said, “Yeah, of course.”  I started doing durability testing whenever I could for Honda. One day (Roger) DeCoster was out there, and he was working with the race team back then. He was watching all of us do durability. He came over to me and asks, “Do you want to do some testing for me on some of our race team bikes?” I'm like, “Of course I do.” So, he started using me to do all the race team stuff. What that consisted of was I would ride the bike and sort through parts that were sent over from Japan. Works parts, not so much suspension stuff, but more engine stuff, carburetor stuff, intakes, all kinds of different stuff. I would weed out the good from the bad. Then when their factory dudes came, back then it was (Jean-Michel) Bayle, (Jeff) Stanton, and Ricky Johnson, they didn't have to go through all the crappy stuff that Honda sent over. I started doing a lot of that, which just progressed into more of a job at Honda R&D doing all the new bike stuff. They'd send me to Japan. I was over there for months at a time helping to develop stuff. 

Vital MX: During this time, are you also doing the magazine testing? In the 90s it seemed like every time I opened a magazine, Rich Taylor was testing something or doing a photo shoot for something.

RT: I was still doing the magazine stuff. Today you'd be like, “Whoa, wait a minute. You test for Honda, and you do all their development, and you're doing shootouts for the magazine?” Honestly, it was probably not the fairest situation when you look back on it. Because that Honda that came out all through the 90s was basically my settings for the most part. They would always take my settings and then massage them a little bit to mellow them out and stuff. For the most part, I knew those bikes like the back of my hand. The Hondas did do a lot of winning, especially when you read my comments. Back in those days, if you really look at it, those Hondas were badass all through the 90s. They were pretty damn good. You might find a couple of the years that weren't, but for the most part, ‘92 through ‘96 were some of the best bikes ever. 

Vital MX: Was that ‘97 Honda one of the biggest disappointments from where it started to what ended up in production?

RT: In the history of motocross that could be one of the biggest disappointments. When we first started riding it, the bike was bitchin’. lt was really, really good. The frame kept cracking, so every time it cracked, they'd beef it up. Then it would crack somewhere else, and they'd beef it up. By the time it came out, the thing had broken in so many places our nickname for it was the Lead Pipe because it felt like a lead pipe going down the track. It was just as solid as could be, man. It just made for a horrible handling motorcycle. It was pretty bad. At one point when we were in Japan, I was six seconds a lap faster on the ‘96 production bike than I was on the ‘97 proto bike. It was just so hard to ride, and it would kill us. We went into the final meeting basically begging Honda not to put it out yet, but it was too late. They've got their production schedules and everything.

Vital MX: Did the engineers understand, “This is not going to go well?” 

RT: Yeah. So, the engineers at Honda, for the most part, most of them rode. A couple of them were ex-pro racers and they were just super knowledgeable. They would design stuff. Then there were guys who didn't ride and didn't really know, and they just looked at numbers and thought it would work. They thought it was bitchin’. There was a lot of that at Honda. For the most part, most Japanese companies, they're very respectful. Whenever you want to change something or do something different, you have to run it by the head guy and it needs to trickle down the line of command before you can actually do some changes. Now you've got this whole brand-new aluminum chassis, Yamaha had made an aluminum chassis years before, but nothing like this. A twin spar big chassis like that. You're basically starting from the ground up and there's a lot of stuff that probably could make the bike a lot better if you changed it. To do all those changes would take so much time and getting so many okays to get it done that a lot of it just couldn't get done.

Vital MX: Then in ‘97, you go to Suzuki and start testing for Suzuki. Why the change? You did 12 years there, including working on McGrath's RM. 

RT: In ‘96 I actually rode pretty well in the Nationals. I was doing pretty good. I think I finished 14th or 15th overall in the 250 nationals. If you look at who was racing back then, it was deep. For me, that was pretty good. I was super stoked, and it was a good deal. At Honda in ’97 we were riding the aluminum chassis. The year before, I'd been getting some good parts. Dave Arnold was sort of my boss there, and he was helping me out with some good parts, some race team parts, and stuff. In ‘97 I was supposed to get a lot of good stuff for that bike. We showed up at the first national in Gainesville and my bike wasn't good. I got my ass handed to me in the first moto and I think I wadded up the second moto and DNF’ed. I was just over it. I screwed up basically. I just got too cocky because I'd done well the year before. I'm like, “I don't need this.” Roger DeCoster had already gone to Suzuki. McGrath was there. Roger made the comment that he could bring me over because I'd done a lot with Jeremy on his bike, and I did Steve Lamson's and Doug Henry's stuff at Honda. Roger used to talk to me a lot about different ideas and testing. After Gainesville, I called him to see if he could get me in at Suzuki. Suzuki called me and offered me a deal that was not even a quarter as good as what I had at Honda, but I just wanted a change. I thought in the end it might end up being better. So, I took it. I'll never forget because the next weekend after Gainesville, we were still doing Supercross, and we went to Minneapolis and I won the semi. On the podium, I said, “I just want to thank Honda because I'm going to ride a Suzuki next week at the next race.” There was a bunch of the higher-ups from Honda at that race and I remember them coming over to my pit. “We don't understand. What did you say up there?” I'm just like, “Don't worry about it.” I kind of blew them off. It was probably one of the stupidest things I could have done, but that's what I did. The next week I ended up having a bone stock ‘97 RM250 shipped to me. I don't remember who, but somebody did the suspension for me for Houston Supercross. The bikes were just so slow. We nicknamed it the RM175 because it was such a slow motorcycle. It was horribly slow. The first race I raced was in Houston and I ended up endo’ing. There was a set of whoops, you could jump all of them. You came out of a corner and if you hit it just right, you could jump the whole set of whoops. I came up short and endo’ed my brains out and broke my kneecap. That was the end of ‘97 right there. I thought, “Oh, my God, what have I done? What have I done?” 

Vital MX: You mentioned working on Supercross: The Movie. How does the stunt work start?

RT: I actually doubled for Jeremy McGrath believe it or not, on a Honda commercial in probably ’95. I think ’94 or ‘95. They did a commercial at Vegas Supercross and they needed somebody during the day to do a bunch of riding on the track in his gear and some stuff behind the track in the pits. Just riding around basically. They asked me to do it because I was kind of the same size as Jeremy, and I had doubled him for some picture stuff, brochures, and stuff before that. They knew I could kind of look the part. I ended up not racing that night and doubling him in all his gear. Then I was the guy in the commercial and that was the first thing I did. The next thing I did was that movie called Motocrossed. A good friend of mine, David Barrett, he's a producer/director now, he was a big-time stunt guy back then. He hired me on that Disney show. There were a bunch of us that were on it. That was a really fun one. We were down at Barona Oaks for like two weeks just moto’ing around and playing, and causing trouble. 

Vital MX: How many movies have you worked on at this point? Do you know?

RT: Oh, geez. If you go on IMDB you can type in my name and see, but I probably have 100 to 150 features between TV shows and movies and stuff. Which isn't even that many compared to most stunt guys. I've got my fair share for sure.

Vital MX: What's the gnarliest stunt you've ever done? What's something that was, “Oh, I don't know about this?”

RT: I did a movie called, Into the Storm. There were two things I did on it that were pretty gnarly. I had this old 4x4 piece of shit quad. I had to jump it like 30ft and land in one of those doughboy round pools and the pool was on fire. This movie was a funny, crazy movie, but I had to throw the bike in the air and it had to hit a certain place. That was pretty gnarly. In that same movie, it's basically these dudes who are chasing tornadoes, I was in a harness and the cables were up to this crane that was up on top of this mountain, and on “action”, they'd pull me across this grass and then shoot me almost 100ft up into the air, swinging across into this tree and then swinging back. It was freaking gnarly because the cables they use are this tech cord, which is super thin. It looks like dental floss, basically, but it's really gnarly stuff. That was probably the gnarliest thing I did just because it scared the shit out of me. If they screwed up or if something broke, I was going down. That one was kind of hairy, for sure. I did another movie, I think it was called Invasion, and I was on the hood of a car, and someone was driving it and pitching the thing sideways and just crazy stuff. I was tethered to the hood of the car. Then in one of the scenes, and this all happened during rehearsal, he pitches the car in sideways and I'm on a cable and they yank me off the car up into the air, and I swing and then they drop me in these boxes. Well, on one of the “actions”, they pulled me up into the air, but the mechanism system froze and I swung back over the car. Now I'm probably 15-20ft above the car. All of a sudden, the thing, the ratchet just let go and dropped me like 20ft down into the back window of this Jaguar car. I landed on my ass and my back through the back windshield. I blew the windshield out and smashed myself. I screwed my elbow all up. That one was kind of gnarly.

Vital MX: Wow! The life you've lived. 

RT: Well, nothing more gnarly than going into the first turn at Anaheim 1 with 20 gnarly dudes. Trust me. No stunt is scarier than that.

Vital MX: Let's talk about post-race life. Your dad, Hook worked at Smith Goggles for many years. What made you want to start EKS Brand Goggles? 

RT: When I was done racing, I continued to test for Suzuki for almost 13 years. They had started cutting back already. They were firing a lot of people. This was in 2006, 2007. My boys were born, and I knew things were going to start getting pretty tight. Willy Musgrave was running a company called MTA, and he was like, “Hey, dude, if you do a goggle company, we just got rid of Dragon. We'll take it on right now.” Between my dad's contacts and people that we knew, we knew where to have them made and how to do it. We came up with a concept and got the ball rolling. Immediately those guys bought a container of them, and we were rolling. It was pretty easy to get it going once we had tested the goggle and come up with something we liked. That’s how the goggle started. In 2008, we started selling and started the company and made it happen.

Vital MX: EKS Brand has grown into one of the top brands for privateers, but also the GNCC guys. The 2022 GNCC XC2 champion Lyndon Snodgrass wore them, and the ATV Pro champ, Bryce Neal wore them. If they can get a guy through a GNCC they're a good goggle.

RT: Yeah! We were pretty stoked with the last GNCC. Craig DeLong won, and Josh Strang got second. Both are my guys. Josh has been in the goggles since like 2009. He's been with us forever. Craig's worn our goggles for a long time as well. What I was so pumped about is that race was a full-blown mudder, man. It was some of the worst conditions you could have for a goggle or a goggle company. Our guys went one and two. I'm not saying the goggles are what made those guys win. They're both badass dudes, we know that. It's just really cool to know that probably one of the gnarliest races of the year, motocross, off-road, whatever, and first and second were wearing our goggles. So, you know we make a great goggle. Our roll-off system is really good. Our tear-offs, the whole way it's put together, it works, you know. A lot of goggles work. I'm not going to bag on other brands, but it's just cool. It made me smile for sure. I was pretty pumped.

Vital MX: A lot of people may not realize this, but a lot of the major brands of goggles all come from the same factory. The companies can pick what foam they like, what frame style they like, etcetera, etcetera. They're kind of made in the same place. What I like about yours is you keep them at a lower price, but they're still an elite goggle when it comes to quality.

RT: Let's make one thing clear. There are a few different goggle companies overseas that build a lot of the goggles out there. The company that builds our goggles builds like three of the top goggles in the world and that's really it. We're made at a company that builds Oakley, 100%., EKS, and a few other ski brands. Then there are other companies that build a lot of these little goggle companies you see out there. There really is a difference. A lot of people think a goggle is a goggle. But when you really put the goggles next to each other and you feel the materials and you see the clarity there's a big difference out there. If you look at the top goggle companies in the world, there are a lot of similarities because a few of us are made in the same factory. It's more about designing your own face shape and stuff like that.

Vital MX: For a company of your size to upgrade or evolve with the new Lucid with Wavelatch Quick-Change lens system, how difficult is that? 

RT: Being in the motorcycle industry for so long and racing for so long, I have a bazillion ideas that go in and out of my head every day. As you can imagine. It's trying to put it to paper and then bring it to the market that is so hard to do. We had an idea and Jason Lighthart is a guy that's helped us out for a long time with designs and stuff. He and I talked a lot about what would be the next step. To make a wider view goggle that was still easy and functional and worked. That's sort of how we came up with our slider mechanism. If you haven't seen it or haven't played with it yet, try to go to a dealer and get them to show you because it's a really cool system and it works really well. 

Vital MX: That goggle has to be good, in my opinion. The proof is in the Factory Ride goggles that ClubMX is using, John Anderson at Dubya USA did a one-off goggle, and Alpinestars are all branding your Lucid's themselves. Hunter Lawrence is leading the points wearing Lucid goggles with Alpinestars branding. 

RT: Our goggle is really, really good. Plain and simple. Everybody's face is different. Everybody's helmet fits them differently. We've been pretty lucky that this goggle fits a lot of people, and it fits them well. The way the goggle functions is amazing. We are still a pretty small company. We've been around since 2008, but in this industry, if you don't spend a lot of money, you don't necessarily make a lot of money. That's probably with every industry. The 100%s and the Oakleys are buying all the top riders and I can't afford to buy them. We have to do what we can to stay successful and keep pumping away. So, we've done a lot of private label goggles and a lot of companies do pick our goggles because it does work really well. For those companies you're talking about, we definitely work with them very closely. The goggles those guys are wearing are our goggle, you know? 

Vital MX: If you're reading this, go to your local dealership and ask for X brand distributed through WPS. Or go to EKSbrand.com and place an order. I want to finish up by talking about your boys. Richard is racing professionally. Zach stepped away from racing a few years ago after a pretty big crash. Talk about the boys helping you out and Richard racing professionally.

RT: Yeah, Richard is figuring it out. This sport is not easy and anyone who thinks it is, all you guys who are watching it on TV and think it's easy, you have no idea, man. It's a tough sport. He's doing good. Richard's out there riding 450 Supercross. Does it get any gnarlier than that? I don't think so. He's just trying to figure it out and make it happen. He's an incredible rider. He just needs to figure out the mental side a little bit better. He's had some good results in the past, so he'll figure it out and do it. Zach is my younger son. He actually works here at the office with us. He's starting a new company right now of his own. That's going to be pretty cool. So, mountain bike sunglasses and some mountain bike clothing and pads, knee pads, elbow pads, stuff like that for action sports. He's also going to dip into the golf arena a little bit and he's got some pretty cool products that'll go good with the golf people. Yeah, just trying to make it happen. When you grow up in this industry, you kind of learn to do what you have to do to make it work.