All That Talent and No TitleRebuilding a dynasty doesn't happen overnight. How many NBA titles have the Chicago Bulls won since Michael Jordan retired? DeCoster has brought talent to the table, but talent alone doesn't win titles, as evidenced by the one-year stint of McGrath in '97. It doesn't matter which version of the story is told, the bottom line is that neither party was ready coming into the season. McGrath's relationship with Honda came to an abrupt end just two weeks before the season, and American Suzuki wasn't prepared to work with the greatest supercross rider of all time. MC ended up 15th in the first round in Los Angeles, but Suzuki still came away as the point leader: Albertyn won the race. "We hired Jeremy hoping we could go out and capture a championship, and we found out that we were not ready to compete with Honda and Yamaha and Kawasaki at that level," Harris commented. Jeff Emig won the title, but several "what if" stories haunt McGrath from '97. He suffered a cut ankle from a piece of glass in a nonracing accident and then got a flat tire during a main late in the season. McGrath lost the title by 15 points.
Suzuki's woes continued into the 21st century despite a top-shelf lineup that included Travis Pastrana, Kevin Windham and Sbastien Tortelli. Between the three riders, Pastrana's 2000 AMA 125cc Motocross title was the only bright spot. Beyond that was a clipboard full of medical charts, especially for Pastrana, whose injuries and extracurricular activities left DeCoster scratching his head. The bad luck continued to the point where Suzuki had no reason to even send a truck to the races because there was nobody left to ride the bikes. "Every year you get excited," Harris said. "We had Windham and Pastrana a couple of years ago, and if the main events had been 10 laps, we would have won three of them right off the get-go. It seemed like during the 11th to the 20th laps they crashed or suffered from arm-pump or fatigue. You name it, we just couldn't put 20 good laps together. I think we were starting to second-guess ourselves."
Wasn't April Fool's Yesterday?"When I first heard of RC's signing with Suzuki, I thought it was some kind of joke. I couldn't believe it," 1983 AMA Supercross Champ David Bailey said. That was the perception, that there was no way in hell Carmichael, the all-time race-wins leader, was going to ride a Suzuki. No fooling. On April 2, 2004, that was the truth. Carmichael, who had been out with a knee injury since the previous November, had signed with Suzuki without even riding the bike.
"The final ingredient was when he came to Daytona in '04 and saw Pastrana and Sean Hamblin get the holeshot and lead for a while," Harris said. "He said, 'If those guys can get the holeshot and lead on that bike, then I will win on that bike.'
"The Monday after Daytona the call was made, 'Let's finalize the deal.' He had needed a little reassurance-seeing the bikes at Daytona-and we understood. Not winning a title in 24 years and not really having the bike of choice. There were a couple of other riders who tested the bike and didn't get the offer from us that maybe they were expecting, and I think they would have appreciated riding the bike this year. But we felt that Ricky was the rider that could win the championship for us on our bike."