Long before the gates drop on the 2007 Amp'd Mobile World Supercross GP and Amp'd Mobile AMA Supercross series, the off-season arrives with more show and dough than your traditional American supercrosses. One of the races, the U.S. Open of Supercross, has been stirring up the middle season for a while. The other is the newborn of stadium racing with a name fit for a king: the Jeremy McGrath Invitational (JMI). Now, with the JMI in the racing calendar, the off-season is really turning on.
Fueling the fire of off-season supercrosses is cash, and plenty of it. Promoters use big bucks to lure the nation's top talent into putting on a show outside the championships. The U.S. Open has done just this awhile now. But the new JMI race stepped up huge this year with enough prize money to put dollar signs in the riders' eyes, blinding them to the risk of injury, mechanical failures or other possible black eyes on yet-to-be-contested championship seasons.
Kevin Windham walked away from the JMI with his biggest success story since beating Ricky Carmichael at Hangtown in 2003 to break RC's 30-moto win streak. K-Dub won every moto, every heat and every heads-up battle on his CRF450R at the JMI to walk away with $185,000 and some confidence to boot. There was also another Honda head-turner in K-Dub's teammate, Josh Grant, who met up with his bigger-biked brethren on the line for both bracket-race finals aboard his CRF250R...beating a lot of 450s on his way.
Unfortunately, everything wasn't as sweet as Honda's success in the heads-up battles at the JMI. And the event, if it intends to become an annual affair, has some growing pains ahead. First and foremost, the race format will need to be solidified as it wasn't always clear who, why and what was racing. The operational scoreboard on night two helped, but confusion in the stands remained. With time trials, head-to-head and main-event races going off in a smoother fashion, fans will be watching the action more and reaching for their race programs less.
The Home Depot Center is a great venue for supercross, but it had a lot of seats that weren't even close to being filled. If Ricky, Chad, Bubba and maybe Villopoto, Langston or Millsaps would've shown up to play, maybe there would have been more butts on numbered plastic. But isn't it understandable why they sat it out? Reed was injured, Ricky is "retiring" and Bubba is paid to win another championship - off-season injuries aren't an option. Speaking of which, MC himself sustained vertebrae fractures after a nasty rhythm-section get-off and missed out on his entire name-bearing event. He couldn't even attend his own race as he was hospitalized for observation. Nick Wey, Mike Sleeter and Ryan Clark also suffered injuries that made them miss the event, some all-important supercross testing and, for some, the U.S. Open. The off-season, with its full gate of events, is still super risky.
Not to be completely outdone in the originality department, the U.S. Open stepped up the creativity this year, too. First, there was more cash up for grabs via the new Toyota Trifecta bonus (which was really a sexfecta - no kidding!) that could add as much as $150,000 to a very dominating rider's pocketbook if he could be perfect through six difficult challenges. The system involved winning both nights' individual time trials, grabbing both nights' holeshots and winning both nights' main events. The Trifecta, while almost impossible in theory, was almost won by ber-motocross-mortal James Stewart as he only lost the Superpole (time trial) and holeshot on night two.
Possibly feeling pressure from the off-the-wall JMI track, race organizers at the U.S. Open decided to mix it up and turn the track around for the second night of action. While limited by the tight confines of the MGM Grand's Garden Arena, the reversed track made for a break in the monotony of the two-night event. Other than that, it was supercross as usual in Vegas with all the stars available.