2007 Anaheim I Supercross Preview - Dirt Rider Magazine

James Stewart.

The Supercross season is almost here. Here as in the United States. And with Anaheim 1 right around the corner, the boys and girls of Supercross showed up to Angel stadium today to knock out the season's first pre-race press conference. As soon as we filled up on little sandwiches and delicious chocolate cookies, we started paying attention and this is what we heard.First off, it's important to remember how awesome last year's SX season was. It was, by far, the most competitive series in the history of, well, anything that has a motor and wheels. Ricky Carmichael and James Stewart went into the last round tied for the AMA title and virtually neck-and-neck for the World Crown. Either title was technically up for grabs with the two motorcycle gods splitting the two crowns between them and then bowing to the crowd in a tear-jerking, fist pumping, Fox-dream-commercial-coming-true celebration.Also impressive in an even bigger way was the coverage of our beloved sport in the mainstream media, specifically T.V. Last year there were more fans attending, watching, reading and listening SX than ever before. Over 830,000 fans went to races, television ratings had never been higher and audio webcasts reached more screen-jockeys than humanly possible (Jim Holley and Jason Weigandt robots anyone? It's possible, think about it). What might surprise you even more than last year's stellar display of our sport is what the entertainment hit men over at Live Nation (Clear Channels muscle in the stadiums) have on tap for this year. How does a LIVE broadcast of Anaheim 1 on SPEED sound? Yep, at 5:00 pm EST on January 6 you can watch Ricky, Bubba, K-dub and the whole SX posse whip around the grueling A1 track in real time. Just watch SPEED. Don't have SPEED? Well you've got till Saturday to get it or find a friend who does. Don't worry, there are 74 million people in the U.S. that get it so it's easy to find. I personally suggest taking the television into the garage and watching from the seat of your bike. The season finale in Vegas will also be LIVE like last year and there are plenty of rounds smack in the middle of primetime to keep your SX satisfaction to a suitable level. Check out www.supercross.cc.com for a schedule. If you don't have friends with SPEED and can't get to the internet (can you really get to the internet?) beam up your XM radio and click over to channel 144 where you can hear live audio coverage of the race. There's really no excuse to miss the SX show.Announcement: The AMA and Clear Channel/Live Nation have extended their supercross agreement until 2019! That means we won't be having a non-AMA supercross series anytime soon. That's awesome for the record books and a racing series which is improving and can always improve more. Yahoo for getting along!

Davi Millsaps.

What else? Well, there are some people hurt. Most notable are Chad Reed and Davi Milsaps. Davi is definitely out until at least Anaheim 3 and even that's iffy as he's barely been riding on a healing femur injury. He's admittedly weak, bored and pretty much just pissed off about the whole deal. He is, however, stoked to actually be able to watch satellite T.V. for the first time ever. We sure hope we see the big guy out there soon.Reed just went down in practice and, frankly we don't know when he'll get back up. Team Manager Larry Brooks said the former SX champ has a couple chipped bones and a hairline crack all up in his shoulder blade due to his YZ450 smashing into him after he went over the bars warming up last Sunday. "Structurally, he can race," Brooks said. "It's just a matter of if he can take the pain and if anybody can, it's him. It's bad timing for sure..." But, surprisingly, the speedy #22 in blue might actually race this weekend! According to Brooks, it's still a "Saturday decision" and Chad and the team will make the call on whether to race or not then. Stay tuned!Everyone else is moderately healthy and ready to kick some booty. James Stewart is strong and ready to go. No news there except that his once Red-bulled self is now riding a very Monster Energy-labeled Kawasaki. Rumors have it that Kawi's signing with Monster left it a little hard for Red Bull to renew James' Red Bull contract which expired on the New Year. We bet there's some high-octane, juicy gossip down there at the bottom of the can somewhere...we just can't find it because we're too jacked up on caffeine to care. What we do care about is that this is definitely James' year. He basically can't loose and has a good head on his shoulders. He's going into this year a race at a time and not letting future or past races get in his way of doing the job at hand. Even though he's not in the lead for the world title at the moment, he's still sitting pretty. After all, Mr. Consistency and current point leader Ricky Carmichael is jumping the supercross ship this year--even if he's in the lead. For the champ to go out on top would be great. Does Ricky ever go slow at anything? Even on his way out he's going fast. Ricky, if you're coasting, man you're coasting fast!So, with RC leaving and Reed hurt it seems Bubba has all of 2007 wrapped up, eh? Well, I'm betting Kevin Windham, Langston and a pile of other guys will do their best to stop him. In fact, I'm willing to bet this is K-dub's year to go to the wire for a championship. He's silly on the bike, has 10 years of Supercross-class experience and is coming off a long break with a focus on the new season. Expect him to carry the big red flag for '07.It was about this time in the press conference when I went for more cookies and to take a look at the racetrack (which was completely done!). I'm glad I had some comfort food because just looking at the triples, sand straight and tricky rhythm sections had me shaking in my shoes. There is actually a triple that leads right into a whoop section! Holy cow, this is going to be insane. Get out to Angel Stadium Saturday night, plop down in front of your T.V., XM radio or computer screen and get ready for Supercross...because it's home!