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.
Ricky Carmichael. This year...
Ricky Carmichael. This year the points leader will run a red number plate background.
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!