Broc Glover - Raiders of the Archives

We're going to start presenting photos from the past as a regular feature here at dirtrider.com and call the new department "Raiders of the Archives." This is our first installment, and we chose Broc "Golden Boy" Glover to kick things off. Looking at the photo, Broc thinks this is his 1980 Yamaha OW (factory bike designation) 250. He thinks the shot was taken at the Houston Supercross the weekend of his first supercross win, partly because, "The dirt looks pretty good, complete with rodeo manure mixed in!" Broc was a 125 specialist at the time, and this supercross race was during the year of Broc's 125 title defense, trying for a fourth straight 125 motocross championship.

THE BIKE - "That was a straight mono shock bike, no linkage. It was the year before the linkage came out. That bike was actually pretty good. It was competitive with the other bikes out there… Mike Bell won the supercross championship that year on the same bike, so we were a competitive team."THE EVENT - "I don't think I even started off the year riding supercross… Houston was a double header. Mike Bell won one night, I think we went 1-2, 2-1. I had good speed and Mike had good speed and I think whoever got the better start probably was going to end up being the winner, and we split races… When I first rode for Yamaha I didn't ride any supercross. I talked them into letting me ride a couple here and there, but very sporadic. It wasn't until Mart Barnett won the LA Coliseum - I had been racing with Mark and was very competitive, a lot of the times came out on top in the races and in the championships. When Mark won it was like, 'Hello? Here's a guy that I'm racing with wheel to wheel every week and he's winning races so I imagine I could probably do okay if I got a chance to ride supercross.' Yamaha at that time, you have to understand, they were selling 10 to 15 thousand 125 YZs in a year… Yamaha was much more into making sure I kept the number one plate on a 125 because they sold so many bikes in that class. They thought they already had enough guys riding supercross… If I'm not mistaken I think I won four times that year… Houston, Philadelphia, and back to back at the LA Coliseum. They went forward and backward that year , when everybody broke the wheels. Remember that one? Literally on the second day, in the middle of the day, when the track was so hard packed, the jumps were really big and they were really peaked and if you came up short you really hit hard. In the main event there were 20 bikes and I think, I want to say, six or seven guys had broken wheels sitting on the sideline."

TODAY - "I manage Dunlop's racing effort in off-road. If it touches the dirt and it's a racing activity it's my responsibility… The job goes into R&D; and the technical side of development, it goes all the way into the marketing side trying to supply information and suggestions for marketing, It kinda touches everywhere. We have access to all the top factory teams, we get a lot of nice feedback. It's real accurate and slightly different from each team so it really helps with development of product."Learn more about Broc's current main sponsor at www.dunlopmotorcycle.com