So what do we make of Matt "Beef" Goerke winning at Southwick? And what do we make of 44-year-old John Dowd finishing second?

There are two ways to go here: anyone younger or with better support than these dudes should go stick their head in the muddy Southwick sand and drown themselves in tears. Beat straight-up by a 44-year-old? Not sure if you can be proud of that. And then Georke wins on Josh Hill's bike, meaning he has proven, unfortunately for Hill, that both his Thor pants and his factory Yamaha YZ450F are fine.

If you're Hill, Michael Byrne, Andrew Short, Ivan Tedesco, Davi Millsaps, or any other factory rider in the field, should you be embarrassed?

Or, do we just chalk this up to the magic of sports? You just never know when an epic event will take place, when a dream scenario, a one-in-a-million underdog story will come true.

Let's do the right thing and just give the credit to Georke and Dowd, who have shown that motocross is one of the few motorsports where someone can really change the results just by getting fired up and inspired. Georke is simply pumped to be on that bike and it has turned him into a different rider--Matt has the same talent level he had when he was struggling the last few years, and the YZ is the same bike Hilly was struggling on for the last few months. But to Matt the bike respresents opportunity, and that has lit his fire.

As for Dowd, just getting fired up, and all of that knowledge of the Southwick track, carried him much further than a 44-year-old body and a privateer Kawi should be able to do. NASCAR has had a few crazy wins at just the right time, but that just ignites the conspiracy theories. No doubt that Georke and Dowdy's efforts were all real.

Plus, Chad Reed crashed out of the race for the first time since....when has Chad EVER crashed out of a race while leading? I know he went down in the Millville whoops a few years ago and busted his shoulder. And one time at Southwick he jacked his shoulder and had to ride in crazy pain. That's about all I can remember. The most consistent guy ever just crashes out? The motocross Gods just seem to go crazy on some days.

In 2005, Doug Henry rolled up to the GNCC in Florida on a beat up Honda with duct tape numbers. He went out and beat Juha Salminen straight-up in a ridiculous all-out battle for the win. They were something like seven minutes ahead of third! Henry wins, and then collapses at the finish line. Exhausted. Couldn't speak, at all. Couldn't stay up on the podium. After the race, he was just laying on the ground, his back in the sand, exhausted. He was DONE. But he won.

While watching this drama unfold, all-time classic MX and SX announcer Larry Maiers appeared next to me. I really think Larry was just beamed down by the announcing Gods for this event. I don't know where he came from of why he was there. I turned to him and said "Larry, Henry is retired and he just beat the entire GNCC pack down. That doesn't make those guys look good."

Larry responded "It doesn't make anyone look bad, because this is Doug Henry! This is what Doug Henry does, he does the impossible. A lot of motocrossers have tried to win this race, Larry Ward, Travis Pastrana, Ryan Hughes, and they couldn't do it. He didn't win because the other guys are bad, he did it because he's Doug Henry! So go ahead and use that. Free of charge."

And with that Larry beamed away, as if his appearance was just a dream.

The point was to take what Henry did as great, and don't diminish the accomplishment by investigating everyone else. By the end of that 2005 season, everyone realized Salminen was the GOAT off-road, which only further validated Henry's win.

And if Doug had been able to race Southwick this year, he might have been up there, too. Would we think any less of the current factory talent if they were beat by him? Probably not.









 

 

Wait! We have more trouble with this blog! I've been trying since last week to post this blog about Hill and Goerke's pants, and for some reason the photo I took of Georke in practice simply and completely will not upload to this site. And no one can figure out why. We've now passed the problem on to the tech team that built the back end of our site. Meanwhile....the photo I took, the one proving I discovered this before Matthes, remains un-uploaded.

Worse yet, I posted an updated version of this blog but the text has dissapeared, replaced by some odd HTML code on some internet browsers. Weege is not happy about this.

So anyway, enjoy reading this week old blog without a key photo.

I'll be back with more later.

We have proof! For years, the debate has raged. Why do Josh Hill’s pants always fall down? Is it the pants? Is it him? And why, in general, have pants started saggin so often at the races? Back in the 80’s and 90’s, when kidney belts became a rule instead of an exception, jersey’s stayed tucked. But then for some completely mysterious reason, the kidney belt went away. Gripper seats showed up. Then hump seats. 450s. Now jerseys are hanging out on a variety of riders. But no one sports the sag like Hilly.

Last week I was standing in the staging area before 450 practice, and noticed Matt “Beef” Georke’s pants. His butt patch had the Yosemite Sam “Back Off” motif, but oddly, Matt had a 75 printed inside Sam’s hat. Was this some kind of message to Hill, #75? “Back off, Josh, I have your bike now?”

So I asked. Turns out Matt forgot to bring a fresh pair of Moose Racing pants, so he just took some Thor pants out of Josh’s locker. That’s all there was to it.

After that convo I realized the real story here. God had bestowed a one-in-a-million chance on us. Another rider was wearing Hill’s pants! We could now test the theory—is it the pants, or is it Josh?

Folks, it’s Josh. The longest lower back in the game today simply can't be contained.

This was such big news that Matthes battled to beat me to the punch by posting this on his www.pulpmx.com site on Monday. Don't listen to him, though, I took the photo before practice even began so obviously, I got the scoop first.

I’m so pumped on this I’m bringing the Blogandt noun of the week back and saying it’s Josh Hill’s pants.

It’s Saturday morning, race day, and Budds Creek promoter Jonathan Beasley has me roped into another one of his wild rides. With Jonathan, you just go with the flow. Probably like co-driving with Ken Block on one of his gymkana videos—this is a rally car where the co-driver is really just a passenger.

 

I last saw Jonathan at the Colorado national in June. Billy Ursic and I were leaving the track on Friday night and Beasley pulls up on his quad, telling us all about this dinosaur fossil park he found on the top of a mountain. “Make a right and go through the gate. If anyone stops you, tell them you’re with me, and they’ll let you in. I have a key to the place so we’re all set.”

 

We weren’t sure how a guy from Maryland had a key to a dino exhibit in Colorado, but you just go with it. Billy and I tried to make the right hand turn, but we were greeted by two police cars, so we turned around and drove away. But in my rearview mirror, I saw Jonathan pull up to the police on his ATV. We circled back over to the scene. “Jason, just turn around and pretend you were never here,” yelled Jonathan. “Get out of here and you never saw me here.”

 

So we took off. That’s all I know.

 

So now at Budds Creek, Jonathan flags me down on race day Saturday. “Get on my quad, I need to give you a poster for Bailey, and we need to clean up this pond so it looks good on NBC,” he says. “I need more headstock, though, the stuff I have for the pond works amazing, I wish I had more.”

 

???

 

Then we ride up to a locked gate where Ellie Reed is trying to get in, and Jonathan unlocks it and then explains some story to her about meeting her at the des Nations in 2001 at Namur. Then we see Jake Weimer walking down for practice, and Jonathan says to him: “I’ve been to 19 motocross des nations. You’ve been to one. You’re going to love it. Good luck young man, and congratulations.”

 

Then we go into some small janitor closet next to the pits and Jonathan pulls out a bottle of pool cleaner. We drive down to the pond at the center of the track and he dumps the contents of the bottle in. DC comes walking up and we just laugh. The pond holds probably 100,000 gallons of mud colored water. Jonathan poured a gallon of cleaner in it. It’s like putting a grain of salt on an entire cow and saying “yup, the meat is salted so it should last forever.”

 

The stuff actually did turn the water blue, but only in a three-foot diameter spot. That spot just floated around, basically a water slick inside of an oil pond.

 

Much later in the day, the rain comes. Hard. You MUST tune into the 250 show this Saturday night on SPEED at 8 p.m. (SPEED will present three-straight hours of motocross this weekend, with the Budds 250 show followed by same-day coverage of the 250 and 450 races from Southwick at 9 p.m.  and 10 p.m.).

 

On that 250 show, you’ll see rivers and water falls all over the track. At Daytona in 2007, it rained about as hard as it can possibly rain. It did the same thing here, only now we had hillsides and natural elements thrown into the mix. Daytona is 90 percent concrete, Budds Creek is 90 percent dirt.

 

They finally had to red flag the 250 moto because the water overflowed from the pond, and haybales were floating through the mechanics’ area. The mechanics’ area is at least 50 feet from that pond. That’s A LOT of water!

 

And by the way, the race had started with a red flag start, so we actually had two red flags in the same race. Has that ever happened before?

 

Anyway, a few hours later Paul Lindsey and I went back out to the track to shoot the Racer X Motocross show. We took a look at the pond to check on all the destruction. Haybales were everywhere, the track was a wreck, you could barely tell what was what. But lo and behold, Beasley’s three-foot wide green water slick was still floating around, in tact despite all the weather.

Okay here’s the test:

It was 88 degrees when I hit the rail trail at 1 p.m. EST today. Humid, too. To make the test even harder, I pulled the shorts and shirt that I had ran in yesterday out of my bag and wore them again. They had been sitting all day in the damp darkness, and what’s worse, the shirt was one of those dry wicking running shirts, a Reebok one I bought for $3 at the local second-hand shop (same place where I found a Arizona Cardinals, 2009 Superbowl Champions shirt for $7!). Who knows what kind of odd smells and chemicals that shirt had endured on its way to the overstock “slightly irregular” shop.

I ran for about 40 minutes, then jumped in my Jeep and headed back to the office-- leaving me no time to dry off, change or clean up in any way.  We had a 2 p.m. conference call scheduled, and that’s where Febreze Sport would have to earn its money. Two other employees would have to gather at my desk and center around my speaker phone for the call. Could Febreze ward off the side effects of an afternoon run?

So I sprayed myself down. Hard. Apparently, Febreze is just something to freshen up your clothes and gear, it’s not TAG or AXE body spray, but I used it as such, totally coating myself in the stuff. Hey, they offered to send me stuff for free so I was going to take full advantage.

The result? An hour later, my assistant Rachel said “You know what, you really do smell Fabreezey!” Success!

What can I say? The stuff works awesome. Everyone at Febreeze worked really hard, so I just have to give it up to them. In fact, dare I say this, “I just can’t thank them.” (Enough).

Rachel did think the Febreze scent wasn’t really that tough, and maybe they would have been better off “manning” it up a bit. But did I mention they also sent me a sweet water bottle? Smells good to me!

What makes it work so well? Let’s go to the press release:

Febreze SPORT Extreme Odor Eliminator is a trigger spray tool for all types of athletes, from the marathon runner to the gym-goer. It features a specially-formulated X-Sweat Technology to seek out and neutralize tough sweat odors. Whether spritzing on gym shorts following a tough training session of spraying down shoes after a long run, Febreze SPORT Extreme Odor Eliminator de-stinks the post workout experience.

Is there a chance someone just sent this to me because I really smell bad?

Anyway the test was good, but we all know the first ride is one thing. Some time later comes the true measure, a more hard-core torture session where you really find out how the 2010 model holds up. And that test might be coming as soon as this weekend. Apparently, the media vests for photographers have been left soaking in a gear bag after the Budds Creek mud fest. This Friday morning at Southwick, the Will Call team at the nationals will open the bag again, greeted only by the horrific odor of 30 vests that were sweated in during the morning and rained on during the afternoon.

Can Febreze handle that? I really hope no one washes those vests this week, the world needs to know!

(The letter that came with the Frebreze Sport today required that I tell you I received the product for free in exchange for a review on my blog. According to the letter, Febreze is always looking to individuals like me, who are highly regarded in their communities, to test out products and share feedback. So there you go, community, hold this review up in high regard).