East or West?

Posted by Steve Matthes on Tuesday, December 23, 2008

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The other day on this very website, we ran an interview with Jake Weimer and in it he says that he doesn’t know which coast he’s riding. I cannot imagine that these guys do not know when they need to start ramping up their programs to get ready to race, but apparently they do not know. I’m not sure when this practice started in our sport, the “keep’em guessing which coast we’re doing” game, but to me it’s silly. It’s along the lines of a rider being secretive about being hurt. The injury thing I’ve written about in Observations a time or two. When you’re not 100 percent and you suit up and go out and stink it up, then people like me are going to write about how you stink. Why not just tell people you’re hurt? There’s no targeting system on the bikes for another rider to “aim” for the injured appendage. As a matter of fact, the media and other people will cut you some slack and wherever you place will be looked upon as doing the best you can. This is another “code” of moto that I simply do not understand.
    
Back to the coast thing though. We used to know who was doing which coast very early and when a rider got hurt, he simply transferred to the other side. The designation of which coast a rider is riding early on allows the media and the SX promoters to start manufacturing the hype and get people talking. This in turn gets the fans excited and maybe wanting to go see the race and see what the outcome will be. It’s not like we have parity in the 450 class to fall back on, that side of SX will most likely see two guys win 95 percent of the races. I wonder if a team might get better performances out of the riders as well, after all the top guys are all on programs where they try to reach a plateau in their training to peak at the right time. If a rider doesn't know where he's riding, how can he get his program going in the right direction?
   
Does anyone out there outside of the teams know who is riding which coast? I think Dungey and Lawrence are riding the west side but after that it’s anyone’s guess. I wonder what these teams are thinking in holding out. There cannot be any sort of advantage to waiting; there’s two practices at Anaheim for everyone to see who is riding, so it’s not like the first time you see your competition will be on the starting line for heat one. We need to be more open and honest in our sport in regards to everything; it's long been my contention that these teams think they are fighting cancer instead of just racing motorcycles around. I know what lengths they go to because I worked on two factory teams. It's amazing the contempt that is held for the media.
  
I bet one day a team will put a sheet over his guy, cut a couple of eye holes and pull it back right before the heat race to unveil who exactly is under the Casper the ghost outfit and therefore pysch out the other riders.
  
I don’t know, I just don’t get it. What do you guys think?

 

 

Posted by Steve Matthes on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 1:40 pm

 Comment (29)   Email Print

 

 

RECENT COMMENTS

• 
  

  bd200

  "I know this is late but my computer was broke. eliminating the coast is crazy talk. it gives more people and teams on smaller budgets a chance to race. ..i think those guys who cant decide what coast ..." DeleteReported
• 
  

  kshires

  "How about a Central Series. Now we have East, West, and Central" DeleteReported
• 
  

  Jwat381

  "Not to mention it makes it interesting when the top guys from each coast do meet. whether it be in the 450 class, the east/west shootout, or better yet: OUTDOORS." DeleteReported

 

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