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“The Worst”
By Kent Taylor
It is difficult to explain to someone just how grueling the sport of motocross can be, especially when the other party is a yellow-bellied, non-riding tenderfoot. Imagine, we can tell them, that you are outside in the sweltering sun, wearing 30 pounds of protective gear, rowing at a feverish pace while people who secretly want you to fall are throwing handfuls of dirt at your face. Maybe they’ll understand, maybe they won’t.
Motocross can be even gnarlier than this, as it was on June 15, 1980, at the AMA 250cc and 500cc National in Lakewood, Colorado. Hot summer temps made track watering ineffective, resulting in blinding, choking dust for riders and spectators. The Rocky Mountain high altitude made breathing difficult, and, to top it off, race bikes kicked up rocks all day long. “I’d have to say it was the worst,” said Team Suzuki rider Kent Howerton. “It wasn’t fair to all the riders. You couldn’t see anything in the corners.” Teammate Marty Smith added, “It was the worst. My lungs are hating life.”
The 1980 season was a mixed bag of changes for MX fans. Yamaha’s Bob Hannah, who had dominated the sport in both 1978 and ’79, was a no-show that year due to a serious leg injury sustained in a water-skiing accident. Longtime stars like Marty Smith and Jim Weinert had left their longtime teams, Honda and Kawasaki, and were now on new mounts. Smith, on Suzuki, was having a good season, but Weinert was struggling to adapt to his privately sponsored Can-Am. Other 1970s legends, like Jimmy Ellis and Billy Grossi, were also now privateers, riding machines that were nearly showroom-stock.
None of the extenuating circumstances might have mattered anyway, because the fastest rider in America and maybe even the world that year was Kent “The Rhinestone Cowboy” Howerton. The Texan had won his first championship in 1976 but had spent the next several seasons battling every other rider for second place, behind Hannah. In late ’79, however, Howerton upped his game with a strenuous training program that gave him the stamina he needed to race with and sometimes defeat Hannah.
His strong finish to the ’79 season made him the odds-on favorite to win the 250cc crown that Hannah could not defend. It would be one of his best-ever years, and he easily wrapped up the 250cc title before the gate dropped at the final race at Colorado.
Although he didn’t need another win, a racer is a racer, and after a bad start, Howerton began to pick off one rider after another, even if he couldn’t see who he happened to be passing. Up front, a local KTM rider named Boo Stichter was having the ride of his life, leading the top riders on his home track. “I remember being out in front,” Stichter said years later, “and just thinking ‘Well, where are they?’”
Stichter’s heroic homeboy ride would not have a storybook ending, as Warren Reid and Steve Wise both made their way past. Coming up through the pack was Howerton. Dust, rocks, energy-robbing high altitude—did he have enough left in the tank to catch the front-runners?
In the history of sport, there are many examples of someone finally cracking the code to beat their opponent. The Red Sox finally topped the Yankees to reach the World Series in 2004, and the 1980 Buffalo Bills ended a 20-game losing streak against their AFC rival, the Miami Dolphins. After losing 16 consecutive times to Jimmy Connors, tennis star Vitas Gerulaitis finally beat him in the ATP Semi-Finals at Madison Square Garden. “And let that be a lesson to you all,” he famously said afterward. “No one beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row.” When you’re tired of the bully kicking sand in your face, you cough up the 50 cents for the Charles Atlas Dynamic Tension bodybuilding guide.
Eating roost from Bob Hannah’s Yamaha had been a steady diet for Howerton for a couple of seasons, and the Rhinestone Cowboy decided he’d had enough. His newfound training program involved a lot of running, so much running that “it made me so sick I nearly quit.” But he worked through the pain and “pretty soon, I was beating [Hannah].” As the 1979 series ended, on any given day, Howerton was swapping moto wins with Hannah.
In Lakewood, the two-lap sign had come out and Howerton “got mad.” As Cycle News reported, “Howerton apparently gets faster when he gets mad. In an astonishing charge, he went by both Stichter and Wise by the white flag. It didn’t end there because he wanted it all, and in that last lap, Howerton slipped by leader Reid to cap his catch-up ride.”
The winning effort took its toll on the new champ, who struggled with severe stomach pains in between motos and nearly missed the gate drop. “When the one-minute board was up, I was still running across the starting area,” Howerton said afterward. The second moto went to his teammate Darrell Schultz, with Reid again in second, but Howerton’s third place finish was enough to give him the overall win.
“I would have beat him this year,” Howerton had told Cycle News when asked about Bob Hannah’s absence. “I’m stronger than ever and my bikes are much better than before.” No more sand in the face. It wasn’t his fault that the bully wasn’t there.CN
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