Come on admit it, you did feel a tingle when the Star-Spangled Banner boomed out over the COTA circuit and the jets roared over the start and finish line before the start of the MotoGP™ race in Texas on Sunday. The stirring United States National Anthem that was such a part of Grand Prix motorcycle racing for the last 45 years has not been heard at a podium ceremony for eleven long years. There was a glimmer of hope at COTA that its return will not be so far away.
The lack of American success is unbelievable. This is a country that has produced seven MotoGP™ and two 250cc World Champions. This is a country that in 2013 staged three Grand Prix in one season at Laguna Seca, Indianapolis, and COTA. This is the only country that has produced father and son World Champions in the premier class. This is a country that produced 173 Grands Prix wins. One hundred and fifty-four in the premier class between eleven riders and nineteen in the 250cc class between four riders.
At one point in the eighties, it was more like the Pilgrim Fathers but in reverse. All you had do was click your fingers and World Champions would arrive by the boat load across the Atlantic in Europe. Kenny Roberts started the migration in 1978 when he shook Grand Prix racing to its very core on and off the track. Three successive 500cc World title and an outspoken campaigner for riders’ safety and recognition made him the unmistakable President of the American Dream. Soon the likes of Freddie Spencer, the only rider to win both 250 and 500cc World titles in one season, four times 500cc World Champion Eddie Lawson for both Yamaha and Honda, three times World 500cc Champion Wayne Rainey and Kevin Schwantz followed their President. At the start of the new decade Kenny Roberts Junior emulated his father by winning the 2000 500cc World title and six years later Nick Hayden’s success in the 2006 MotoGP™ World Championship was as popular throughout the World as it was back home in Kentucky, but that was that. Despite the considerable efforts of Ben Spies the World titles and then the Grand Prix wins dried up like summer in the Arizona desert.
Domestic Racing in America slumped. Those contrasting and superb Laguna and Indianapolis venues disappeared from the World Championship calendar. Out of the gloom came a new President of the American dream. Three times World 500cc World Champion Wayne Rainey who had been paralysed in a crash at Misano while on the verge of winning his fourth World title in 1993 decided enough was enough. He had seen his old boss Kenny Roberts desperately trying to promote the sport in the States in the nineties. In 2015 Wayne organised and then spearheaded the new MotoAmerica Championship. Motorcycle racing in America has been revitalised and refreshed. Slowly but surely American riders are returning across the Atlantic to compete in both the MotoGP™ and World Superbike Championships. Patience is something that Wayne has cruelly been forced to learn the hard way. There is still a long way to go but he is convinced all their hard work will pay off and the United States will return as a serious breeding ground for Grand Prix winners and World Champions.
Wayne should know better than most and as another famous American Bob Dylan always told us – “Times they are a-changin.”