HANGTOWN Still Growing After All These Years!

The 43rd Annual Hangtown Classic

An Evolutionary Tale

My friend Art sent me an email saying he wouldn’t be attending this year’s Hangtown MX and asked if I felt a literary urge to write something about this year’s event. I did, so here goes. As it turns out this story is more about an evolution than it is about the racing.

I believe this is the 40th year AMA’s been running what’s now known as the National Outdoor MX series and this was the Dirt Diggers 43rd annual Hangtown MX event. I also believe this is the only national event put on by an AMA sanctioned club and one of the few, if not the only one that hosts three days of amateur racing in conjunction with a national MX race.

 My first Hangtown MX event was the 3rd annual at the sand track in Plymouth. For years after I would race in the amateur events on Saturday, camp out in my old Ford van and watch the National event on Sunday. I could spin many a yarn about the atmosphere at that old track. Ok I’ll tell one story, I was there the day Bob Hannah had his breakout race. I, like most, didn’t know who he was, but I remember thinking to myself, man this guy’s intense. You could see it in his face.  In those days most riders wore open face helmets and the only thing between you and the track was some flimsy plastic fence.

When they moved the event to Prairie City it went through years of transition, some of it good some not so good.  There were years when you wouldn’t have wanted to take your family. I felt the vast majority of the people attending were there just to party and had no clue what was going on the track. (They did that at Plymouth as well) Fortunately, that has changed.  It’s now a great place to take your family and has been for a number of years.  I believe the vast majority who now attend are fans.

As I have done for years I ride my Dual Sport bike and park as close to the track as I can. Riding a bike out there is a huge advantage, unless it rains, which has happened.  One year I was so unprepared I had to scrounge and beg for a large enough plastic garbage bag to make a poncho to ride home in the rain with. I also came to the realization as I was on the freeway in the slow lane doing about sixty with my plastic poncho flapping in the wind in a hurry to get home I was on my Dual Sport with its knobby tires, not one of my smarter days, fortunately for me I survived.

This year my son and I rode our bikes again. Normally I don’t get out there until noonish preferring to miss all the traffic and show up in time for the big show. This time we decided to go a little earlier and I was reminded again why I don’t go until later.  The traffic was backed up to the freeway on Prairie City Road; some two or three miles from the track.

We got some dirty looks from a few people sitting in their vehicles who didn’t appreciate the freedom we were enjoying on our bikes as we rode past them.  Any way, as we wound our way through and over and around we ended up parked near the concessions without having to give anyone our tickets. We couldn’t have purposely done this if we had tried and if we had tried to sneak in I’m sure we would have been caught.

As we were walking in past rows and rows of blue outhouses and the lines of people waiting to use them, I told my son I needed to look for some funny things to write about today. Turns out there weren’t that many funny moments. Although it was interesting to watch people carefully trying to stack their piece of trash on top of a trash can that was way beyond over flowing. (I tried it myself a couple of times) One observation I’ve made over the years is when the weather is warm there seems to be an endless supply of women who wear tops that take constant readjusting of their stuff and shorts that continually require pulling them down or they’ll ride up into places they don’t want.

How great is it to be able to spend the day with your son sharing a lifelong passion? We also brought along the father on my two year old Great Grand Daughter. I say this because I’m not sure what to call him, perhaps my Grand Son to be. He’s a fine young man, who I like very much, but his passion for the sport doesn’t match ours and at times I’m sure he was a little bored. Maybe he got a little tired as well, one thing I’ve always done is walk around the track, all day, I have no idea how many miles I’ll walk but it’s a lot and most of it is up or down the side of hills. Trying to find a flat piece of ground to stand on is virtually impossible. When you walk around as I do most all the flat spots are taken by people who set up and just stay in one place all day.

Speaking of setting up that’s become a tradition for a lot of people who get there early, stake out their little piece of turf along the fence line, always in the most advantageous viewing spots available around the track and fill it with friends or family, which leaves the rest of us scrambling for the leftovers. But even before the fans get their chance to lay claim, the corporate sponsors lay claim to the very most primo spots, set up their tents and cordon off large areas for their guests. If you’re lucky enough to know someone or are willing to pay you too can enjoy the benefits of prime turf. Use to be you had to know someone who knew someone to even get a sniff at a pit pass. But today you can get a half day or all day pit pass, just depends on how much you’re willing to spend. Most of us go for the “F” package, the one day general admission ticket. But a few years ago even if you couldn’t get or buy a pit pass the factory teams would set up their rigs so the rest of us could walk around hanging on the fence outside the pits and see some of the race bikes and occasionally a rider.

Use to be a time when the track itself matched the outside of the track, hard and rocky. The track today doesn’t resemble in any way the original track. Over the years truck loads of real dirt, sand and rice hulls and a little real grass have transformed the once hard rocky track into a showcase. One only needs to walk around the outside of the track to be reminded of what it used to be like. Originally there were very few man made jumps most were natural, today the course is filled with spectacular uphill and downhill jumps and rhythm sections all a bye product of Supercross. Today’s bikes and riders are designed to attack and fly over these sections with incredible skill and daring. The speeds these young men and women are riding at are truly amazing. Unfortunately with this kind of speed the injuries seem to be increasing as well, staying relatively healthy is almost impossible.

In the past the sound system was for the most part was nonexistent unless you happened to be next to a speaker you then heard for the most part stuff you really didn’t care about. They’ve made small changes over the years to make it better, but this year they out did themselves, this year’s system was outdoor concert quality and was the most obnoxious, over bearing thing they’ve ever done. Apparently they (The promoters not the Dirt Diggers) must have believed that 99.9 % of the fans were ADD and therefore must be constantly stimulated with loud over the top music and an announcer who had to scream at you most of the time. You know maybe most of our youth today is ADD?  When we were on the side of the hill where most of the fans were, looking down on most of the track you couldn’t hardly hear the bikes unless they were passing by you. I’d venture to say 99.9% of the fans wanted to and came to hear the roar of the engines off the starting line and this alone would have been enough to stimulate them, but a lot of what you heard was loud music and an equally loud announcer, it was horrible.  I overheard a group of young men saying they were going to write a letter about the noise.  We eventually made our way over to the other hill next to the concession, pits and starting line the noise was tolerable there, you could actually hear the bikes leave the starting line, you could hear them but you couldn’t see them incredibly the view was blocked with adds. (Looks good on TV though)

The other thing that is new the past few years is live TV coverage, which is great for the sport. The course has been changed to better suit TV cameras and the course is now entirely lined with banners on the inside fence as well as the outside making it much more difficult to spectate, especially for those who want to sit in a chair next to the fence. I’d say the vast majority of spectators had difficulty or were unable to see the starting line. The other thing with TV coverage is you’re on their time schedule there were delays, so you know what the promoters do to keep an ADD audience entertained right?

As time passes and the sport continues to grow things will continue to change, not all change is bad (Except for that piece of S… sound system) and then there’s always the racing, the real reason we all go there and this years was most excellent, we were treated to some very exciting two and three way battles for the lead and battles all the way back to tenth or so lap after lap until the dust settled and Ryan Dungey and Chad Reed pulled way in each moto and split wins with Reed taking the overall in the 450’s. In the lites (250’s) it was the same maybe even a little tighter racing than the 450’s, but in the end Blake Baggett was the hardest charger of them all. Well maybe that’s not true there was two time and current 250cc World Champion Marvin Musquin from France who was making his American debut and after getting two bad starts made two incredible charges forward, from fortieth to sixth in the second moto. It was incredible to watch. I met him on Friday and was amazed at how slight of build he was. Goes to show you don’t have to look like a body builder to hang onto one of these rocket ships and go fast.

I’ve been around long enough to watch the evolution of the sport and in particular this track and I hope to once again ride my bike along with my son and attend the 44th annual Hangtown classic.

Doug

21J