The History of Supercross -ozzy go- supercrossonline.com

Gary Bailey had just done something completely unprecedented. He had
torn up the infield grass at Daytona International Speedway, churning the
sandy soil into the AMA's first artificial motocross track.

The whoops, stutter-bumps and berms that Bailey built, located in the
shadow of the famed speedway's east-end banking, snaked through the
infield on both sides of a culvert. In just hours on this day during Motorcycle
Week 1972, riders would take to that course on Maicos, CZs, Jawas and
Husqvarnas in a style of racing that would one day become known as AMA
Supercross.

History was about to be made. But Bailey had just one small problem: The
riders didn't understand the jumps.

"It's funny," Bailey says 26 years later. "That first track really had nothing
in terms of obstacles. There were no doubles, and everything was low to
the ground.

"So when they saw this little, 25-foot ramp jump over the drainage ditch,
we actually had riders looking at it saying, 'We're supposed to jump over
that?'"

These days, the only thing the pros wonder about when it comes to jumps
is which trick to pull while in the air; a Nac Nac, a Whip, or a Superman. But

motocross, even the outdoor kind run on natural terrain was new here in
those days. And the notion of bulldozing the earth into artificial obstacles
seemed truly radical.

"We actually had people riding into the ditch and coming to an abrupt stop
at the bottom, then going over the bars," Bailey recalls, chuckling.

"We had to do something in case that happened during the race," he adds.
"So we put in a 'chicken path' around it. Some of the riders were actually
using it during the race."

Fast-forward 26 years, and it's easy to see how far supercross has come
since those early days.

The sport now fills stadiums in major cities from coast to coast. The tracks
are intricately contrived mazes of doubles, triples, tabletops and rockers.
The starts sign big-money contracts with Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, and
Suzuki. And they're the heroes of young fans around the world even in
Europe, where supercross once was considered nothing more than a
sideshow to the traditional sport of motocross.

AMA motocross was barely a year old in 1969, when Bailey, a racer
himself, staged what were very likely the first stadium motocross events.
He converted the venerable Ascot Park in California, long a venue for AMA
Grand National Dirt Track racing, into a motocross track, using part of the
half-mile track and even taking riders outside the oval on one section. The
man-made track was an attempt to make the European sport of motocross,
still quite foreign to America, more accessible for fans.

"We were just looking for a way to get the average Joe Blow to watch the
races," Bailey says. "He doesn't want to go sit in the dirt and spend all his
time getting to and from the event. Why not put it in a stadium?"

Bailey approached the AMA with his idea, trying to get the Association to
sanction the event. But officials balked.

"The rule was that the track had to be natural and it had to be at least 20
feet wide," Bailey recalls. "Ours was only 15 feet wide in one spot, so we
didn't get the sanction." full story on supercrossonline.com
Johnny O'Mara (#5) in 1984
Jeremy McGrath (#2) & Doug Henry (#19) in 1998
pics from racerxill.com