FLASHBACK! THE 2023 WORLD VET MOTOCROSS CHAMPIONSHIP (PLUS VIDEO)

THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT WAS! 2023 DUBYA WORLD VET MOTOCROSS CHAMPIONSHIP

Photos by Debbi Tamietti & Trevor Nelson

Founded in 1985, the World Vet Championships was the brainchild of three motorcycle racing buddies who had the combined talents from their jobs in the motorcycle industry to make the dream of a one-off Championship race for riders over 30 years old come to fruition. The three men were Tom White, Jody Weisel and Alan Olson. It should be noted that none of them ever took a penny from the World Vet—they got it off the ground because they wanted the race to happen.

The late Tom White provided the sponsorship, guidance and announcing skills to make the race into what it has become. Tom also had the speed to win the Over-40 World Championships in 1990. Tom realized that a stand-alone World Championship for riders over 30 years old would be a boon to the motorcycle business. He foresaw a day when Vet riders would be a powerful force in the sales of motorcycles, aftermarket products and race entries—and it didn’t hurt that he owned White Brothers Cycle Specialties that imported lots of motocross parts.

Jody Weisel provided the publicity machine to make the race grow. As the editor of Motocross Action, he threw the might of the magazine into promoting the race. He also designed the racetracks, cajoled then-factory riders, like Doug Dubach, into racing the event, and organized the move from Perris Raceway to the much larger and more famous Glen Helen Raceway. Not that Perris wasn’t a good track, but it lacked parking room, campgrounds, RV space and, most important, it lacked owners who believed in the idea of. the race. Glen Helen’s Bud Feldkamp and Lori Wilson threw the might of Glen Helen into the World Vet Championships.

Alan Olson was the number one Vet rider in Southern California, and he would win the first-ever Over-40 World Championship in 1985. Alan would go on to win the Over-40 title in 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1991 and then move to the Over-50 class and win in 1994, 1995, and 1997. He won the Over-60 World Championship in 2005. Alan would win even though he was Doug Dubach’s mechanic for all of Doug’s record-setting 27 World Vet Championships. He worked on Doug’s bike and then went to the starting line to race his own motos before heading back to Doug’s bikes. In the early years, Al’s pedigree as a Vet racer and 2006 AMA Supercross Mechanic of the Year, when he worked for Chad Reed, gave credence to the notion that the World Vet Championship was the real deal.

 

ORIGINALLY STARTING WITH JUST OVER-30 AND OVER-40 CLASSES IN 1985, OLDER AGE GROUPS WERE ADDED EVERY FIVE YEARS.

The list of famous riders who won at the World Vet Championships over the years grew as the age groups grew. Starting with just Over-30 and Over-40 classes in 1985, older age groups were added almost every five years. At this year’s World Vet, the age groups were Over-30, Over-40, Over-50, Over-60, Over-70 and Over-80. As the turnouts exploded over the years, it was necessary to add mid-decade classes like Over-25, Over-35, Over-45, Over-55 and Over-65. Obviously, all the glory goes to the round-number championships. The name-brand riders who have won the Over-30 title are Randy Rodriques, Gary Jones, Rex Staten, Warren Reid, Doug Dubach, Erik Kehoe, Spud Walters, Ryan Hughes, Casey Johnson, Kyle Lewis, Travis Preston, Ryan Morais, Brett Metcalfe, Josh Grant and Mike Alessi.

In the Over-40 class, the star power was focused on Kent Howerton, Radical Ron Turner, Rich Thorwaldson, Jeff Ward, Andy Jefferson, Kurt Nicoll, Daryl Hurley and Mike Brown. The Over-50 stars were Zoli Berenyi, Hideaki Suzuki, Brent Wallingsford, Toon Karsmakers and Pete Murray. As the age group climbed into their 60s, a lot of the Over-40 and Over-50 champions found a new class to race. The big-name winners were Alan Olson, Zoli Berenyi, Lars Larsson, Eyvind Boyesen, J.N. Roberts, Hans Hansson, Thorlief Hanssen, Gary Jones, Brent Wallingsford, Pete Murray and, as the cake topper, Doug Dubach.

Lars was the Swedish Grand Prix rider whom Edison Dye hired to move to America to demonstrate the Husqvarna motorcycle in 1966. Lars is a genuine motocross hero to still be racing at 82 years old. Lars is no stranger to the top step at the World Vet Championships. He won the Over-60 Championship in 2001 and the Over-70 class in 2011 and 2012 to go along with his 2021, 2022 and 2023 Over-80 World Vet crowns. Lars’ fastest lap time was 5:30, while the Over-70 winner clocked a 3:46 and the Over-60 winner’s fast lap was 3:10. The applause for Lars’ accomplishment was as loud as for any Pro-class winner.The Over-70 class wasn’t instituted until 2001 when it was won by the immortal Feets Minert and dominated for the next five years by Canadian Zoli Berenyi. After an assortment of Over-70 winners, Feets Minert came back in 2010 to win it again. Then Lars Larsson won it in 2011 and 2012 before Jim O’Neal took the win in 2016 and Gary Jones went on a roll in 2022 and 2023.

 

Every year there is a small cadre of riders hoping to win consecutive championships in as many age groups as possible. Former four-time 250 National Champion Gary Jones holds the honor of having won the Over-30, Over-40, Over-50, Over-60 and Over-70 classes. He can’t be caught any time soon, but everyone expects him back to win the Over-80 class in 2033. Doug Dubach is the next closest contender for winning in every age group, but since he just won his first-ever Over-60 Championship this year, he has to wait 10 years before he turns 70 to match Gary Jones. Doug Dubach has won 27 World Vet Championships in the Over-30, Over-40, Over-50 and Over-60 classes. Doug also won two age groups in the same year in 2007, 2009, 2013 and 2014.

The goal of Jones and Dubach is to make it to the 80-year-old class, but that is a tough nut to crack. The Over-80 class was added in 2019, and there have only been two different winners and rarely more than five entrants since then. Chuck Koistra won in 2019 and 2020, and Lars Larsson won in 2021, 2022 and 2023. 

 

The Glen Helen World Vet Motocross Championships layout was expansive. Designed to produce three-minute lap times from the pros, it was based on a Glen Helen National track design from 20 years ago. It featured everything and more from the Glen Helen playbook. This included the 70-mph charge from the starting line to the steeply banked and ultra-wide Talladega first turn. The next series of corners led to a sweeping S-turn that sent the riders to the very top of Mt. Saint Helen, which was followed by the 22-story downhill littered with massive braking bumps for all 220 feet of elevation drop before going back up the inner loop. Once back to ground level, the track made a big roundhouse left-hand corner that sent the riders over a step-up to the base of the Saddleback Hump that led to the bowl-shaped canyon. After the bowl, they went over the Hip Jump sideways to end up on top of another hill that looked down on a jump that crossed a paved road behind the bleachers and sent the riders up a hill on the old REM track, where they came down on the opposite side of the bleachers and table-topped 40 feet down to level ground. The next challenge was the sand straight, which had a rolling whoop section that could be taken as a two-one jump or, for the faster riders, as a triple. The sand section led back to the Log Cabin turn that dumped the riders back onto the start straight.

FORMER FOUR-TIME 250 NATIONAL CHAMPION GARY JONES HOLDS THE HONOR OF HAVING WON THE OVER-30, OVER-40, OVER-50, OVER-60 AND OVER-70 CLASSES.

It was a challenging layout, but apart from how rough it got, almost everything was designed to be safe and sane for vet riders. With the two-mile-long track delivering lap times just shy of three minutes for the fastest riders, the rough, hilly and steep layout easily saw lap times in the four-minute range for everyone else (with the 80-year-old cracking the 5 minute mark). Since the World Vet motos were timed at 15 minutes for the amateurs and 20 minutes for the pro classes, all the riders got in more riding, covered more ground, and took a bigger beating than if they had raced by laps instead of time. 

There were remarkable performances at Glen Helen this year and one racer who made the podium in three different classes. Ryan Morais was first in the Over-30 Pasha 125 Pro class, first in the Over-40 Pro class and second in the Over-30 Pro class. Jeremy McGrath made the podium in two classes by finishing second in both the Over-50 Pro class and the Pasha Over-50 125 class. Giacomo Redondi got second in the Pasha Over-30 125 class and third in the Over-30 Pro class. Doug Dubach got first in the Over-60 Experts and third in the Pasha Over-30 125 class. Mike Brown got two firsts—in the Over-50 Pro class and Pasha Over-50 125 Pro class—and backed that up with a 4th in the Pasha Over-30 125 class.

Doug Dubach turned 60 years old in June and was chomping at the bit for the World Vet to get here. The rest of the Over-60 Pro class wasn’t quite as eager for him to show up. Most of them remember what he did to the Over-50 class when he turned 50. You wouldn’t think that a guy who has won 26 World Vet titles would care about number 27, but Doug did, and he went out and wrapped up the Over-60 title that was missing from his resume.

The Over-30 Pro class is the most important class at the World Vet Championships, and has been the “big race” since the event founded back in 1985 (when there was only an Over-30 class and an Over-40 class). KTM test rider Gunter Schmidinger took the win with a 1-2, but that was heartbreak for 2015 Over-30 World Vet winner Ryan Morais went went 3-1. 

How so? Ryan Morais threw caution to the wind and blew by Giacomo Redondi as they hit the finish line at the end of the first Over-30 Pro moto. Ryan thought he had passed Redondi for second place, and after winning the second Over-30 Pro moto, Ryan thought that his 2-1 had beaten Gunter Schmidinger’s 1-2. But, a photo of the first-moto dash for the finish line showed conclusively that Redondi had indeed beaten Ryan over the transponder wire to be scored in second place—even though Ryan passed him as they went by the checkered flag. The result was that Ryan’s 3-1 beat Redondi’s 2-4 for second overall, but not Gunter’s 1-2.

 

THE GLEN HELEN WORLD VET MOTOCROSS CHAMPIONSHIPS TRACK LAYOUT WAS EXPANSIVE AND FEATURED EVERYTHING AND MORE FROM THE GLEN HELEN PLAYBOOK.

Even with Morais’ loss in the Over-30 Pro class, it was a great day for the KTM test riders. Ryan Morais is KTM’s in-house test rider for the North American market, and at this year’s World Vet Championships he was joined by Austrian test riders Michael Staufer and Gunter Schmidinger. Schmidinger won the Over-30 Pro class. Morais won the Over-40 Pro class and the Pasha Over-30 125 Pro class. Plus, Mike Brown won the Over-50 World Vet Championships on a KTM to beat Jeremy McGrath and Kurt Nicoll. Mike came back to win the Pasha Over-50 125 Pro class on a KTM, while former FIM Women’s World Champion Steffi Laier won the Over-30 Women’s Pro class on a KTM.

Those KTM victories, especially the sweep of the Over-30 Pro, Over-40 Pro, Over-50 Pro, Over-30 125 Pro and Over-50 125 Pro classes, were done in front of KTM’s primary audience. Vet riders have the money to buy whatever they want, proven by the fact that 1,300 of them flew, drove or hitchhiked to Southern California for five days of racing their motorcycles. For one brand to dominate in front of the riders who make up a large portion of the yearly sales is a tremendous boost for the brand.

If you’ve never been to Glen Helen, you should plan to visit. It is a motocross track like no other. Just spinning a lap on the World Vet track will take your breath away. Mark your calendar for next November for three days of practice and two days of racing, but pace yourself, because Glen Helen doesn’t unveil the whole track until Friday practice. And, what they keep secret is a game changer!

2023 WORLD VET MOTOCROSS CHAMPIONSHIP VIDEO: JUST LIKE BEING THERE