May 2014 Dirt Rider

MAY 2014

HELMET LIGHT COMPARISON FIXING THE 2014 MXERS o FEATHERWEIGHT HONDA CRF450R o HOPPED-UP SUZUKI RM-Z250 o KTM 450 SX-F WORCS WINNER

MIKE BROWN

SUPERCROSS TECHNOLOGY THE SCIENCE OF SPEED KTM 350 EXC VS. 500 EXC STREET-LEGAL SHOWDOWN

HUSQVARNA’S HOPE

CHAPTER 3 THE NEXT VERSION OF

MIKE BROWN Story By BJ Smith · Photos By Shan Moore And The Dirt Rider Archives

M

elissa Brown had not seen her husband in more than four weeks, but she could feel his energy just by analyzing the facial expression she saw on the computer screen. As he sat on the starting line for the final round of the 2013 GEICO EnduroCross Championship in Las Vegas, she didn’t see a crease between his eyebrows. The crease is how she knows when he is focused. He also didn’t stretch his wrists or arms on the handlebar; he just sat relaxed with his arms folded across his chest and his head turned to the right. She looked at their two young boys, both up way past their bedtimes to watch dad on the live webcast, and tried to lower their expectations. “I don’t think your dad’s heart is into it,” she told them.

This wasn’t the first time Mike Brown had lined up at a championship finale under the combination of heavy pressure and emotion.

In late summer 2001 he won the 125cc Pro Motocross Championship after entering the final round a few points behind and only two weeks after Melissa suffered a miscarriage and underwent minor surgery. During the post-race interview with ESPN, Melissa, who usually prefers to stay out of the spotlight, hugged her husband as tightly as she could while he answered questions. Mike broke down in tears when asked how it felt to be champion at 29 years of age. “I just wish my mom and dad could have been here to see me,” he said, sobbing. After weeks of trying to stay strong and focused, Mike and Melissa were finally able to grieve.

On November 23, 2013, Brown was in a similar situation of being under the pressure to perform coupled with the mourning of loss, and this time it was much harder to hide his emotions.

Even though the entire industry grieved with him, only a few people understood how deeply he was affected.

After the race in Vegas, Brown didn’t feel like talking to anyone except his wife, who he’s talked to every day of his life since they met in 1992. His teammate, Taddy Blazusiak, was the new

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champion, and the KTM truck was filled with both excitement and disappointment; and he didn’t want to be a part of either mood.

He changed in his van while he spoke on the phone with Melissa.

“I know you wanted [the championship], but now there are bigger things you’re going to have to deal with,” she told him. He told her he was not upset about the title. He hung up and began the walk back to his hotel room at the Orleans. He called Melissa again on the way. Within 25 minutes after crossing the finish line in ninth, Brown was alone, surrounded by four walls and outdated furniture.

That’s when he began to ask himself what he could have done differently. That’s when he realized he didn’t lose the championship on this particular night. He lost it in Denver when he faded to fourth; in Everett when his nine-second lead eroded in the final laps and he was passed by Cody Webb; in Boise where a mediocre fourth place in the main erased his seven-point lead and left him in a championship tie with Blazusiak; in Mexico eight days earlier when his friend and teammate in the race, Kurt Caselli, died while leading the Baja 1000. Yes, the feeling of disappointment realized in Las Vegas wasn’t really a shock; it had been building for two months.

At 4 a.m. he walked through the smoky hallways of the Bourbon Street-themed casino. Even at that small hour he bumped into familiar faces who offered him a strained smile and apologetic small talk. A 6 a.m. Delta flight waited for him, a symbolic marker to the official end of an exhausting racing season. In the two months leading up to Vegas, Brown had raced in five EnduroCross events, the International Six Days Enduro in Italy, took several trips to Mexico to pre-run and train for the Baja 1000, raced the Baja 1000, and mourned the loss of Caselli, one of the greatest racers Brown had ever known.

Now he was headed to a place he hadn’t seen much of lately, a place he knew could help him forget the pain and punishment: Bluff City, Tennessee. Home.

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MIKE BROWN ON DECEMBER 19, 2013, HUSQVARNA ANNOUNCED A SQUAD OF FOUR RIDERS, EACH WITH A SEPARATE CHAMPIONSHIP ASSIGNMENT; BROWN’S IS TO WIN THE ENDUROCROSS TITLE.

THE BEGINNING Michael Lynn Brown was a bashful, clean-cut boy, the son of a caretaker and a contractor. Mike’s father, Berney Brown, raced motocross in the early ’70s when Mike was a baby. Mike’s mother, Kathy Brown, was 15 when her son was born and she was nervous about motorcycles. To this day, Mike believes his mother has only seen him race about five times. She begrudgingly let him have a trailbike, a Yamaha 80 enduro, to ride in the yard when he was 10. What Mike really wanted was to race motocross just like his dad.

Since he couldn’t bring a motocross bike to his house, Mike rode his bicycle 4-1/2 miles from his home on the east side of Johnson City, Tennessee, to Jim’s Motorcycle Sales, the same shop where his daddy bought his own bikes. Between the ages of seven and 13, Brown would ride his bicycle to Jim’s every chance he got just to be around the motorcycles and flip through the magazines. His parents didn’t know, and Kirk Hayes, third generation owner of Jim’s, kept it a secret until 1985 when Berney came in to the shop to buy his son his first real racing bike.

“Berney called me on a Friday,” Hayes said, recalling the 29-year-old memory like it had just happened. “He said, ‘Hey, this boy’s running me crazy. He wants to race.

That’s all I’ve heard.’ ” Hayes said Berney wanted to get a Honda CR125, but Hayes told him Mike wasn’t big enough. When Berney protested and asked how he’d know, Hayes told him about Mike’s journeys to the shop. “I’m going to beat the hell out him when I get home!” Berney barked.

Kirk loves telling this story and tells it quickly, running his sentences together in his Eastern Tennessee drawl. Berney bought a bike, a 1985 CR80, and that same weekend Mike Brown, 13, rode at Muddy Creek Raceway in his first motocross. Hayes went to the race, the first of hundreds he would attend with Mike Brown over the next 29 years. Hayes remembers Mike placing fourth. Mike thinks Chad Lowe won and he was third, details that no longer really matter. The memory that Hayes and Brown can both agree on is the goal the teenager set for himself. In 1986, Berney signed his son up for the Gary Bailey Motocross School. Kirk was there for that, too. “From that point on Mike always told me, ‘I want to be a professional motocross rider. That’s what I want to do. I want to make a living racing motorcycles,’ ” Hayes recalled.

A STROKE OF HUSKY On a mid-May morning in 2013, at a café in Barcelona, Spain, Andy Jefferson and Mike Brown were eating breakfast when Jefferson asked a rhetorical question that made them both laugh out loud: What would you think about racing for Husqvarna? “We both laughed at each other,” said Jefferson, the racing manager for Husqvarna North America. “When we were in Europe I didn’t even know if we would have a race team or what kind of race team. When you think of someone with his status, would we really be able to get him on our bikes, especially the first year in the new company structure?”

Later that day, Brown went to the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, site of the 1992 Olympic games, and won a gold medal in X Games Enduro X. There was no

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more discussion with him about riding for Husky as Brown then headed to Sacramento where he won the second round of the GEICO EnduroCross series.

Husqvarna? It would be the sixth motorcycle brand Brown would race for in his 25-year professional career. Did he want to be switching now at 41 years old? But the company has more than 100 years of motorcycle history and is attached to names like Malcolm, McQueen, and Burleson. And on January 31, 2013, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of KTM, the company he was already racing with. Brown spent the rest of the year building on his own legacy as someone who can ride and do well at any type of two-wheel racing. In 2013, he prepared for and competed in the San Felipe 250, the Baja 500, Baja 1000, ISDE, seven rounds of EnduroCross, four X Games events, four rounds of AMA Pro Motocross, and the Tennessee Knockout. While Brown was busy, management at KTM/Husqvarna went to work on building a winning offroad team, with Brown as the marquee.

On December 19, 2013, Husqvarna announced a squad of four riders, each with a separate championship assignment; Brown’s is to win the EnduroCross title. But, of course, that isn’t going to keep him from riding GNCCs, motocross races, and extreme enduros. Jefferson’s responsibility is to keep his star focused. “He doesn’t know how to slow down, and I’m hoping to be able to help him with that a little bit,” Jefferson said. “I just want to try to guide him and say, ‘Hey, sometimes you need to back off a little bit. Let’s try this and see if it works.’ Those kinds of things.”

It’s because Mike Brown dreads idleness. He signed up to race with Husky for two years, and as long as he’s competitive, he will keep going. However, he actually likes to think about his life beyond racing. Ideally, he’s still on the team. “I told Jon-Erik [Burleson, KTM N.A. President] that if they needed some kind of help in management, I would start tomorrow,” Brown said. “I wouldn’t turn it down. As long as it keeps me in racing. It’s all I know. I would do anything really. I don’t care if I was a parts guy, a floor sweeper, or a truck driver and see the other side of it.”

It wouldn’t be the first time Mike Brown stopped racing to sweep the floor and stock parts.

WORKING CLASS So loyal was the Brown family to Jim’s Motorcycle Sales that when they received support from Team Green in 1988 Mike was embarrassed. He stopped visiting the shop’s owners, Kirk and father Ken, who were only Honda and Suzuki dealers at the time.

Mike felt like he was betraying them. Hayes explained: “Berney called me and said, ‘You’re going to have to talk to him. He won’t ride these things. He just tears up and says, “That ain’t what Ken and Kirk sell. They sell Hondas.” ’ ” Mike’s dad escorted him to Jim’s and sat him down in the owner’s office where Mike got his first lesson on distinguishing between personal and business matters.

“We are not mad at you,” Hayes told Brown. “We love you. But you’re going to have to ride these motorcycles and ride them to win on them.” Brown took two championships and two second places at the Amateur National Motocross Championships at Loretta Lynn’s between 1988 and 1990 over names like Ryan Hughes and

Grayson Goodman. In 1991, when he was ready to race professionally full time, it was Jim’s Motorcycle Sales that made sure his #483 Honda CR125 got to the races.

But halfway through the 1993 season, Brown was lost. For three consecutive seasons, he had gone backward in the 125cc East Supercross points, fifth, seventh, and now eighth. In 1992, he was a Team Peak/Pro Circuit rider but a privateer once again in 1993. So at 21 years old he quit. Sort of. “He quit because he couldn’t figure out how to get to the next step,” Melissa said. One of the first places he visited after making this decision was Jim’s Motorcycle Sales.

“He came in and said, ‘I don’t know if I just want to race all the time,’ ” Hayes said. “ ‘I’m thinking that maybe I need to do something else.’ ” Then the question came.

“Would you hire me?” Brown asked. Hayes paid him minimum wage and put him in the parts department. “I said, ‘Hell, you don’t know nothing about the motorcycle business. You just know how to ride one.’ ” Brown swept floors, stocked the parts shelves, posed for pictures, signed autographs, and made exactly $132 a week. “I remember him looking at that check and he didn’t even cash it,” Melissa said. “He asked, ‘How can people live off of this?’ ” Brown still raced local events while working at the shop; he raced go-karts and even late-model dirt track cars with his dad. He did that until he blew his first engine and realized how expensive four-wheeled motorsports were. None of that really helped him get back to racing motorcycles. Brown rediscovered his love for motocross while riding a bicycle with Everett Baker, a local semi-pro mountain bike racer. Brown learned how to ride a motorcycle better by riding a bicycle. “I didn’t train; I didn’t know how to train really,” Brown said. “I hooked up with [Everett] and started mountain biking. I could tell when I started riding my motorcycle again that it helped me, so I started doing more of that.”

Brown had a 1968 Volkswagen Bug that he strapped his mountain bike to. Every day for six months, when the 5 o’clock work whistle sang, he headed to the trails. “When he started racing full time again, after he had been on the bicycle, he was faster on the motorcycle,” Everett said.

Melissa Brown—who was Melissa White when she met Mike on a blind date in 1992—was still trying to figure out how it all worked, how someone could find enjoyment in racing in Daytona on a Saturday afternoon and then driving more than 600 miles to be in Blountville, Tennessee, the next morning for a race at Muddy Creek. She remembers sleeping in a panel van, not knowing where they were. Mike would be out for first practice and she’d still be asleep. But she knew that’s what made him happy, and for the next 20 years she was there. She supported him when he was a privateer in the mid-’90s, when he left for Europe where he was a top-three rider two years in a row in the 125cc GP World Motocross Championship, cried with him on the podium at Steel City in 2001, when he was a privateer again in the mid-2000s, and even today, as they raise two boys who love playing basketball and rooting for Chad Reed and daddy. She supports him because she has seen just how important motorcycles are to Mike’s life. “He has a love for this that I’ll never understand,” Melissa said about Mike. “I stopped trying a long time ago.”

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MIKE BROWN FROM MOTO TO OFF-ROAD The first race Mike Brown did as a full-time professional off-road rider was in Monticello, Utah, on August 31, 2008. It was a WORCS race won by Bobby Bonds.

One of Brown’s former 125cc supercross shootout rivals, Damon Huffman, was second, Brown third. The two-hour race was like a long motocross to Brown. He loved the speed and long laps. Ideally, he wanted to be in the GNCC series, which would put him on East Coast terrain and closer to home, but he was on a trial-condition ride with KTM and wanted to impress the company. Two weeks later KTM called him and asked him to fill in for an injured Polish kid named Taddy Blazusiak, who was also trying to win his first off-road championship in the United States. Two days after that he was in Florence, South Carolina, at an EnduroCross and once again competing against Huffman.

Melissa went with Mike to South Carolina. The way she remembers it, they could barely walk around the track and Mike said, “Really? I can’t do this!” Mike’s memory is slightly different. When he found out the races were only between six and 10 laps, “I thought it was going to be pretty easy,” he said. Huffman won the final. Brown finished ninth and was completely exhausted. “It’s probably the hardest thing I’d ever done because it was so hard on your body.”

But he was hooked and the series increasingly became his priority, which is ironic because by 2011, KTM found itself in a position where it was compet-

ing against itself. Blazusiak dominated the sport, but Brown was getting closer to winning. He took the WORCS title in 2009 and was helping KTM get closer to wins in Baja and at the ISDE, but with EnduroCross he was like a child who had wolfed down dinner and was ready for dessert. He was hungry to be successful in stadium racing again. It reminded him so much of supercross and, like supercross, EnduroCross didn’t come easy to him. He liked that.

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever learned how to do,” Brown said. “To watch myself now on video is a big difference. It’s embarrassing really, the style through the obstacles. It’s just challenging, and that’s what I like.” Brown was determined to figure it out, and after four years of being thwarted by Blazusiak, he dominated Enduro X at X Games LA 2012. His wife and two boys, Colin and Brandon, now seven and 11, were in the Staples Center. For Melissa it was yet another milestone witnessed. “I watched him teach himself EnduroCross,” Melissa said.

When the Browns landed at the Tri-Cities airport in Tennessee two days later, they were greeted in the terminal by a large crowd of family, friends, and fans, who were proud to welcome home Tennessee’s first X Games gold medalist. “I won one of the biggest championships in the world and it wasn’t like this,” Brown told the Johnson City Press referring to his 2001 125cc motocross title.

BROWN’S ON-TRACK RUTHLESS AGGRESSIVENESS BETRAYS HIS SOUTHERN SHYNESS.

THE WARRIOR Brown’s on-track ruthless aggressiveness betrays his Southern shyness. Not long after he’s off the bike he calms down; but even when he’s not racing, almost everything else in his life has a competitive and determined purpose. He mows nearly 25 acres of grass as if it were a manicured front lawn; he decorates his home at Christmas with a Clark Griswold-like intensity; his garage is too clean for a man who makes his living racing on dirt. Mike Brown is a normal guy who does normal-guy activities like yard work, kids’ basketball tournaments, and sessions at the gym; he just doesn’t do any of it with same level of passion as a normal guy.

“He’s internally driven. And a bit OCD,” Everett Baker said. “He’ll come home after being on the road for two or three weeks and spend a day and a half mowing the lawn.” Brown’s new team leader, Andy Jefferson, has been spending a lot of time with his new rider, and it didn’t take him long to pick up on his character. “He just has an unbelievable drive,” Jefferson said. “Probably too much of a drive because he doesn’t take a day off. I’ve been on bicycle rides with him, and he’s intense on the bicycle.”

Brown doesn’t get badgered much by the cliché question veterans of all sports are asked: How long are you going to keep doing this? Winning EnduroCross races and finishing top 15 at motocross nationals, Brown is still too good to be asked that question. He does admit, though, that he has no goal of becoming the oldest rider to compete on the pro motocross series. John Dowd, who was nearly 48 years old at Southwick last June, can keep that record. Then again, “One more year,” is a running joke in the Brown household. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard that one?” Melissa asked with a laugh.

Aging weekend warriors, and all race fans really, can rejoice because there’s definitely going to be at least one more year of Mike Brown. When he lines up for the 2014 EnduroCross series on May 2, he will be one day past his 42nd birthday. He’s not the only regular who is post-40. Geoff Aaron and Destry Abbott share the same birth year, 1972, as Brown. But Brown is slightly older and is the only one winning races at mid-life. Although, realistically, he’s much closer to the end of his racing career than the beginning, Brown now has more to ride for than ever. In addition to satiating his own competitive desires and making his sons proud, Mike is now a part of an iconic brand that, although incredibly similar to KTM, will surely find its own niche as the equipment becomes more and more unique. It’s still too early to know what the team strategy is, how the bikes will work out, and where Brown’s career path will lead him, but one thing is for sure: Mike Brown will go into this new season the same as he has since he was 19 years old, giving 100 percent effort every step of the way.

WANT MORE?

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FOLLOW MIKE’S ASSAULT ON THE 2014 SEASON AT MXBROWN.COM AND VIA SOCIAL MEDIA AT @BROWNIEMX.