The Rise & Fall of Motocross in America
In the early 1990's several kids in my neighborhood and me had small dirt bikes, at that time we could ride right from our houses to each other’s houses as well as on trails near the neighborhood we lived in, we also made small motocross tracks in nearby fields, that we could also ride our dirt bikes to from home. This was the normal way of life back then not just for us, it was like this at that time in most cities and states all across America, and I lived in the suburbs of a large metro area not way out in the country.
My friends and I started out on small mellow air cooled trail bikes like Honda XR80’s, and I had a Kawasaki KD80 which is an air cooled trail bike, after a couple years on trail bikes my friends and I moved up to racing versions, Honda CR80’s, Kawasaki KX80’s, Yamaha Yz80's ( at the time they were 80cc not 85cc) we then started racing local motocross races and then later moved up to 125cc two stroke race bikes.
Around that time things started to change in our area, it was in the mid 1990’s, when the fields that we used to ride in started to turn into neighborhoods, businesses... schools... golf courses... (Urban Sprawl) … Also corporate farms bought up a lot of land in some parts of the country, particularly in the midwest. It seems now days in some states there is almost no land that isn’t either privately owned or being farmed, The western states and that side of the country still has lots of wide open spaces, but not so much in some of the midwest states… It also became more & more taboo over the years to ride even a short ways down the street to get to riding spots like we had been able to do in the past, you cant do that anymore in most places. (Unless your in Philadelphia or Florida apparently, and willing to do it illegally & run from the police) We were not being disrespectful back then, we would ride slowly on the far right side until we got to our riding spots.
Now days unless you live in a very rural area, or out in the country, you have to have a truck or trailer to get your bikes to tracks to be able to ride them, and tracks are far and few between in some areas, often hours away from populated areas.
Its my personal belief that unless you grew up riding dirt bikes and remained into it, or have a very persuasive friend, or family, that is already into motocross that the chances of new people randomly choosing to get into motocross racing in its current form and going to buy expensive dirt bikes that are $5000 dollars or more plus a helmet, Gear etc., I think the chances of it are slim.
These are just some of the reasons why dirt bike sales in the USA have declined so dramatically from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, to now. Many people also blame the change from 2 stroke to 4 stroke and I do believe it played a part, however I don't personally think that it's the sole reason for the decline, I used to think that as well but I though so mainly because they were more expensive, but I began to really question that thought when I realized that people were still buying other things that are just as expensive, after some research I Now I believe Its a combination of things.
Another big change from the 1970’s when they were selling the most dirt bikes ever is that the dirt bikes were much less powerful air cooled bikes, they had less horsepower & they were easy to ride, easy to learn on types of bikes, and the size of the jumps were smaller and the speeds were a lot less, it was less dangerous and people's perception of the danger was different as well.
Now days it is considered an extreme sport. And its true it is a lot more extreme and dangerous.
But even knowing all of that, I still think there are things we can do to help turn it around.
I believe that by looking back throughout the history of the sport and recognizing what the changes were over the years and fully understanding the effects that each of the changes had on the overall direction of the sport that we can address them one by one and fix a lot of the issues in the sport.
Comments