US Open

Okay, the press conference wasn’t quite as big this year as last year. Let’s see. Last year we had Ricky Carmichael making a huge announcement about going car racing. Ricky’s “big secret” which had not been announced at all at the time is obviously going to draw some people.

A year later, Bobby Ginn and his money is all gone, Ricky is really, really done racing motorcycles but should hang on to the car deal through DEI, and James Stewart is your defending AMA SX Champ but also a late entry into the event. Stewart wasn’t here today, though, so it was up to Reed to bring some fireworks, and damn if he did.

Reed A) made sure that he DID NOT praise the 2008 YZ450F like Grant Langston had this summer. “Grant is good at his job, which is to sell motorcycles.”"

B) took the criticism for not riding the nationals head on, which is awesome really because most people probably wouldn’t have gone there. But Reed usually doesn’t duck the issues, and I give him credit for that. In fact, I thought he had more to give on that one so I kept going back to the same question about the nationals, and finally when I asked “does people bad mouthing you about not racing nationals give you motivation?” he said it did, because “people think I am a pussy and I’m afraid to work hard. Well I’m not afraid of it.”

I think that’s about as good of an answer as I have ever gotten out of a press conference, too bad there just weren’t many people left here to hear it.

I was so impressed that I actually went up to Chad after it to say thanks. He smiled big and said “hey man nice job on the nationals this year on line, I was listening to them at home.” I said “Oh yeah? Hey thanks.” And he said “Yeah I heard you talking shit on me for not racing” and then he walked away.

Now I don’t know if he’s joking or if he was really pissed, but hey, here I am writing about it freely because I know he’s not going to read this, so I can’t really act like I’m Mr. Tough Guy. Plus, although I don’t really remember taking any shots at him this summer, I guarantee that if I did 10 5-hour long webcasts, I must have said something at some point. So again, at least he was up front about it. Hey, I’m sure I made fun of him, but I never did say he was a pussy.