Motorcycle.com

A few weeks ago I was invited by the producers of Speed Channel’s “Super Bikes” show to take part in a shoot at Willow Springs Raceway. The title of the show is “Trade Secrets,” and it brought together riders from different disciplines to see how they’d perform at supermoto, road racing and stunting.

It’s a cool concept, and it was interesting to see an expert motocrosser like Kyle Partridge get his first crack on a road-race track. Or seeing pro stunter (and host of the show) Jason Britton try a supermoto bike for the first time. Or watching road-racing specialist Jeff Tigert try his hand at stunting.

Also in attendance were: speedy roadracers James Randolph and Zenzo Tazawa; supermoto aces Matt Pursley and Rick Pearce; and wild-man stunters Kane Friesen and Clint Ewing, among others. Balancing the gallons of testosterone in attendance was the dazzling Natalie Jackson, a co-founder of Umbrella Girls USA and a TV personality in addition to being a great rider, whether on dirt or asphalt. 

All the riders started off the day at Willow’s Horsethief Mile racetrack that had a small dirt section added to create a supermoto course. Next we moved down the hill to the Streets of Willow road course for some knee-dragging action, and finally to the Streets’ skidpad area for a gravity- and logic-defying stunt show.

My time in the supermoto round was perhaps the most exciting, A session aboard a nicely prepped KTM 450 was my warm-up for a new machine in my riding resume. The KTM was a pussycat compared to the ferociousness of Rick Pearce’s Honda CR500 supermoto. While I experienced fear I’ve never felt from a Hayabusa aboard this two-stroke monster, Pearce can put it inside the top-10 of an AMA Supermoto national. The guy’s a hero in my book.

Also deserving big props is stunter Kane Friesen. When one non-stunter finished about 10 minutes of attempting rolling burnouts, he pulled in with Kane’s Kawasaki ZX-6R burping a bit of coolant. But rather than pull his personal stunt bike out of rotation, he instead deemed it okay for more abuse! And the amiable wild-man knows his bike well, as it held up fine. And awesome entertainer, too, performing some tricks stunt legend Jason Britton isn’t doing.

Anyway, it was playing on Speed for the last week, so maybe a few of you saw this dorky short guy in black-and-red Shift leathers. MO represents!

(The title of the show episode is “Trade Secrets,” but on Dish Network, at least, the show was mistakenly called “Sport Bikes and Law Enforcement.”)