CRAIG DACK – 2007
“Supercross was a whole new gig in the early eighties and people were thinking, “motorbikes riding around in the middle of the Entertainment Centre? Bullshit, I gotta go see this,” and it added the wow factor to it which we enjoyed for a decade. Now people have got used to that, and with the liability issues and local councils wanting more input in traffic management to a supercross, there’s a whole array of complex issues and I think it’s caught everybody unawares, but we’ve got to remember we’re all in this together.”
IT MUST HAVE BEEN EXCITING TO BE A PART OF SUPERCROSS WENT IT FIRST STARTED IN AUSTRALIA?
I remember I went to a Midnight Oil concert on a Friday night, and when it was finished my mechanic brought my bike in and I rode around in the stadium after the Oils concert to do the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) test at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. So I got involved with the very first indoor supercross before there even was indoor supercross, and it was really exciting.
WHERE YOU CONVINCED IT WOULD WORK?
Yeah, absolutely. And it was such fun times with the hype that was involved in those years. We used to race two nights and we’d have capacity crowds for those two nights. I was only looking at some photos the other day and there was Coke sponsorship at those events, and there was Channel Nine coverage with Darrel Eastlake doing commentary and with the American riders who would come out, they were such fantastic years.
DID YOU EVER REACH A POINT WHERE YOU NEW YOU WERE GOING TO WIN.
There was a period of time there, I think it was about 1986, and honestly I remember going to the starting line and I knew I was going to win, I just knew it. Sometimes you can go to the start line and be running the intellectual point of “gotta win, gotta win,” but it’s not there in the stomach. But when you do connect that mind and body it’s such a great feeling when you ride to the line and know it’s not even an issue – you just know through your whole body that you’re going to win.
DO YOU THINK YOU’D GOT INTO YOUR COMPETITORS HEADS BY THEN?
I think I used to play a lot on that. I was a pretty hard rider – hard but fair I feel. I try to explain to my riders now that you’ve got to really understand your competition and all their strengths and weaknesses. That was one of the things I really worked on because there’s no use challenging someone on the track in an area where they’re strong. Find that weakness sometimes in sport – that’s that animal instinct that we need to find in ourselves – find their weakness and ram it into them.
