What a difference a year makes. Last year Ben Spies was in the middle of yet another battle with the irascible Matt Mladin for the AMA Superbike Championship. This in the midst of a buyout of AMA sanctioning rights by a Daytona Motorsports Group that would turn U.S. road racing into a farce. In addition to his AMA ride he was able to get some wild card rides with the Suzuki MotoGP team at Donington, Laguna Seca and Indianapolis. Spies put in solid performances at all three races, but took a lot of criticism when he turned down a last minute opportunity to ride at Assen after missing the first day of practice.Spies went on to win his third consecutive AMA Superbike championship, but went into the off-season without a solid ride. Well he might have had a ride, but if he did he wasn’t telling anyone. He had reportedly wanted to get a MotoGP ride, but those rides all seemed to be taken. This is when he started hearing the “Spies wants too much money” claims from the press. Who knows where these stories come from, but they just wouldn’t stop, and the motorcycle know-it-alls had Spies spending another year in the recently neutered AMA series.
To his credit the cool Texan from Tennessee didn’t let the bad press get to him, and didn’t say much until announcing that he would be riding for Yamaha’s World Superbike team in 2009. Spies followed that up with quick times in preseason testing and winning superpole and a race at the first event of the season in Australia. Spies went on to win four more races and five more superpoles leading up to this weekend’s races at Miller Motorsports Park in Utah.
In the days leading up to the U.S. round both Sports Illustrated and USA Today told the tale of the American rider who was taking the world of motorcycle racing by storm. When was the last time you saw a motorcycle racing story in Sports Illustrated. I don’t read SI much anymore, but the last time I remember was when Freddie Spencer beat Kenny Roberts for the World Championship.
Everyone knew that Spies had talent, and that the years of fighting with Matt Mladin on the track and dealing with his head games off the track would prepare him for the world stage. But it's always hard to predict how a rider will perform when they move to a new series where the tracks, riders and bikes are an unknown, and Spies would have the additional burden of overcoming his reported fear of flying.
Well Ben Spies has overcome it all, and his journey to the U.S. round of the championship has finally put him on a racetrack he knows. He took his seventh consecutive superpole and dominated both races, moving into second place in the season standings and closing the gap between himself and Noriyuki Haga to 53 points.
It’s all good now for Ben Spies, but that always seems to be the case. He suffers the slings and arrows of abuse hurled at him by the press and the competition with a stoic calm that is beyond the capability of most human beings. There are already rumors of his moving on to MotoGP next season, but Spies just seems to be taking it day by day. Just like he always does.
