Grant Langston at Vets Motocross des Nations
Saturday, September 17, 2016 at 6:12PM The Vets Motocross des Nations at Farleigh Castle in England is an old-school race that really seems to be catching on. It draws a ton of past European GP stars to race on vintage bikes, and this year Americans like John Dowd, Jeff Emig, Doug Dubach and Todd DeHoop went to race, as did American-based South African Grant Langston. It was GL’s first time competing and also his first race ever on a 500cc two-stroke. We rang him up for a report.
Racer X: How was the experience? I know you didn’t win the race, but what was it like overall? Was it fun?
Grant Langston: Yeah, I think unfortunately with the amount of rain they had Saturday it kind of made the whole weekend a mud fest. I haven’t been there when it’s been dry. So that made the racing a little tough, but the atmosphere and the crowd and just the old machines…it’s a beautiful setting and a pretty part of the country. So I think the cool thing with that is it’s more about the heritage of motocross. I don’t know all the classes and the rules, but it’s basically all older bikes of which pretty much almost all of them are two-strokes.
You’re not even paying attention to the rules specifically. That’s how much of a “I’m just going there for fun” race this is.
I assumed everyone was going to ride 500s and then guys were on 250 two-strokes. I’d rather ride a 250 two-stroke. I had such bad arm pump I couldn’t hold on!
How much 500 experience did you have?
Less than an hour.
In your entire life?
Yeah!
Can you even say if it’s fast or slow compared to a 450 or is it so different that you can’t even really say?
I think the 450 power would enable you to go faster, but the 500, I think the whole thing is a bit of a beast. When you look at those bikes, it had more power than it had stability. The frames were flexing and the suspension is probably under-engineered for that kind of horsepower, and they vibrate. There’s no engine braking so it’s physical. It’s hard on the brakes and then hard on the gas, so it’s a lot of upper-body strength. And as they say, when you hit the power band, it just wants to lift the front end. When it was dry for the first practice it happened a couple times getting on the gas. Then once you got into that power, you’d almost loop out going up the hills. So it is pretty fun, but it’s almost like trying to re-learn how to ride again.
The conditions were pretty gnarly over there, right?
Yes. A lot of elements. At one point I was thinking, all right, just slow and steady, just stay upright. Then when the rain came down there was a lot of different things. The track was pretty choppy and slick, and it was getting slicker by the minute. Being on a 500, it got to the point where it you braked a little too hard going down the hills, you started gaining speed because you’re sliding! You had to drag the brakes, use the gearbox and then the turns, they’re off-cambers, the typical European track. It’s very English—a track on the side of a hill with some woods in the back. I would say overall it’s a pretty cool event and it’s a pretty cool location. A lot of people support it. A lot of people actually take it quite seriously. They’re like really into it.
What were the fans like? I always hear that the crowd is massive and they’re super stoked.
Yeah. I would say for the whole weekend is just like a continuous flow of people coming up for autographs, pictures, thanking all the guys that kind of come over. I don’t know the attendance numbers, but if you just go look at the campsite, you could tell it was huge. It’s a big event for these guys. I swear, some of these guys build their bikes all year, do everything to get ready for this one event. They’re camping Friday through Monday. They make it a full five-day weekend.
How many guys over there were old-school friends of yours? Did it feel like a reunion?
It definitely felt a little bit like that. There were guys that I have raced with and guys that were maybe just before my time, but it definitely was. I saw a lot of people that I raced with, like Werner Dewitt that was there, and he actually was a teammate at Champ KTM on the 250 in 1999. I hadn’t seen him pretty much since I left Europe, so that’s sixteen years. Then Brian Jorgensen, who actually won individually the actual race, I raced against him the year that I was world champion. He ended up sixth or seventh in the points or something that year. So him, Gordon Crockard…lots of guys. Actually I didn’t ever really race John Dowd that much because he basically was getting into retirement by the time I moved up to the 250s. Also, I saw James Dobb who I raced with in the GPs. I never really raced with Kurt Nicoll. He had just retired right when I got to Europe.
Wasn’t Kurt your boss at one time with KTM?
Yeah, exactly. And he was a little bit quicker than me in qualifying! He was on it.
You still have the racer instincts, right? You can’t just totally be there for fun? You still had some competitiveness, right?
Yeah, well the only problem is qualifying is ten minutes. So you go to a new track, you have a new bike and in four laps you’ve got to figure out the track, the bike, and lay down a lap time. Meanwhile I’ve got arm pump almost immediately! Also I had so much lapped traffic. There are a lot of guys. They have sixteen countries of four riders, so there are sixty riders. You have a forty-man gate, and then once they round the first turn they drop another side gate that has twenty more guys. You start hitting lap traffic pretty early. We’d end up T-boning those dudes!
Is that where you hurt your leg?
Basically he got cross-rutted. The first moto it started raining pretty heavy. I think I went up, like, sixth and I got up to, like, fourth. I think in front of me it was Jorgensen, Dowd and Dewitt. I thought, okay, it’s not too bad. It was raining pretty good anyway. My roll-offs jammed and I was trying to get them off. I had a little issue getting them off, so when I come down this hill I was kind of sitting down dragging the brakes trying to get the goggles off, and I ended up stalling the bike. Once I did that, that 500 and me just did not get along. It did not want to start. Someone ended up helping me so I got disqualified for outside assistance. So then it rained so hard that they canceled the second moto of that day. That would eliminate it from four down to three motos. Sunday, the track was a mud bath. That’s when the lapper got cross-rutted and I T-boned him. After I hit him I didn’t even start the last moto. I kind of jarred my wrist a little bit, and I’ve had issues with my wrist for a while. When I went over the bars, the handlebar kind of caught the inside of my leg, so I had a bit of a bruise on my shin. So my knee was also sore. Just kind of tweaked it in a weird angle. So my results were DQ, DNF and DNF. I don’t think I’ve ever had even two motos where I didn’t even get a result, and in this one I got nothing in all three!
Did you actually still enjoy this though?
After that I was like, yeah, this is just not my weekend. The good thing was the other guys on the South African team kind of pulled together for decent results. I guess the way the system works you have four guys on a team and you count the top three finishes. So obviously with me not getting any results it was all their results that counted. They ended up fourth. So I thought they were pumped as a group. Like I said, after the race, I don’t really take it seriously at all, so it was one of those things that after the crash I was just like, you know what? My wrist is sore, my knee’s a little sore, so let’s just kind of made a vacation out of it while we were out there. I actually didn’t come home Saturday afternoon, we stayed for a week.
Well if anyone I know can find some social time and make the most of a weekend at the track, it’s you.
Exactly. That’s the thing too, they have a beer tent and they do interviews. So I think for the guy who puts on the event, Dave King, I think he just wants some names that attract some people, but the big thing is just to be able to interact with the fans. You know me, I’m not too bad at being social. I just went to hang out at the beer tent and I think I talked to just about everybody there. If there were 10,000 people there, I talked to all of them!
Would you do it again? Do you have a little vengeance on the mind results-wise?
Maybe. I think it’s one of those things you definitely have to be in riding shape because the track is so physical and the bikes that you ride are so physical. If you don’t do enough preparation you’re going to get smoked. The guys that ride all the time do pretty well. The problem with me, a lot of my old injuries come back up in my hand and my knee. You start getting carpel tunnel and tendonitis in my hand. My knee always swells up. The event was pretty fun and I think now that I know a little bit what to expect and what the options are, if I knew that physically I could just keep riding now and get over the arm pump and my knee swelling up and I could actually ride without being in pain, then yeah. That would be a fun event where I feel like I could get a little bit of revenge. A place where it’s always dry could be a nice, fun race.
Who gets the bike ready for you? How does that come together?
Actually yeah, I want to give the guy some credit there. Gavin Williams is the team manager for South Africa. He got a KX500 which he then prepped and shipped over for me to ride on. He helped the other guys with bikes and flights and everything. He’s just really into it; has one of the biggest bike collections in South Africa. He’s got I think almost 200 old bikes! As you can imagine, he’s begging me to come ride next year. He’s giving me all of these options of bikes.
But he still has to ship them to England for this?
Yeah. You’re looking at about… those crates and the way they do it and everything, it’s like $1500 a bike to ship it there. And then he pays for one of the guy’s plane tickets. He was really into it. No wonder he was taking it so seriously!
You couldn’t start the 500 when it was a problem in the race, but starting the thing—what kind of leg does it take to get it going?
It’s leverage but the problem is I have a bad knee, already sore before the race even had started. So trying to kick really hard, plus if they did any sort of motor work, like if the compression goes up at all, you have to be really precise. You have to give it a good, solid stroke. The problem for me was in the mud my boot kept slipping off. I couldn’t get good leverage. I had to put my foot on the ground to get good leverage. I needed to get a bike stand or something and get over the top of it.
Who were the other dudes on the team? They ended up having to carry you, which is funny since we could argue you’re maybe South Africa’s best guy ever.
That’s the thing. I was on paper supposed to be like the team leader and I ended up being the team anchor! One of the guys on the team, his name’s Andre David, me and him used to race 80s together for Yamaha in South Africa. And then he’s been living in England. He still rides like club races. He’s still pretty fast. He’s a former South African champion. The other guy was Ryan Hunt who raced Grand Prix back in the day. Actually in 2000, Colin Dugmore got hurt and Ryan filled in for him at the Motocross des Nations team with me and Albee. And then Tony Ridell, I think when my dad raced he was a junior. He’s like 48 years old. He still rides and is in good shape. As much as you could say on paper he was the slowest of the four, the guy was almost 50, but then you look at someone like John Dowd and you’re like, how the hell do they still do it at that age? I’m in my thirties and I’m out there feeling it. Some of these guys are freaks of nature!
