Old School
- Updated: July 30, 2007
By David Porter
Well, to say the least I’ve been impressed with the first few WPSA Powersports ATV Tour events. It feels really great to see all the factory rigs all doing their thing and to see the sport really catching on. WPSA and ESPN have been a great step forward for our sport, and It’s very refreshing to see our sport moving in the right direction like it was in the mid to late eighties.
To be able to survive through ATV racing’s not-so-good-times of the nineties and arrive at a much larger scale of professionalism today is fantastic. I was fortunate enough to have been there in the thriving eighties to witness how things can progress when everyone does their part to advance the sport to a higher level. I’m just not so certain everyone is doing their part nowadays however.
It’s obvious that there are definitely a lot of incredible things happening in our sport. A lot of what is not happening, in my opinion, is that we’re not getting enough quality media exposure. To be more specific, I should say we’re not getting enough quality print media exposure. I’ll go ahead and say it like I see it. ATV magazines of today do a poor job of covering ATV racing, especially when compared to dirt bike motocross magazines. Actually I dont think they even compare to the printed dirt bike rags on news stands.
I guess one could argue that ATV motocross is only lately starting to really gather steam, and that we should give the print media a chance to catch up. I guess that argument could hold some water but not with me. There are tons of ATV orientated magazines and tons of interesting news pieces that don’t ever seem to find their way into print.
I think it’s important for the print media to wake up and get on board with ATV racing. We need information about a race weekend and stories that develop during that weekend. There were so many story lines to cover over the past few WPSA races that didn’t appear anywhere. I’ll give you some examples that I stumbled across (without even looking) that would have made great print feature presentations. John Natalie raced his practice quad at the first race not his race quad. Doug Gust has been battling some sort of virus for the first three races, it turns out the guy had an ear infection yet still found his way on just about every podium possible, incredible! Spader’s Yamaha was experiencing an electrical problem all weekend in the first race. Josh Creamer cut the track during his qualifier and Johnny Hale and Jason Luburgh have been wearing the new Leatt neck brace all season. Now if you say to yourself what’s a Leatt neck brace then you probably only read ATV magazines.
This is only the tip of the storyline iceberg. At round two of the WPSA Tour I talked to Doug Gust for about 20 minutes about this issue. He totally agreed with me about the lack of interesting features in today’s quad mags. He and I both admitted we read more (actually read) dirt bike magazines than ATV print. I also had a chance to talk to Jason Dunkelburger about the same subject and he absolutely agreed with me. He also admitted he reads dirt bike magazines more than ATV magazines as well. The fact that ATV racers read more dirt bike magazines than ATV magazines should be no surprise, the bike magazines spend more money, try harder and their finished product is much better than most of today’s quad magazines.
Why is it when I do flip through an ATV magazine there really isn’t anything to actually read? You know, something that makes you want to pick up that magazine again next month. Oh yeah, you can read about the right way to check tire pressure and install a winch but where are the informative news pieces that give readers an inside look at the incredible life of say Doug Gust?
We all know how many 50 year old guys buying their new utility ATV won’t make their choice of which quad to buy until the big utility shootout goes to press. Guess what, those ute buyers don’t care what is written in the magazines — they go by price, brand name and the extras each manufacturer offers. I guess the reason I’m all fired up about this subject is all the interesting stories I see at the WPSA events and no one seems to pick up on any of them – it frustrates me.
Let it be known, I’m talking about the print media here — not the online magazines. Let’s face it the print media simply gets more respect and revenue than the online magazines do. That’s just the way it is right now. They have the means to step it up and they choose to sit on their hands.
Our sport could get as big as two-wheel motocross some day, especially with the help of ESPN and WPSA it could indeed happen, but we all need to do our part without getting lazy. We need Doug Gust, John Natalie, and other ATV stars on the front covers of ATV magazines at news stands throughout the country. We need stories and personal information about our riders, – information that brings readers closer to them and allows them to connect to the quad racing celebrity that they should be reading about. It wont be long and large crowds will come out to see the Bubba or RC celebrity of ATV racing that they read about. That’s when we will start to really see this thing explode.
Most of the dirt bike magazines do such a great job of turning their riders into heroes and stars. We need our magazines to do the same. Let’s give these guys the credit they disserve. To start lets start running racers on the front covers and show some respect. The average ATV fan needs to know more about the riders in order to motivate them to travel multiple hours to see them ride. Everyone seems to know the bike scene’s G.O.A.T, but what about ours? I would say it’s Doug Gust without a doubt and by now that’s what he should be known as if the print magazines were doing their jobs that is.
Enough for now, all I’m saying is our old stand-by rags need to step it up or we need more Racer X type new magazines in the quad racing scene.
I wont leave on a negative note, I have to give props to ATV Insider and Quad Magazine as well – they do a good job and I hope they continue with bigger and better things to help evolve this great sport. I know I’m going to get some shit for writing this but it needed to be said as far as I’m concerned. Step it up print boys everybody else is.
