MOTOR RACING : MOTOCROSS AT ANAHEIM : Bradshaw Crosses Up Veterans, Holds On to Win

All week long, promoters of the Anaheim Supercross Challenge promised the most competitive season of stadium motocross racing in years with highly touted newcomers Damon Bradshaw, Jeff Matiasevich, Mike Kiedrowski and French world motocross champion Jean-Michel Bayle set to race in 1990.

The anticipated changing of the guard is just what the 66,141 fans in Anaheim Stadium saw Saturday night as 17-year-old Bradshaw stunned veterans Rick Johnson, Jeff Ward and Jeff Stanton to win the 20-lap main event.

Bradshaw, riding a Yamaha, led for seven laps before Matiasevich passed him near the start-finish line on the seventh lap. But Bradshaw regained the lead on the 14th lap and held off Bayle to gain the victory.

It marked the first time a Yamaha factory rider won a Supercross event since Broc Glover won at the Coliseum in June of 1988. Bradshaw earned the win the hard way, failing to qualify from his heat race and having to earn a berth in the main event by winning a six-lap semifinal.

Bayle finished second, with Matiasevich third and Ward fourth. Johnson, the two-defending champion, had to be content with sixth while defending series champion Stanton was seventh.

Afterward, Bradshaw credited the pressure tactics that he put on Matiasevich midway through the race for earning him the victory.

“I tried to ride real conservative through the first half of the race, and then I wanted to put the pressure on Jeff,” he said. “I waited for him to make a mistake, and then decided it was now or never.”

A night of upsets began in the first heat race when 20-year-old Matiasevich of La Habra defeated Johnson in an eight-lap race. Johnson won at Anaheim the past two years but Matiasevich and another rising star, Bradshaw, showed little respect for one of the sport’s most successful riders.

Bradshaw got an excellent start and led for the first four laps but lost control of his Yamaha at the end of the fourth lap and fell. Matiasevich took advantage of Bradshaw’s misfortune, gaining the victory by holding off Johnson.

A semblance of order returned in the second heat when Ward, a 12-year factory Kawasaki veteran, went wire-to-wire to gain an easy win. But another newcomer, Kiedrowski, pressured Ward throughout the race and finished second.

The third heat produced even more surprises when the Frenchman, Bayle, earned a victory. Bayle, a native of Manosque, France, rode in a few stadium races last year but will compete in each of the series’ 17 races on a Honda this season.