MOTOCROSS AT ANAHEIM STADIUM : Ward, Bayle Are Taking a Last Ride

Jeff Ward of San Juan Capistrano and Jean-Michel Bayle of France, two of the premier motocross riders in the sport’s young history, will make what each says will be his final appearance at Anaheim Stadium tonight in the Coors Light Challenge.

Both are retiring at the end of the season. Ward, 30, is leaving motocross, after having won seven national championships and 53 main events, to pursue a career in automobile racing. Bayle, 22, is switching from motocross to Grand Prix road racing after having won two world championships. He also made a clean sweep of United States championships last year, winning the Camel Supercross and national 250cc and 500cc titles.

“I would like to go out a winner at Anaheim,” Ward said. “I’ve won there before (1987), and I look at it as sort of my home course. I still feel competitive, and I think I have as good a shot at winning as anybody out here.”

Ward finished second to Kawasaki teammate Mike LaRocco of South Bend, Ind., in the season opener at Orlando, Fla., but was 10th at Houston after colliding with another teammate, Mike Kiedrowski, in mid-race.

“I am happy with what I did last year, winning the Supercross and the two other championships, but this isn’t last year,” Bayle said. “I am going to try my best to win again this year. We will see how I come out, but however I finish, I am leaving motocross to go road racing for Honda.”

Bayle, who lives in Redondo Beach during the racing season, has not had a good start, by his standards. He was a distant sixth at Orlando and third at Houston after getting off the line last in the 20-rider field.

To win tonight, Ward and Bayle will have to contend with Damon Bradshaw, 19, Yamaha’s teen-age phenom from Charlotte, N.C., and Jeff Stanton, 23, the defending Anaheim champion from Sherwood, Mich.

Bradshaw was a wire-to-wire winner at Houston, and after two races is the stadium series leader. In 1990 he won the first two races, at Anaheim and Houston, and appeared on his way to the championship before suffering a foot injury at San Diego that dropped him from contention. Last year he finished second to Bayle.

Stanton, the 1989 and 1990 Supercross and national 250cc champion, is hoping to unseat his Honda teammate and regain the championship. After winning at Anaheim last year, he was battling Bayle for the Supercross lead when he dislocated his shoulder at the Pontiac Silverdome and missed four races. He still finished third in the final standings, only one point behind Bradshaw.

“I want them back,” he said of the championships Bayle took away last year. “I feel fine, completely recovered, and I had a strong off-season. I want to make it two in a row at Anaheim.”

During the off-season, Stanton won stadium events in Tokyo and Geneva, Switzerland, where he beat Bayle.

Two world champions from the international Grand Prix circuit, Trampas Parker of Shreveport, La., and Stefan Everts of Belgium, are entered tonight. Both are campaigning the first five races before returning to Europe for the world championship season, but both lack stadium experience. Parker won the world 125cc crown in 1989 and the 250cc last year. Everts, 19, became the youngest 125cc champion last year.

Tonight’s program will start at 7 with 125cc riders competing in support motos.