Making Tracks : Playing in dirt pays for Rich Winkler. His Rancho Santa Margarita company is the sole Supercross course builder.

In the beginning, there is dirt. Tens of thousands of cubic yards of dirt. In Anaheim, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New Orleans and other cities with big-time stadiums, the dirt is hauled in and transformed into big-money pro racetracks.

The dirt is moved around by heavy machinery that Rich Winkler rents town to town. So much rented machinery that Winkler was profiled in the in-house magazine of the maker of John Deere equipment as one of the best repeat customers.

Does it get any better than that?

Well, yes. Winkler, whose Dirt Wurx of Rancho Santa Margarita is the only company now doing the lucrative Supercross pro motorcycle racecourses, is also in international demand. He has just finished racetracks in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and El Salvador and will head to Japan for two courses in September.

“I think,” he says with predictable arid delivery, “the cover of Time magazine is next.”

Think El Nino muddied up your life this past year? Consider what it did to Winkler’s. Imagine trying to sculpt 8,000 cubic yards of dirt into a professional motorcycle racecourse. In an outdoor stadium. In the rain. In three days. Careful you don’t take out that hydraulic pitcher’s mound!

An average of 50,000 people have bought tickets and expect the show to go on, as does the promoter. Roughly a million dollars is at stake. For Winkler, there’s no such thing as a rain-out.

Dirt Wurx is the only company now designing and building motorcycle racetracks for the high-drama national Supercross, which is similar to motocross--in the speed, the dangerous feats, the dirt--but staged in stadiums.

Racers tackle jumps and sharp curves and tightly spaced dirt bumps called whoop-dee-doos. At the Coliseum in Los Angeles, Winkler’s course sent them roaring from the field up into the stands, then through the Olympic columns for a dazzling 10-story plunge to the floor.

This season, Winkler pulled off his own high-wire act: 13 of 15 tracks for the American Motorcycle Assn.’s (AMA) stadium motocross series were built in bad weather.

Winkler, 40, pulls down six figures just for Supercross, whose season ended in May. By year’s end, Winkler will travel the globe for other events.

“He is the premier international track builder at events in Europe, Asia and Central and South America,” says Roy Janson, vice president of operations for PACE Motor Sports of Lombard, Ill. PACE contracts with the AMA, the governing body that sanctions pro motorcycling, to promote 15 national Supercross events yearly.

“The reason we’ve settled on one company is that we feel this guy’s product, his knowledge of the sport, the quality of the construction crews he uses and the innovative approach he has taken puts him ahead of everyone else,” Janson says.

Not bad for a pro racer forced to quit young due to injuries. Also, adds Winkler, whose dry wit and appearance are reminiscent of comedic actor Chris Elliott: “I broke my leg, my nose, both feet, a thumb, my ribs, my collar bone--three times. . . . It kind of slowed me down. Speed does help in racing.”

His mother was not unhappy about this turn of events.

“We never thought he’d make any money in racing or with motorcycles,” Roslyn Winkler of Ramsey, N.J., says of her oldest child. “Like an actor.”

She laughs. Who could have known then that her son would find a lucrative career shared by few others on the planet?

*

Little League mom, soccer mom. One doesn’t exactly pine to be motorcycle mom. Flying dirt clods, noise. There will be a seemingly permanent film of motor oil on the motorcycle kid. His big dirt bike will frequently occupy the back of the Ford Country Squire station wagon. There are driveway discussions, Dad versus the muddy one. Terror that your danger boy will not return alive from his latest thrill ride.

Around them picture the neighborhood--wooded and serene, an actual forest that extends beyond Ramsey (population 16,000), through other Bergen County suburbs. It is quiet here. It is Stingray bike country.

Then little Richie falls for a minibike and saves his paper-route money to buy one. He will soon graduate to a larger dirt bike that other kids covet, must ride--in and out of the driveway, up and down the street. Officers will be called.

Roslyn Winkler laughs.

“You have to remember, it was the ‘60s, and our neighbors [were] Mr. and Mrs. Homemaker--the only motorcyclists they know of are Hells Angels.”

Despite the worries and mess, by the time Rich was 14, the Winkler family recognized motorcycle racing had become Rich’s consuming passion. Picnic baskets were loaded and the station wagon packed for trips to Unadilla, N.Y., home to one of the first U.S. pro motocross tracks.

Still, when college time arrived, there was not much debate. Rich would go.

“I was actually a business management major,” Winkler said on a recent visit home from the race circuit, “but the whole four years I was thinking, ‘Insurance broker? I don’t think so.’ ”

He was living at home, competing locally. But he knew that if he didn’t take a shot at the pros, he’d regret it. He took off his sophomore year to race the national Supercross circuit. The parade of injuries began early. At his peak, he was the top rider in New York state, a pro for three years. Yet by the end of the 1978 season, he said, “I realized I probably better continue in college.”

He graduated with honors but wound up working at a tire store.

His luck turned after he fired off resumes to motorcycle manufacturers and other outfits with racing ties. He got one vague call. It was a Supercross promoter: Maybe when the circuit arrived in neighboring New York, Winkler could come out and chat. Afraid it might never happen, Winkler offered to pay his own way to the promoter’s current race in Kansas City.

“I said, ‘I’ll lift hay bales, whatever, whatever horrible job you have, to get in the door,’ ” Winkler said, standing on one of the dirt tracks he built in Corona for motorcycle manufacturers to test their products. “I was green and low-paid, an operations assistant--you order the fences and portable toilets.”

*

His employer was Stadium Motor Sports Corp., headed by onetime rock ‘n’ roll promoter Mike Goodwin, considered the father of Supercross. Motorcycle lore has it that Goodwin’s idea to put motocross inside the Coliseum was first sketched out on a cocktail napkin. Supercross was launched there in 1972.

Winkler worked for Goodwin for a couple of years. Then he joined what is now called PACE Motor Sports, a division of a company that started by promoting Evel Knievel stunts, became one of the three largest concert promoters and is now the country’s largest producer of touring Broadway shows.

With PACE, Winkler learned the big-picture business of staging stadium-sized entertainment. Tiring of the constant travel after three years, Winkler began selling booth space for an Orange County trade-show outfit. He married (it didn’t work out). He stayed put--except for the yearly Tokyo Supercross, whose racetrack Winkler took a two-week leave to construct.

In 1990, PACE, seeking cost and quality consistency for its Supercross events, asked Winkler to design its racecourses and guaranteed him six events a year.

There were never more than a handful of firms building racetracks, but three or four years ago Winkler’s Dirt Wurx became the only one doing the Supercross circuit. So few companies do motocross work now, Winkler suggests, because insurance costs are high, and things can go wrong--on a grand scale.

“The standard thing people think is that we dump all the dirt on the stadium floor and push it around to where you want it,” Winkler says.

“But you are placing the dirt places. These places have pro ball fields and a lot of things that can be damaged, and you need to know what you are doing. Replacing a pitcher’s mound is not cheap.”

Then there is Mother Nature.

PACE’s Janson says Winkler and his crews use innovative construction materials to combat rain, sometimes replacing dirt with sand and road construction substances.

Beyond all else, it is “a work ethic that he and his crew of workers simply tough it out until the job’s done. What it means is several 24-hour days in a row,” Janson said.

Such drive never surprised Roslyn Winkler. She wasn’t sure her son could support himself in an industry that was then more fringe than mainstream, but she was certain he would go down trying.

“I’d think, ‘Oh my God, he’s not gonna make a living; he’ll have to give up the dream. But I knew he’d keep at it until he had bloody stumps.”

Her daughter and other son are engineers. Her firstborn engineers dirt.

“He sometimes says (mopey voice here), ‘I hope you’re not disappointed that I’m not a professional,’ ” Roslyn muses. “And I say, ‘Are you kidding? You are doing what you love. How lucky can you get?’ ”

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Battling the Clock

When Rich Winkler and his Dirt Wurx Inc. prepare a Supercross course on a grass field, time is of the essence. When bad weather has forced him to, Winkler and his staff have built an outdoor course in as little as 17 hours. Here’s how they typically transform a stadium floor for a four-hour Saturday event.

TUESDAY

Winkler, his staff, all materials and equipment arrive by air and truck. Some supplies have been stockpiled at the site.

WEDNESDAY

Layering begins at 3 or 4 p.m., when sunlight is less intense and the stadium shades the turf, minimizing damage to grass. Layering, from the bottom up:

1. Plastic sheeting over the grass

2. Double layer of 3/4-inch plywood sheets, staggered (7,500 4-by-8-foot sheets, enough to fill 10 to 11 semitrucks)

3. Another layer of plastic poly sheeting

4. 10-inch base of dirt (8,000 cubic yards used for the whole course)

THURSDAY

Jumps and other features are built. In the afternoon, Winkler and his staff build the television and announcer towers, sign racks and start-finish gates. These are constructed from two semitruckloads of aluminum trusses such as those used to hold up lights, sound equipment, etc., at rock concerts. Hay bales are no longer used around the track; instead, 600 to 700 dense foam “tough blocks” form the protective barrier. If all has gone well, Winkler and his staff may get a couple of hours of sleep.

FRIDAY

Setup continues: Cables are laid; signs are hung, and cameras are positioned. After a practice session in the afternoon, modifications may be made to the course.

SATURDAY

Final dressing of the course; practice and qualifying runs are made. Alterations may be made. Winkler and his staff do track maintenance before the event and during intermissions.

Spectators arrive at 7 p.m., and the Supercross lasts until 10:30 or 11 p.m. Immediately after the event, Dirt Wurx staff members begin removing signs and aluminum-truss structures.

SUNDAY

By 1 a.m., trucks are hauling dirt from the stadium. An excavator with a huge backhoe-type bucket scrapes the dirt from the protective plywood, working its way toward the tunnel. Plastic tarp is removed and discarded. The plywood is picked up. The final layer of plastic is rolled up, and the entire Supercross track is gone by evening.

On Sunday and Monday, stadium groundskeepers rake, fertilize and aerate the shocked turf.

Source: Dirt Wurx. Diagram based on Supercross course at Anaheim Stadium, January 1996. Researched by PAUL DUGINSKY / Los Angeles Times