Henry’s ‘Perfect Race’ Is a Winner

Nobody could catch Doug Henry on the ground during the Moto X supermoto race Sunday at the X Games. Nobody could match Jeremy McGrath through the air.

Together, they proved to be the best racers on the Home Depot Center track, a half-dirt, half-paved layout that weaved in and out of the stadium and through a section of the parking lot.

Henry, a former American Motorcyclist Assn. motocross champion who in the last two years has emerged as one of organization’s top supermoto racers, took the lead early in the 45-lap race and increased it to as many as 25 seconds before easing up and winning by 11 seconds over McGrath.

“It was a perfect race for me,” said Henry, who lives in Torrington, Conn. “Last year, I went down in the first turn and it ruined my weekend. My goal this year was to just get through the start.”

Henry, 35, was second through the first turn behind Yamaha teammate Chad Reed. He stayed on Reed’s fender until the fifth lap, when he passed him coming out of a hairpin turn in the parking lot.

“I knew it was a long race,” Henry said. “I didn’t want to push too hard in the beginning.”

Henry briefly lost the lead when he took his mandatory pit stop around Lap 30, but quickly doubled it when the new leaders began to pit. Henry said he never realized how large his lead had grown over the 21-man field.

“I told my pit crew before the race not to tell me,” he said. “But while I was racing, I wish I would have known.”

McGrath, a seven-time supercross champion who retired from full-time competition two years ago, crashed in the first turn of the second lap while trying to pass Jeff Ward, another former supercross champion. But McGrath picked himself up and gradually pushed his Honda CRF450 back through the 20-rider field.

“I kind of passed [Ward] a little bit and tried to shut the door on him and I lost the front end,” McGrath said. “After that, I kind of started to get my rhythm going and then, once I started feeling the flow, I started putting some great lap times in.”

That allowed McGrath to blow past Eric Bostrom and Reed in the closing laps and finish second.

“Toward the end, I just put my head down and we had a great pit stop and I started picking guys off, “ McGrath said. “It was awesome.”

McGrath, 33, made up considerable ground through the air. A 100-foot ramp that led into the stadium included a step-up jump -- a section of the ramp that flattened out and then jutted back up to the apex. McGrath was the only racer who was jumping the entire second section, clearing the apex and landing on the down side of ramp leading into the stadium.

“I had a little secret weapon,” McGrath said. “I started doing it in practice and nobody followed and nobody did it. It really came into play on the race.”

McGrath said he also started getting more comfortable with the street portion of the course as the race wore on.

“I knew I was faster in the dirt, I just had to make sure I was even with everyone, or on pace, on the street part,” he said. “As the race went on, I felt more and more comfortable with sliding the bike.”