EDITORIAL
The Golden Ticket
Author: K3 Chris Onwiler
Be careful what you wish for
 The Devil wore Repsol orange. Surely he must have been the Devil, because he was offering me the Golden Ticket. Only Satan himself could have peered into the deep recesses of my soul and found the one secret desire so dark and intimate that I’d never shared it with another human being. What he’d offered was the chance to go pro.
There’s probably not a sportbike owner in the world who doesn’t dream of being in the Big Show. If you’ve ridden your motorcycle on a racetrack, you’re at least guilty of having the notion. Imagine what it would be like to possess the Golden Ticket; an AMA Pro Racing license. Picture yourself lining up on the grid at an AMA road race, with cameras everywhere, umbrella girls so plentiful that you have to push them aside to get to the bathroom and rabid spectators lining the hills of the arena where you’ll compete. In reality, few riders will ever get the chance to compete in an AMA race. Time, money and talent are the three things most of us lack. It’s OK to fantasize but we know the truth. Like dating a supermodel, your chances of earning a pro license are somewhere between “Never gonna happen” and “When Hell freezes over.” Well, it must be pretty cold down there right now because I’ve got a Golden Ticket. To earn an AMA Pro Racing license, you must have been an Expert racer for the two previous seasons and have earned at least 300 points while racing a bike legal for AMA competition. While there'd been a time in my racing career when I'd achieved these criteria, I'd chosen to retire from racing rather than turn pro and had instead become a track coach. Primarily, I'd based that decision on my inability to generate the funds necessary for an AMA effort. Now however, an honest-to God AMA Pro Roadracing team was offering me my dream shot. In my case, the Repsol orange demon was Mitch Stein, lead mechanic and rider for the Mid-Illini Motorsports / Repsol / Maui Jim’s Sunglasses Moto-GT team. Mitch and I go way back, having paired for many an enduro in our CCS racing days. There came a point where neither of us was having fun anymore as club racers. I became a riding instructor at trackdays and Mitch went pro. With his wife/team owner/crew chief Deana running the show, their team has been the gateway into AMA competition for a number of riders. The problem is that the Mid-Illini Motorsports organization doesn't have a budget to pay those who ride for them. When a team with deeper pockets needs to fill a seat, they think nothing of cherry picking, leaving the Mid-Illini squad depleted. At this point in the season, Mitch and Deana were looking for an endurance specialist who wasn't otherwise occupied. To be a successful endurance rider, you need to be be reasonably fast but more importantly, you must be capable of riding at a pace that conserves the machine. Above all, you cannot crash. To win an endurance race, you first have to finish. The Steins thought back to our club racing days and remembered that endurance racing was where I had always managed to achieve my best results. Without warning and many years past what I'd have considered to be my expiration date as an aspiring pro, I got the phone call that every racer yearns for but few ever actually get.
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