History
Motocross is usually said to have begun after World War II, but the sport actually originated in cross-country races known as scrambles in England and North America during the 1920s. It just wasn't called motocross back then.
The first was the so-called Southern Scott Scramble, held on March 29, 1924, over a 2-5-mile cross-country course on Camberly Heath, England. The winner of the 50-mile race was Arthur Sparks with a time of 2 hours, 1 minute, 51 seconds.
In 1926, the Crotona, New York, Motorcycle Club started a similar type of race, but it was called a Tourist Trophy, undoubtedly after the famous Isle of Man road race. It doesn't appear that the Crotona members knew anything about the scrambles that were becoming very popular among motorcyclists in England. However, within a few years cross-country races were being called scrambles in both the United States and Canada.
And sometime between 1924 and 1934, depending on which account you believe, the scramble crossed the English Channel into France. The French came up with the name "motocross," from "motorcycle" and "cross-country," and developed a new, shorter course with man-made obstacles such as jumps.
One of the first major sports events in Europe after World War II was an international team motocross competition hosted by the Netherlands in 1947. Only two other countries, Belgium and Great Britain, took part. The race comprised two heats of eight laps each over a 2-mile course, with team scores based on the times of the three fastest riders. The British team won by just nine seconds over Belgium.
As it turned out, that was the first Motocross des Nations, which has been conducted by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) since 1949.
The FIM inaugurated a European individual championship for 500cc displacement in 1952. That became a world championship event in 1957. The 250cc class was added in 1962.
Scrambles were staged in North America throughout the 1930s and immediately after World War II, but the first race referred to as motocross was held in Grafton, Vermont, in 1959. The promoter was a dealer for the German-made Maico, then one of the world's best motocross bikes.
But it was a California dealer for the Husqvarna of Sweden who really made motocross a popular sport in the United States. Edison Dye was an aeronautical engineer and motorcyclist who began organizing motorcycle tours of Europe durin the early 1960s. During one of those tours, Dye saw and fell in love with the Husqvarna. He agreed to become the make's first U. S. distributor and decided that the best way to publicize the bike was to demonstrate it in motocross races.
In the fall of 1966, Dye hired Sweden's Torsten Hallman, the reigning 250cc world champion, to race a Husqvarna in American events. Hallman scored easy victories in several races, including the Canadian Northwest Motocross Championship.
But there wasn't enough motocross racing in the U. S. to get the "Husky" the kind of publicity Dye was looking for, so in 1967 he organized his own series, the Inter-America, better known as the Inter-Am. He brought over several more Europeans to race against Hallman and U. S. scramble riders. The series not only proved popular with existing fans, it created new fans for this kind of motorcycle racing.
At the time, the American Motorcyclist Association wasn't involved in international racing. A very small organization, Motorcycle International Clubs of the United States (MICUS), represented the U. S. in the FIM. Dye's series was sanctioned by MICUS.
In 1970, the AMA joined the FIM. The association's first major move into international competition was the establishment of the Trans-AMA motocross series to compete against Dye's Inter-Am. The Inter-Am was forced out of business in 1971 but Dye continued promoting races within the Trans-Am series until 1974.
Great Britain had dominated the sport for the first two decades, winning 15 of 20 Motocross des Nations championships. Then Belgium took over, winning seven championships from 1969 through 1980. In 1981, a young United States team won the Motocross des Nations by just one point over Great Britain. That victory was generally considered a fluke at the time, but it was just the first in a string of 13 consecutive championships for the U. S.
Supercross
Although motocross became very popular in the United States, it didn't fit into the country's standard motorsports format: the oval track bringing vehicles continually past a grandstand full of spectators. So supercross was created.
Supercross is really nothing more than motocross on an artificial course constructed inside a stadium. That's not a uniquely American idea. Motocross races were run in a stadium outside Paris in August of 1948 and in a Prague, Czechoslovakia, stadium in May of 1956. The Prague event drew an estimated 100,000 fans. There were also some stadium motocross events in Norway during the 1960s.
Even before motocross was known in the U. S., the 1961 Florida State Scramble Championship was staged at Miami Stadium. But supercross was really rooted in a series of races staged in 1968 by promoter J. C. Agajanian at his Ascot Speedway in Garden, California. Ironically, the AMA wouldn't sanction the races because they weren't run over "completely natural terrain," as specified in the association's rule book.
That rule had been changed changed by March of 1971, when a motocross event was promoted by NASCAR founder Bill France in the infield of his Daytona International Speedway. It was successful, so France did it again the following year.
Four months later came the event that gave supercross its name: The Superbowl of Motocross, staged at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on July 8, 1972, by Mike Goodwin, a rock music promoter. The event drew 28,000 fans. That went up by 10,000 for the second Superbowl of Motocross.
The magazine Motocross Action referred to the event as the Supercross. Despite Goodwin's objections, the name stuck. However, the AMA called this version of the sport "stadium motocross" until 1988, when "supercross" became official.
By then, supercross had become considerably different from motocross. Because of the limited area, which required much tighter courses, it had been different to start with. On the tighter courses, smaller motorcycles were faster than the large machines used on natural motocross courses. In 1976, the AMA made 250cc the main class for stadium motocross, as opposed to 500cc for standard motocross.
A different scoring system was also set up in 1976 for the stadium version. In traditional motocross, competitors run two or three heats and the winner is the cyclist who collects the most points. The new scoring system was progressive: heats were used to determine which riders advanced to the semi-finals, which in turn determined which of them would race in the final. The winner was the top finisher in the final. In traditional motocross, by contrast, the winner doesn't necessarily have to win any heats.
The scoring systems remain different. In American motocross, there are two heats, called motos, for each class. and a certain number of points is awarded for a top-20 finish, from 25 points for the winner, 22 points for second place, and 20 points for third place, down to 1 point for the 20th-place finisher. The rider with the most total points from the two motos is the winner. If two or more riders have the same number of points, the winner is the one who had the best finish in the second moto.
In supercross, there are usually two heats followed by two semi-finals, and the top 25 riders qualify for the final.