For the last few months, uncertainty has loomed over northern Nevada’s race scene. At this time last year, everything was tidy: MX West held all the cards, and nearly every local track ran under its banner. This year, MX West is struggling to find enough tracks for a series, the upstart Sierra Motocross Association has corralled a handful of non-profit venues, and many of the for-profit promoters have gone off to seek their own fortunes.

As a result, nobody is sure where the crowd will be each weekend. The only certainty is that wherever the crowd is, its overall size will have diminished in comparison to last year’s version of itself. The sudden divide has not only separated the rider base; it has also shrunk it.

Last fall, around the beginning of the split, I wrote a column that confronted some worries. Sadly, every one of those worries has come to fruition in recent months, and still worse, fewer and fewer people seem to care about these issues. It appears that most riders, tired of the ceaseless political posturing, are now content to pick and choose the races that look promising. But as most will tell you, fewer races than ever look that way--at least from a competition standpoint.

Yet I still care, though I have trouble understanding why that is. My experience among the powerful has given me only faint hope that things will change, and I--a racer of more than 20 races per year for about as many years--have honestly began to think that I might be better off just burning laps at a practice session most Sundays.

I guess I still care because I recall when nearly every class at the races would be loaded with promising, homegrown talent. Having 400 or more riders at most events raised the quality of competition for everyone, and helped develop a number of national-caliber locals (Bobby Garrison, Aron Harvey and the Siminoe brothers come to mind.)

I also remember, just as significantly, the way this environment turned the races into a social Mecca. There are few more exciting sights than seeing the pits jam-packed on a Sunday morning, and not all of that excitement comes simply from the promise of competition. It also comes from the promise of seeing and talking with people, and that unmistakable feeling of immersion that comes from entering a buzzing motocross microcosm.

In the column last fall, I expressed some very specific hopes for what might come of the split. But since none of those hopes was met, my present wishes are much vaguer, and even a bit more cynical.

I hope, in the course of what might be a confusing and dismal fall for riders and promoters alike, that we all manage to gain enough information to weed out the bad, gather behind the good, and gain some understanding of where our friends and competitors will be each Sunday.

That is, if they will be at the races at all.

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