HOPETOWN AND THE FOUR HORSEMEN

While it is often claimed that history has the benefit of 20/20 hindsight vision, that's simply not always the case. Take the introduction of motocross to America, for example. While opinions vary on how the sport first came to the USA, in the eyes of many of the sport's insiders, it was a race dubbed Hopetown that truly put the sport on the map here. An event held in Southern California just short of Thanksgiving in the year 1967, Europe's premiere motocross racers came to Hopetown to show the American race fans what the sport was all about. Not really prepared for what they were to see that sunny afternoon, the style, technique and brilliance displayed by the Grand Prix racers not only spellbound the American fans, it left many of them slack jawed in astonishment. Roger DeCoster, Ake Johnsson, Torsten Hallman, and especially Joel Robert, simply blew the minds of the 25,000 fans present on Bob Hope's movie that epic day. Check out the lead of the story featured in the November 23, 1967 issue of Cycle News: “Would you believe that we could have a real moto-cross here in this country with huge crowds like Europe? We did Sunday at Hopetown where come 2 p.m. we were told 25,000 paid admissions had come through the gate.”