Anaheim

The gold standard of Supercross battles, Ricky Johnson and David Bailey threw down in front of 70,035 at the 1986 season opener. After Bailey hunted down his new Honda teammate, the two swapped the lead seven times, lapping through seventh place!

“Going into this race, I wasn’t that confident,” Bailey said while rewatching video of the event with We Went Fast. Bailey won, his 9th career SX win. Johnson finished second.

Marty Smith, then a two-time 125cc Pro Motocross champion, won what was called the “American Motocross Finals,” in December 1976.

The race wasn’t technically part of the AMA Supercross Championship (which ended 5 months earlier) but it utilized a (then) revolutionary formatting system: heats, semis, LCQ, and one winner-take-all main event. The formatting irked many because ‘that’s NOT motocross.’

Jeremy McGrath’s record run of 72 Supercross wins started at Anaheim in 1993 when he passed defending champion, Jeff Stanton and ended in the same building in 2001 when he won the final race of his career.

Even though McGrath didn’t get the benefit of competing in multiple Anaheim rounds in the same season until 1999, his 8 wins are still the most all-time in the building and are the subject of one our We Went Fast Epics.

The return of Ricky Carmichael against defending champion, Chad Reed with rookie prodigy James Stewart making his 250/450 debut was what the world came to see. Instead, they got an opening round mudder won by Honda’s Kevin Windham.

RC minimized damage to his title hopes with a 3rd place, while Stewart was 5th and Reed was 16th. What nobody would have predicted: Honda didn’t win again until July 2007.

James Stewart and defending champion, Chad Reed opened 2009 with 1986-like vibes, trading the lead twice. When Reed ran into the back of Stewart on lap seven, they both went down and Stewart suffered a DNF.

Josh Grant led the final 13 laps but his first (and only) career 450SX victory ended in suspense; a tuff block cover sucked into his rear brake rotor with two laps remaining. His 15-second lead over Andrew Short evaporated but Grant kept his wheel spinning and earned Joe Gibbs Racing its first win.

Chad Reed is the all-time everything of the Anaheim Supercross: most wins, podiums, points and starts. Yup, Reed, also has eight Anaheim SX victories, the same number as his childhood hero, Jeremy McGrath.

Between 2002-2020, Reed raced in (gulp!) 47 main events at Angel Stadium, 11 more than Nick Wey (36). He has 27 podium finishes, almost double the next closest riders (James Stewart and Ricky Carmichael) and his 813 points scored is over 300 more than Kevin Windham’s 500.

Anaheim has been a good venue for Ken Roczen; he’s the only rider to ever win A1 four times and he has five total Anaheim SX wins on three different brands.

Roczen has won here on KTM (2014), Suzuki (2015 x 2) and Honda (2017, 2022). Among the eight riders who have three (or more) Anaheim SX wins, he’s the only one without a championship.