Brian Catterson has never stopped his being a veteran motojournalist from jading him out of his dreams, and the inaugural Husky World Championships is just one more in a long line of brainchildren the 55-year-old has hatched.
Scheduled to take place at Cahuilla Creek MX Park in Anza, California, March 4-5, the Husky World Championships is planned to be the first in what Catterson hopes will be an annual celebration of the fabled marque, and he has been working his ass off for the past four months to make his dream a reality.
Busy as he is, Catterson took the time to chat with DirtBikes.com and share some of the particulars of the event, how the idea got started and what participants and spectators can expect when they attend. All we can say is that it sounds like fun to us. If you like what you read here, you can gather more information on the official event website at www.HuskyWC.com.
Catterson: Thing are going really well. There aren’t as many pre-entries as I had hoped for, but a lot of people are saying that that’s pretty normal.
DirtBikes.com: What made you decide to make the effort to promote the event in the first place?
Catterson: A lot of people have asked me that, and it’s not easy to pin down. I think that it has always been in the back of my mind. I think they used to have a Husky World Championships at Carlsbad back in the old SVRG days. It was just like a round of the series. It was done once, and it has never really been done again. Then there is the CZ World Championships. I went to that last year and did a story for Cycle World, and people at the event were saying it was the best race they’d ever been to. That just kind of inspired me to want to get this Husky thing going.
DirtBikes.com: What is it about Husqvarna that appealed to you? Was it just because there was no event like the CZ World Championships, or is it more than that.
Catterson: I’ve always loved Husqvarnas. I’ve been running my business, Team Cagiva, for Italian Huskies and Cagivas for the past four years, so I have a real passion for them. And then when it comes to history, Husqvarna is probably the most significant brand in motocross in America. Literally, without Husky there wouldn’t be motocross in America.
DirtBikes.com: What things are you doing that will set the Husky World Championships apart from the CZ World Championships or maybe other vintage races that you have been to?
Catterson: Honestly, the bikes will be Swedish, Italian and Austrian instead of Czechoslovakian. [Laughs] Honestly, if I can have an event that is as successful as the CZ World Championships, I will be really happy. Last year’s CZ World Championships was really great.
DirtBikes.com: Finding a track for the Husky World Championships seems to have been a bigger challenge than you thought it would be.
Catterson: Well, yeah, but I think I made that hard on myself, to be honest. I knew I could always do it at Cahuilla Creek because CalVMX races there all the time, and it is a perfectly good track. But, in the back of my mind I really wanted to try and get into The Ranch and race on their Carlsbad replica track. But that just proved to be a dead end. People say that Kawasaki rents it out for R&D, but I can’t confirm or deny that. Then I tried to get into Amago Raceway [near San Diego] because the track is still there. In fact, I posted YouTube video, doing a lap around there, a couple months ago, but the people that run the place are Indians as well. They were going to a casino there, but now they have settled on a hemp farm and a dispensary. [Laughs]
DirtBikes.com: Ya gotta go where the money is!
Catterson: Yeah. The Saturday night parties there should be lively. Or not lively.
DirtBikes.com: Beyond finding the track, what has been the most difficult logistical challenge while putting the Husky World Championships together?
Catterson: Well, for me, I’ve never really done the promotion thing all the way through like this. I started the Formula RD road race series back in the early 1990s, and I came up with the idea for the Prostar 600cc Supersport drag racing series. I helped Don Canet quite a bit with the STTARS Supermoto Series—that was my acronym, STTARS—but I’ve never really done the full thing on my own. Finding sponsors was challenging, plus I probably waited a little too long. But the first one was finding a track, and the second was finding someone at Husqvarna to talk to because they’ve had some personnel changes that were all going down right when I was trying to talk to someone about sponsoring the event. But they did come onboard, which is great.
DirtBikes.com: Who are some of the other sponsors backing the Husky World Championships?
Catterson: The main guys who have stepped up include ASV Inventions, which makes levers, and MindFX, which makes energy drinks for your brain. [World-renowned motocross trainer] Aldon Baker recommends them for his riders. The main guy there, Kevin McCarthy, took over my old shop when in Murietta when I moved out of it. Bridgestone Tire has stepped up just in the last few days, so they’re going to help us with tires. There are probably 20 or so sponsors who are donating product. Nobody is going home empty-handed.
DirtBikes.com: Do you have any idea what kind of rider turnout to expect?
Catterson: Not really. I’ve said all along that I would be happy if I could get 100 entries, but we’ll see. We have a lot of interest. One thing I would like to do is get the Pro class going. I have a Pro class, but I don’t have any pre-entries. I mean, obviously you’ve got to think local Pros not AMA Pros. I’ve talked to a few people about it. With all the people who ride Huskies on the West Coast, people like Ashley Fiolek and Josh Hansen… I don’t know if those guys are coming, but it would be great if they did. I’m trying to get Andy Jefferson to ride the 40+ Pro class, but he said he is only coming out to work the event, not to ride.
DirtBikes.com: How did you come up with the class structure for the Husky World Championships?
Catterson: It’s just basically technical and timeline kind of stuff. I spent a lot of time looking at parts fiches and old manuals to determine exactly where the cutoffs should be, but it’s still pretty loose. It’s pretty obvious, for the most part. One thing is that originally I just wanted to have a short-travel Swedish class, but some of the guys with the older bikes, the ’67 bolt-together frames and pre-’72 four-speeds got up in arms about that. So I ended up making a separate class for them even though we’ll probably end up running them at the same time on the track anyways.
DirtBikes.com: How many motos do you anticipate running?
Catterson: Well, on paper there are 18 classes, but then there are displacement and/or age divisions in each one of them, and skill levels as well. It should be 18 motos, but we I won’t be surprised if we don’t have that many. The first round of motos will all be displacement classes, and then the second round of motos will all be age classes. Any bike that you have will be eligible for at least two classes. I also have a Women’s class and a Kid’s class.
It’s kind of ironic, but it seems that it has been harder to get the word out to the modern guys than the vintage guys. The vintage guys are all plugged into the various websites and Facebook pages. There are all kinds of owner’s groups for old Huskies, but not so much for modern guys. Husqvarna North America has been really helpful with that, though.
DirtBikes.com: You’ve probably have to work really hard to put together your track crew for race day.
Catterson: Yes, and I am honestly still doing it. That’s one of the things where I have a good group of people who work for CalVMX and others plus a lot of my friends in the industry who are coming out to help. I’m actually going out to Cahuilla this weekend because CalVMX is having an AHRMA round. I’m going to go out there Saturday just to finalize everything. It gets silly when you start thinking, ‘Oh yeah, I need radios. I need flags. Then you need ambulances and insurance and water truck drivers, all that kind of stuff, you know.
DirtBikes.com: At the end of the day, how will you consider whether or not the Husky World Championships has been a success? Everyone has fun and no one gets hurt?
Catterson: Honestly, you took the words right out of my mouth. It’s a little ambitious to compare my effort in the first year to the CZ World Championships, but I would love it if a few people said, “Wow, that was the best race ever.” It’s going to be fun. I’m taking a page from the CZ World Championships, where on Saturday morning we’re going to line up all the bikes on the start straight in rows by decade and have an impromptu show, which really makes for a great photo op for you magazine and web guys. Then we will have open practice on both tracks for all the classes on Saturday, and we’re going to also try to open up that extended portion of the facility that runs up into the hills a little bit.
Saturday night, we’re going to watch a movie called One Chance to Win. It’s a documentary of the finale of the 1975 AMA 500cc National Championship. It’s an interesting story. Todd Huffman of Pipeline Digital Media is actually one of our sponsors, and he didn’t have anything to do with it back in the day, but it never saw the light of day until Todd got involved with it. Marty Tripes is also coming to do the barbecue on Saturday night, so we’re watching supercross and then we’re watching the movie. Brad Lackey is doing the t-shirts for us. Lars Larsson is going to try and come down. Lars just received the Edison Dye Lifetime Achievement Award. Mary McGee, the first lady of motocross, will be there. And I’m hoping to get Mark Blackwell and Malcolm Smith there, but a lot of these people have busy schedules, so we’ll see.
DirtBikes.com: Anything else special happening?
Catterson: One unique thing that I want to try to pull off, and I’ve said all along that it is time permitting, is that at the end of the day on Sunday I want to get the overall winners of each moto throughout the day and have a race of champions. We’ll have a staggered start where the minis will go first, then the old guys and then have the modern guys at the back. We’ll go off of lap times, so if it all works out, everyone should be crossing the finish line at about the same time. That should be fun.
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