131
and Stefan was being real
cocky; his bike was on point,
and he was just hauling ass.
Down the start straight, he’d
pull three or four bike lengths
on me. After fi rst practice,
Stefan was talking shit. We go
out in the next practice and I
lay into him and parked him
to teach him a little respect.
Geboers pulled me right off the
track and he threw me in the
trailer and said, “If you ever
touch that kid again, you’ll be
off this team and you won’t get
paid.” I knew right then and
there I was done.
EVERTS: Mike was my team-
mate, but he was a bit of a
rebel. At one point, I was in
front of him and doing better
than him, and he was com-
plaining that the bikes were not
the same. He could be a big
crybaby. It was always some
bullshit. He could go fast, and
when he put things together,
he could win.
MOORE: Mike Healey was a
great kid and an awesome guy,
but he was the wild child. We
were complete opposites. He
was all about the long hair, tat-
toos, going to the bar after the
race, picking chicks up, and
I’m just this Christian kid that
would go home and read the
bible and go train!
HEALEY: The whole thing was
a rite of passage. Living with
my parents, under their roof, I
had to answer to them. I was a
teenager. I had a curfew. I was
just a teenager. When I took
off and went to Europe, I didn’t
have anything there. I screwed
DYMOND: Donny was just a
really good person. He was
honest, and he worked really
hard. He was on the cusp of
making it in America and ended
up in a spot where it was just
better to go to Europe, and
when he went over there, he
succeeded.HEALEY: Every time I got
close to Stefan, my bike got
slower. Suzuki came over about
midseason and wanted to
know why I was having trouble
qualifying. They put my bike on
a dyno, and my bike was some-
thing like seven or eight horse-
power less than a production
bike. The team had completely
detuned it to be slower than a
production bike.MANNEH: We were in Germa-
ny, and I crashed on the start
with Stefan Everts. When he
crashed into me, his handlebars
went into his spleen and he got
taken away to the hospital and
they took out his spleen.EVERTS: The next day, I woke
up and the guy next to my bed
at 7:00 in the morning was
Donny Schmit. I opened my
eyes, and he was there next to
my bed with his wife, Carrie. I’ll
never forget that.HEALEY: Stefan got hurt at
the round in Germany. I fi gured,
“Cool, Stefan is out and I’ll have
the truck and trailer to myself
and they’ll give me the good shit
and give me the good mechan-
ic.” Nope! They took the full semi
and trailer and parked it. They
put me into a box van and said,
“Here you go, see you later!”up my factory ride with Suzuki
because I wouldn’t take it seri-
ously and I wouldn’t cut my hair
and be the clean-cut corporate
motocross kid they wanted.
I got fi red by U.S. Suzuki be-
cause I had a blue mohawk....MOORE: It was not easy. You
showed up at one track and it
was hard and rocky, and you’d
go to another and it would be
muddy, and then you’d go to
another track and it would be
sandy. Everything was just the
lay of the land. And if you tried
to live like you lived in America,
there was just no chance, and
you were going to be miserable.
It took me two years to fi gure
that part out.DYMOND: In Switzerland, we
had one moto where we fi n-
ished fi rst and second. Trampas
won the overall and I was fi fth,
so the start of the year was
good, and I had a lot of poten-
tial and I got a couple of good
fi nishes, but the infrastructure
of that team was just a mess.
Even if I had been winning, it
wouldn’t have lasted. I mean, I
went fi ve races and they ran out
of parts!MOORE: I lived with Donny.
We trained and lived together
in the same house in Italy. My
wife and his wife, we all lived
in the same three-bedroom
house. That was pretty cool.
And just training with him that
year, in a lot of ways, helped
me understand the commit-
ment level required. Still, to
this day, I’ve never, ever met a
more dedicated individual than
Donny Schmit.Every time
Stefan’s
father
would
touch the
bike, it
would blow
up. I knew
I was being
sabotaged.”MIKE HEALEY