from here
http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/11/399/Motorcycle-Article/2007-450-MX-Rider-Bios.aspx
Rider Bios
Our motley testing crew, selected from thousands of hopefuls, was nothing if not diverse and produced a vet expert, two pros, an intermediate and novice rider in the form of salesman, stunt man, full-time racer, high school sophomore and lowly scribe. That's a has-been, could-be, wanna-be and never-will-be depending on how you look at it, but regardless, just about all the bases were covered.
Yes, it's "The" Chuck Sun. Only one of our test riders was even born at the time he won his 500cc National title but Chuck remains a professional. Factory guys just don't seem to ever lose it, do they?
Chuck Sun - 5'9"/190 lbs/Vet Expert
I pity the fool who doesn't recognize this name. We had a slew of fast young guns to come out and act as air-time photo models, but we needed a seasoned vet to teach the whippersnappers a lesson or two in old-school. Though not a state known for producing tidal waves of motocross masters, Oregon has produced two AMA National champions over the years and Chuck Sun was the second to emerge during the late 1970s and early '80s.
He laid tracks on the first motocross race of his career at the tender age of 14 and wouldn't look back until compiling seven 500 AMA National race wins and a 250 SX win at Atlanta in 1980. After chasing his MX dreams out of Sherwood, OR, around the Northwest and onto the professional circuit, Sun found himself as the 1980 AMA 500 National champion aboard a Factory Honda. Shortly after he set the stage for America to become the world's most dominant country in the sport as a member of the first winning Motocross and Trophee Des Nations team in '81. He was included in the AMA Hall of Fame as a part of the 2003 inductees.
After his racing career was over, the Oregonian loitered around the industry and found lasting work as a Regional Sales Manger for KTM and helped bolster its sister company, Husaberg, by managing a race team in the AMA Western 4-stroke Nationals. As an open-class outdoor specialist who started his career on heavy 4-strokes and later managed a team of new generation beasts years before they were widely accepted, who better to twist the throttle on our crop of big-bores?
Though he no longer lives in the Beaver State, Chuck agreed to take a few days away from his new gig as the Off-road Sales Specialist for Tucker Rocky and drive over from Las Vegas to hang out with the MotoUSA crew. Not only did we get to ride alongside a living legend, but he clued us in to some of his plans for the near future. The man's enormous passion for motorcycling extends outside of the boundaries of a motocross track and we'll keep track of his exploits in the FIM Asian Enduro Championships on Feb. 21-25. Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months as we follow Chuck into Thailand for the 2007 Maxxis Asia Open.
Alvin Zalamea - 5'8"/150 lbs/Pro
Alvin is a jack of all trades having served as a Yamaha test rider, magazine photo model, real estate mortgage agent, owner of a printing business and now Hollywood stunt man. Unless you've studied every moto mag for the last decade, recently bought a house in SoCal or had a need to distribute a large volume of written material, you might better recognize him as the surfer dude who doubled for the character Tony Alva in the movie Lords of Dogtown.
The 29-year-old Huntington Beach resident cut his racing teeth at LA County Raceway with California Racing Club's moto series. He was pegged by Yamaha to help test the original YZ400F as a novice rider just about the time people were getting serious about a Y2K apocalypse. With his pro credentials he made a few SX appearances in 2004 without success and qualified for the Glen Helen National the following year but a lack of support that plagued him throughout his racing career eventually put motocross on the back burner. He's since regained his enthusiasm for racing and the new 4-stroke movement.
"I got a bitter taste for 4-strokes," he said of his early Yammie experience. "I'm just starting to come around."
Upon hearing this statement our Ty Pennington-humanitarianism training kicked into effect and we set about rehabilitating our favorite chipmunk with a MotoUSA Extreme Makeover - 4-Stroke Edition. Welcome to the crew.
Personal Sponsors: O'Neal Racing
Mike didn't have the best Arenacross season this year in the BooKoo series. We'd like to tease him and call him BooHoo but we're not really fast enough, not that it's ever stopped us before.
Mike Horban - 5'9"/150 lbs/Pro
After smoking the locals and gauging his speed against guys like Tiger Lacey and Kevin Rookstool, Mikey is in the difficult early stages of jumpstarting his fledgling professional career. We worked with Mike earlier this year when he ventured out of nearby Grants Pass and hit the road for the opening rounds of the BooKoo and Toyota AMA Arenacross series. A few bad starts and tough breaks conspired to keep him from the main events and the series soon turned eastward leaving Mikey-boy with few options. This is precisely when we swooped in and picked him up on the rebound to sign on as our tester.
Horban was just the guy we were looking for to be able to swap from bike to bike. The 20-year-old has raced Hondas, KTMs and Yamahas in the last six months so it was just another day at the track for our ringer. The real reason we enlisted his help was simply to have his company along on our long road trip. When he agreed to drive himself it was a done deal. That way we got to tease him about his rig which is just the kind of suspiciously-tinted shaggin'-wagon you'd hate to see loitering around an elementary schoolyard. Hey, we've got to keep ourselves entertained somehow.
Personal Sponsors: MotoUSA.com, Oregon Motorsports
Ian Martin - 5'6"/135 lbs/Intermediate
The last time we worked with Ian he was riding 80cc 2-strokes. That's quite the jump for our now-intermediate rider but if he had any trouble adapting his current 250F habits to the big-bores it sure had us fooled. We had to be careful to dodge those pesky child labor laws when we made the poor kid lift all those bikes off their stands being nearly twice as heavy and all. Thank god for Red Bull.
As it turns out, Ian is quite the multitasker in his ability to balance his racing, education and MotoUSA workload while keeping all those 15-year-old raging hormones of a high school sophomore in check. Just imagine what he'll be able to do once he can legally drive.
Personal Sponsors: Oregon's Best Motorsports, Northside Chiropractic Clinic, Spy, ONE Industries, CycleWorx, Mom & Dad
JC Hilderbrand - 5'11"/190 lbs/Novice
JC might not be the fastest, but dammit, he's the tallest and that has to count for something. This year featured one of our most well-rounded testing crews ever. From left to right: Ian Martin, JC Hilderbrand, Robert Horban, Chuck Sun (seated), Mike Horban and Alvin Zalamea.
Hilde has improved significantly on the motocross track since our 2006 shootout season, but, to his dismay, not enough to overtake any of our guest testers. Therefore, he was once again relegated to the testing totem pole position that occasionally gets peed on by a stray dog - the bottom.
The only other thing that has grown faster than his riding skills in the past year is the empty trash talk that escapes his often-chapped lips. Fortunately he had the good sense to keep his trap shut when Chuck Sun was regaling the crew with colorful stories of MX lore. As a result he now knows the origin of Washougal's famed "Chuck Sun Jump" and the "Catcher's Mitt" - a vital piece of missing information in his Northwest motocross trivia. One year older, one year wiser.
Personal Sponsors: Credit Card Companies
