Tell Us a Story, Doug Dubach

The doctor is in the house and on the cover of MXA. Move your cursor over the image to make it bigger.

"This is 1989 and I can totally remember this cover. As I was moving through the ranks and all that, I tended to look to the next thing, the next thing and these things didn’t impact me the way they should have. In hindsight though, it’s so cool to be on the cover of a major publication. At that stage in my life though, I still wanted to be a Ricky Johnson or whomever and didn’t stop to look at those types of things. I didn’t take it and think that I made it and went and bought a new truck and a stereo (laughs.) I was still driving a humble little Toyota. I thought that was cool and all but I just went and moved on to trying to get to the top step of the box.
 
That was my first main image cover, I had done a lot of testing for various magazines and was mystery guy on many covers. I was never really the main image but getting this MXA cover was very cool. That was a great day, it was Hangtown 250 national and it was kind of the beginning of becoming the holeshot king of that era. It was a great day, great weather, got both holeshots and led for a while. I ended up on the box that day. That’s Johnny O’Mara behind me, one of my long time heroes. And I’m leading him and on the cover of a magazine! So that was nice.
 
The 1989 season was pretty good for me, I finished fourth in the 500 nationals and sixth in 250 and supercross season. That was my best points scoring year of my career and it got me national number seven that next year. It was a good year, pretty injury free which the next few years were not. It seemed that I missed three to five races the next few years. It was always away from the AMA races that I got hurt as well. I got hurt at some Japan races, it always put a big damper on my AMA season.
 
In ’89 I was supported by Yamaha. I got a box van leased to me for a dollar. That’s how they did it back then to cover themselves. I got in the range of $60,000 for my expenses. I had to pay my then mechanic Steve Butler out of that and I got flights and hotels paid but I still had to cover a lot of my own expenses. I was like a B level guy. In ’89 the factory team was Micky Dymond and Damon Bradshaw and there were a bunch of us B level guys, like Mike Larocco, Larry Ward and a few others. I was right there on that tier. We were able to go racing but we weren’t making a ton of money.
 
I did get great parts this year actually. The year before I was driving my own vehicle and getting Race Tech to do suspension and Pro Circuit to do my motors but this year here, I had factory guys working on my bike. John Rosenthal was doing suspension and Bob Oliver was doing my engine. I had good stuff and I had to pay the gas and stuff like that but I had Yamaha’s truck.
 
If you look at me here, its O’Neal gear, Shoei helmets, Scott goggles, Dunlop tires and I still wear and use all that stuff today. I still receive a small salary and product from most of my sponsors because I’ve been loyal. Some of the young guys today could learn from that. At my ripe old age with my two races a year I still get help. I’m even wearing O’Neal boots, I was a die-hard and took one for the team!"