The GOAT Club – 102 Outdoor Wins for both RC & JH

So as has been well documented, Jeffrey Herlings broke the all-time MXGP win record at the Spanish Grand Prix, lifting his tally above that of Stefan Everts to 102 Victories at the highest level.  However, one other rider has won that many top-class events in outdoor Motocross – the rider known as the GOAT – Ricky Carmichael, who claimed 102 AMA Nationals in Pro Motocross over a remarkable career.  Just for a comparison, MX Vice shows you how JH84’s numbers compare to those of RC4, and as we already had them there, SE72 as well.

Words: Ben Rumbold | Featured Image: KTM / Richard DeLibertis

Year-By-Year:

As rapidly as Jeffrey has amassed his GP wins, with around 50 less starts than Stefan had to get to 101, he can’t match the sheer domination that brought Ricky his 102nd win in just 127 starts, only dropping 25 races across an incredible ten-and-a-half year career in AMA Pro Motocross.  Just to note of course that we are not including Supercross in all this.

Of course it did help RC’s tally that he had those two absolutely perfect seasons of 2002 & 2004. In comparison to Herlings, he also avoided injury incredibly well, not missing a single moto until the last race of 2006 when he hurt his shoulder at Glen Helen, had to pull in from moto one and skip moto two.  This is also what deprived us of seeing RC & SE battle it out at the Matterley Basin Motocross of Nations that year.

Opposition

Now this is where fans of the GP riders will look to pick a few holes in RC’s record – just how good were the people he beat?  Well, maybe John Dowd and Brock Sellards weren’t quite as tough to beat as Tommy Searle or Greg Albertyn, but both Stefan & Ricky battled Sebastien Tortelli for a title, the Frenchman getting the better of the Belgian in 1998 but finishing 78 points shy of the AMA Champ in 2000.

Jeffrey Herlings has passed RC for outdoor moto wins, and with one more GP win will move clear of his overall win tally as well. (Image: Ray Archer)

All three of our record holders – Stefan still holds the record for most world titles, don’t forget – have deprived great riders of being Champions in their own right. Marnicq Bervoets just couldn’t break the 1990s stranglehold of his fellow Belgian, and Searle & Seewer have been denied by Jeffrey at their very best. RC managed to keep out one of the ultimate stylists in the form of Kevin Windham, who was 2nd five-times to the mighty Floridian, and although he got closest in 2001, just 8 points behind, that’s because Ricky stepped down at the final round to race the 125cc class and shoot for the all-time record in that class.  That win, which took that record away from Mark Barnett, is reflected in Ricky’s numbers here, by the way.  Apart from that, only John Dowd, factory Yamaha-mounted in 1998, got to within 50 points of RC across that incredible ten-year unbeaten run.

Classes

Both Stefan & Ricky had to cope with the shift from two-strokes to four, but it made no difference whatsoever to the American, whereas the 450F probably suited Everts’ style more even than the outgoing 500cc two-strokes, on which Stefan won in his only attempt, at Namur 1998.  Jeffrey did stay in MX2 a little longer than most, but he did start at only 15 years old in the 250F class, and joined the big boys at the age of 22 for his 8th year of world class competition.

Stefan Everts is the only rider to collect world-class championships on four makes of motorcycle, as well as only the second to win in all three original GP categories.

Incredibly for a rider of such short stature, Carmichael only dropped 3 overall wins on the 450 machines, one when he got injured as previously mentioned, and the other two in close duels with new hot-shot, a promising lad by the name of James Stewart!

Machinery

Jeffrey Herlings has never left the comfortable bosom of the Red Bull Factory KTM team, and for a megastar in the social media age it is easy to see why. They really do have an awesome support network, only amplified by the amount of times Jeffrey has had to recover from serious injury. Stefan took some time to find that sort of home, and became the only rider to win world titles on all four Japanese manufacturers, ultimately forming that incredible alliance with Yamaha to turn his already awesome career into a record-breaking one.

Ricky was brought up as part of the immense Team Green programme, and won more with them than anyone else. Big money moves from Honda and then Suzuki mixed it up later in his career, but his domination meant he probably would have won on anything!

Ricky Carmichael closed his career out with Suzuki, dropping only three overall wins from his last 30 outdoor events.

Progress

Even bearing in mind that there were less AMA Nationals per year than the GP guys had for most of their careers, the rate at which RC racked up his wins was incredible, with a career win percentage of over 80% there was simply no stopping him. Jeffrey got close to that rate during his best years of 2013, ’16, and ’18, and Stefan had his awesome spells of domination in 2003 and ’06.

One thing which Jeffrey did in Spain is to lift his moto win tally above Ricky’s, moving on to 192 moto wins amongst his 102 GP overall victories. That magical number 200 is within his reach, and I’m sure that those celebratory boards will be getting worked on as we speak! But with an incredible ten-year championship run, it’s hard to argue with Ricky Carmichael’s incredible numbers in AMA racing. There is a reason why he’s known as the Greatest Of All Time.  How would he have fared against Jeffrey?  To quote The Bullet himself, “I guess you’ll never know!”.