A Look Back at Past National Champions

By Miki Keller

This weekend the 2008 WMA National Champion will be crowned and her name will be added to the list of exceptional women racers who through training, sacrifice, skill, determination, will, and sometimes a little luck, had the honor of accepting the number one plate and laying claim to being the best women’s motocrosser in the U.S.A.

Over the past 30 years the official and unofficial leaders of women’s motocross have always found a way, sometimes battling through much adversity, to organize a one–off event or a multi-stop series to determine our national champion.  Whether or not the championship was formally recognized by the American Motorcycle Association, or any other official sanctioning body for that matter, the winner was always held in the highest regard within the women’s racing community.

In an effort to document and honor the women champions who raced before this most recent generation, I enlisted the help some of the top women racers of their time including; Sue Fish - a champion through the mid 70’s and an AMA Pro licensed racer, Mercedes Gonzalez – a multi-time women’s national champion through the mid 80’s and early 90’s and arguably the most well known women racer pre-modern era, Tami Rice - creator of womensmxhistory.com and a racer and Bonnie Warch - top racer since the 1980’s and who, just this past May, competed in the WMA pro class at Hangtown.  All of these women were pioneers and leaders in their own right in their period of racing.  MX Sports, the organizers of the Loretta Lynn’s AMA Nationals, was also a great resource through their web site, mxsports.com.

For documentation, each champion’s race entry was verified from two sources.  Note, if anyone has been left out it was not intentional and, with proper verification, they will be added to the list, which will become a permanent feature on the WMA website, womensmotocrossassociation.com. This listing includes only the motorcycle national champion (not minicycle) noting that at some national events additional championships were awarded in other classes. Also other events, including those non-AMA sanctioned, that are held throughout the year and are loosely referred to as “nationals” by some racers are not included in this listing. This document focused on the most prominent champions of each year.

And here they are:

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