I threw my goggles, my water bottle, and my hat into the crowd. Someone handed me a bottle of champagne and I sprayed it all over the place. I saw my parents, Kicker, Grandpa Motorcycle, and Cody out there, looking pretty much the proudest I’d ever seen them look. My dad was punching the air. We’d dreamed about this for so long.
In the white canvas media tent, I talked to the journalists, my dad acting as my translator. A reporter from the New York Times who had been following me that weekend was there with a cameraman. He gave me a big thumbs-up. I remember feeling proud to even be at a press conference. This felt like Christmas—better than Christmas—and all my birthdays rolled into one. A whoosh of images—broken bones, riding in Wolverine Forest, Grandpa Motorcycle smiling—all exploded in my mind. It felt like my journey, starting with riding my PW50 bike through the woods in Michigan, was flashing in front of me. This is what everything had been pointing toward. Today.
That night we went back to the hotel, too exhausted to celebrate anymore. I slept harder than I had in months.
The next day I still had to race the second moto—but it was a mere formality at this point as I already had all the points I needed to win the championship. I could concentrate on actually having some fun. The gate dropped and I took the holeshot. Not long after Jessica pulled around me, and then Tarah. The two of them duked it out in front of me. Tarah ended up winning her first moto of the season, and I was happy for her. I came in third in that moto. But I was twenty-nine points ahead of Jessica Patterson overall, and won the championship.
That night, I was in the mood to celebrate. A group of WMA girls, Miki, and my family and I headed to a Pittsburgh restaurant called Smokey Bones. After such a tense season, everyone was ready to let off some steam—and I don’t think the restaurant knew what they were in for. Toward the end of the meal, as a joke, I took some whipped cream from my pie and dabbed it on the nose of one of the moms sitting next to me. Tarah Gieger pointed at Cody with a wicked glint in her eye. I flung a handful of whipped cream at Cody, narrowly missing him but hitting my agent—thunk—in the middle of his forehead. After that, our table descended into chaos, with everyone flinging food and Kicker racing around the table like a lunatic. The Smokey Bones manager threatened to kick us out, but nobody seemed to be paying much attention. It’s a moment I’ll never forget. And I don’t think they will either.
R&R
Back in St. Augustine, I gave myself a couple months to relax—time off is really important to me. The way I see it, taking time out just helps make me more hungry to win. After not being on a dirt bike for a while, I start craving it. Time out also gives me a chance to reflect. What did this all mean? Now that I was the WMA champion, where was I supposed to go from here? When I wanted to switch off my thoughts, I would make little movies—sometimes poor Kicker would get to star in them, and I’d dress him up in funny costumes, making him look like a rapper, with jewelry and a backward baseball cap. Universal Studios and Disney World are just a few hours’ drive away, so I went there and checked out the roller coasters. Sarah had gotten me into roller coasters—when we went to MGM Studios one time, she joked that if I didn’t go on the roller coaster with her, she’d write that I was a big wimp in her magazine column. So of course, I got on, and now I can’t get enough of crazy fairground rides.
With my friend pro skateboarder Lyn-Z Hawkins, at the 2008 Women’s Sports Foundation’s benefit dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.
After winning the WMA, I made the cover of TransWorld Motocross magazine, the first woman racer to do so. The two biggest motocross magazines are TransWorld and Racer X, and Donn Maeda, the editor of TransWorld, had been a supporter of mine for a long while. He even invited me to write a monthly column for them, “Silence.”
Courtesy of Donn Maeda at TransWorld Motocross magazine.
And the coverage wasn’t limited to motocross publications—all kinds of magazines and newspapers wanted to talk to me now. Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and Paper magazine. That’s how I met Caroline, the journalist who wrote this book with me—through Paper magazine. She thought what was happening in women’s motocross was interesting and believed it was a story more people needed to hear. It was heartening, seeing people who might never have given motocross a second glance starting to take an interest in this world.
Many publications seemed to be especially intrigued by the fact that I am deaf. I had to become skilled at giving interviews with my parents translating. There aren’t many journalists who can sign, and we do a lot of interviews on the phone. Sometimes it feels like I do more interviewing than training. But it’s part of the job, and I’m always happy to tell the world about what I do. To this day, I believe my deafness, while on the surface defined as a handicap, has helped me in ways I could never have imagined. I’ve had to be tougher and work harder than hearing folks. And my deafness has made people pay more attention to the sport than they would have if I was a regular, hearing girl.
Victim of Motocross
Being a motocross family is never easy. For so long, 99 percent of our lives had been focused on me—me racing a dirt bike and me getting better at it. There were so many money issues and sponsorship issues and motocross issues that other things—like the health of my parents’ marriage—had been pushed to the sidelines.
My mom and dad—Roni and Jim from Dearborn, Michigan—had always believed that God had given them a girl with a talent, a deaf girl with a talent, and that it was their duty to help that talent grow to its maximum potential. But the constant traveling, the lack of privacy, the worrying about money—after a while it all became too much to bear. I think they just both got tired.
When my parents told me and Kicker that they were splitting up, I was sad, but the announcement didn’t come as a huge surprise. They had been living relatively separate lives for a while—my mom staying home with Kicker, my dad training with me on the road. I tried to be as understanding as I could, although I worried that maybe it was my fault.
“It’s got nothing to do with you or Kicker,” my mom reassured me. “These are issues between me and your dad.” They explained that sometimes love isn’t enough for people to make a marriage work. It takes time and effort and communication, and they’d allowed themselves to neglect one another as they helped me fulfill my motocross dream. They promised me that things were going to carry on as they always had, in terms of my motocross. I wanted them both to be happy and all of us to keep working together, but I accepted that some things would have to change.
My dad decided he would move into the motor home and park it in an RV park close to our home while he and my mom figured out the next steps. Kicker was pretty upset—he didn’t want my dad to leave. But ours was an all-too-common story—each year young athletes’ families break up because of the pressures. Some motocross parents have had to remortgage their home two or three times just to support their kids’ racing. You can imagine the toll that takes on everyone. Suddenly we had to face the possibility that the Fioleks, too, would become a moto-cross statistic.
Courtesy of American Honda
chapter 8
FACTORY GIRL
Trip to the Outback
November in St. Augustine—I loved this time of year. The oppressive humidity of the summer months had eased and finally I could breathe without having to blast the AC all the time. The motocross season was over, and it was time to regroup, relax, and make plans for the following year. Ordinarily, my dad would light fires out in the back and invite his buddies over when the nights started getting cool. Now he was living in the motor home, and the house felt quieter. He came over to visit plenty, but still—I missed him.
One afternoon Cody and I were hanging out, playing with Kicker, when my mom called us over. “Your dad and I want to take you for dinner,” she signed.
“Sure,” I said. When it comes to eating out, you don’t have to twist my arm. “Where are we going?” There was something tense in her manner. I could tell she was holding
something back, but I didn’t know what.
Cody seemed less enthusiastic—unlike me, he’s not always hungry. “You guys go, and I’ll stay here and look after Kicker,” he said.
But my mom wasn’t taking no for an answer. “No, you should be there, Cody. We need to talk about next year’s plans.” Both Cody and I stiffened—what did she mean? My dad wanted us to meet him at an Outback Steakhouse nearby. Cody fidgeted the whole way there—I could tell he was nervous. I was in the passenger seat next to my mom, and she seemed very focused on the road. Something’s going on, I thought.
We walked into the steakhouse and found my dad. He had already ordered some drinks and appetizers. We sat down, and after a few minutes’ small talk my mom started rummaging around her handbag, pulling out a piece of paper with something printed on it. She handed it to me.
“This is what your next motorcycle is going to look like,” she said. I looked at the cut-out—it was a top-of-the-line Honda works bike, the kind the factory boys ride. I didn’t get it. I looked at Cody, and he seemed just as confused. My mom and dad started laughing. “Ashley, this is your bike,” said my dad. “It’s brand-new.” A brand-new factory bike, for me? This could only mean one thing—was I really on the Honda Factory team? I was stunned and thrilled. No woman in American motocross had ever been invited to join a factory team before.
I had so many questions, it was hard to know where to begin. How had this come about, how long had they known, were they sure? I had no idea that Honda was considering making me the fifth member of their elite factory team. It turned out my agent and parents had been talking with reps from the major bike companies all year long. After my WMA performance and the attention that brought, Honda had decided to make me an offer. My parents had been negotiating for months but hadn’t said a word about it. “We didn’t want to distract you from your racing,” said my dad. “And honestly, we didn’t want you to feel let down if it didn’t work out.”
The waitress came by to take our orders and I asked for the biggest steak on the menu—this called for a celebration! The first person we called was Donn Maeda from TransWorld. “Oh, I had a feeling this was in the cards,” he said. “I’ve been telling Honda for years you needed to be on their factory team.”
My mom was holding the phone, talking to him, acting as a conversational go-between. “Well, looks like they might have listened to you, Donn,” I signed.
Being on a factory team meant that finally my family would be relieved of the financial burden of paying for me to get to races. From now on, Honda Red Bull Racing would cover hotel rooms and flights for me and Cody. My dad would actually be able to keep the money he made from his job, rather than spending it all on me. We formed a company from which I would draw a salary and pay for my family’s travel expenses. Honda would give me parts and fix my bike. Finally, I was going to make a living—a good one—out of racing a motorcycle. That day’s news was a sign that the tide was really starting to turn for female racers.
Golden State
In December 2008, Honda invited me to their facility in Torrance, California. There, I would be officially introduced to my new factory teammates Andrew Short, Ivan Tedesco, Ben Townley, and Davi Millsaps. I had grown up racing with Davi in Florida, and when he saw me, he stopped in his tracks. “No way! It’s you,” said Davi, beaming. Honda Red Bull had told the boys that there was going to be a new addition to the team but they hadn’t said it was going to be a girl.
My new ride. Courtesy of American Honda
Testing, Testing
We set to work testing my bike right away, seeing how it responded to my body, build, and riding style under every imaginable set of conditions. If I didn’t like the way my bike was reacting to anything I would tell the team of Honda mechanics and they would adjust it and cut it down. The aim was to make the bike and me run like one entity. Cody was still on board, washing my bike, changing tires, and greasing things up, but now I had a whole new team of super mechanics too, one looking after my engine, another in charge of my suspension, another for my chassis—as many as ten dedicated technicians for just five factory racers. We’d test the bike at various tracks, under different conditions—one time, Honda rented the entire Glen Helen track so its factory riders could test!
Because of all the testing, Honda encouraged us to move to California for the next five or so months, so I could be based close to their workshop. There, they could get my bike into tiptop condition while I prepared for the next WMA season, the X Games, and the European grand prix races. It seemed to make sense—my mom, Kicker, and I would find a house in California, and my dad would stay back in Florida, and carry on working his job.
Honda decided to tell the rest of the world about their newest factory rider—me—at the official opening of the Red Bull training facility, a month or so later. It made sense, as all the motor-sports press and industry top brass would be there.
By the time I arrived, the place was buzzing with media. And when the Honda officials called them in for a press conference, I could tell many of the journalists were more than a little surprised to see a tiny blond girl wearing the factory Honda jersey. By the end of the day, though, they seemed almost as excited as we were. This marked the start of a new era in women’s moto-cross!
I was presented with my new ride: Honda’s CRF250R, even though I was riding on a 450 team. (Girls aren’t actually permitted to ride 450 dirt bikes at pro races—a 250 is as high as we could go. For my height and weight, I’m more than happy on a 250.) Immediately after the party, the team started customizing it, shortening the frame, cutting the seat down, and trimming the handlebars for me because I’m so tiny. As a factory rider, I now had a team of experts available to me, experts whose sole job it was to ensure that my bike was exactly as I needed it. At races, they would be at my disposal, working on everything from my motor to my chassis to my suspension. There was a whole village behind me now, it seemed.
My new team. Courtesy of American Honda
The bikes themselves were unlike anything I had ridden before. I was always the type of kid who would ride anything—even if the handlebars were mangled, I’d hop on. Now I was riding bikes whose suspension alone could cost $75,000. Riding prototype machines added a whole new dimension to my life in motocross. Along with practicing and racing, testing would now be a big part of my life.
A Big Girl Now
My dad has always wanted nothing but the best for me. He’s demanded perfection, as have I. To be a good motocross coach you have to be tough. But having Jim Fiolek be my coach and my father had become confusing. I wanted my father back.
We had talked about it regularly over the years—in fact, my dad had offered to stop coaching me several times but I hadn’t felt ready to separate from him. The tension between us was part of the reason we had brought in trainers to work with me, like Ronnie Tichenor and Shannon Niday. We hoped they would take the pressure off and give us the space we needed to build a normal father-daughter relationship. But I always ended up asking him to be my coach again. No one else could communicate with me the way he did. No trainers knew sign language. Quite simply, I needed my father there. He knew me and what I was capable of, what I could and couldn’t do. We had a language that no one else understood.
In the end, there was no earth-shattering moment, no monumental argument that led to our parting ways as athlete and coach—like my parents’ separation, this was something that had been building up for years. But now, in February of 2009, taking some space just seemed to make sense. We both felt it was for the best. It was a strange time for me. My parents’ relationship was on the rocks, my dependence on my father was dissolving. I was in emotional free fall.
I soon found out it wasn’t easy flying solo. You have to push yourself. You have to be organized and plan your own strategy. I was used to my dad telling me when to practice, when to ride, where to ride, how much to ride—I had to start doing all that on my own.
Leaving my father behind in Florida whil
e the rest of us moved to California wasn’t easy. “I wish I could be the person who helps you go faster,” my dad told me as we said good-bye. My mom and Kicker were waiting in the truck, and there were tears in his eyes.
“You are, Dad,” I signed. “You always have been.”
California Dreamin’
After our California visit in January, we had about three months to prepare ourselves for the big move. We returned the Monday after Easter, headed for our new home in Riverside County—the spiritual home of motocross. We wanted to spend around half of the year there, and our good friend Rick Wernli, a devoted member of the motocross clan who had been my mechanic on and off, offered to help us get settled. He found us a house in Canyon Lake, a pretty, gated lakeside community with fourteen miles of shoreline. Best of all, it was within a forty-five-minute drive of some of the region’s best tracks—Perris Raceway, Glen Helen, Competitive Edge Raceway, Starwest, and Pala Raceway.
Even though the last two or three years have seen more of the motocross industry relocate to Florida or Texas, SoCal is generally where it’s at in my sport. The epicenter is southwest Riverside County between Corona and Temecula, about an hour and a half east of L.A. Top men pros like Ricky Johnson and Broc Glover came from there, specifically from the El Cajon area (they call it the “El Cajon Zone”). Go to any popular open riding area on any given day in our new home base, and you’d most likely find ten to fifteen major pro racers out there training. Super-cross heroes Jeremy McGrath, Chad Reed, and James Stewart had homes in the area, as did my friend E-Bash—now we were neighbors.
Motocross flourished in this part of the world partially because it’s where all the factories are based. Honda is in Torrance, Yamaha is in Buena Park, Suzuki is in Fullerton, and Kawasaki is in Irvine. And when the factories need to test bikes, they can take them into the wide open spaces of Riverside County.
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