Video: RC and Reed – from rivals to friends
Ricky Carmichael and Chad Reed gave an interesting insight into what their rivalry was like during their careers and why they are now friends during the Gypsy Tales podcast while in Australia – and both revealed that there was a lot more mutual respect that it sometimes appeared!
“He wanted to kick my ass,” said Carmichael on the intense rivalry for supercross supremacy, with Reed agreeing,” and vice versa.”
“There was a huge amount of respect,” added Reed. “Put a helmet on and some goggles and drop the gates and it was whoever could win, and you did what you had to do to win.”
“The one thing I always remember,” continued Reed, “everybody talked about how much gas he burned and how much he rode, and I remember as a kid being like, ‘Ricky Carmichael rides a lot, and I would just ride for hours and hours, a 20 litre gas can to the track and didn’t leave until that thing was empty you know?
“For me I feel like it wasn’t us who made the beef it was the people surrounding us, the entourage. That’s what it really was,” said RC. “Like Chad said, there was a lot of mutual respect there.”
And Reed felt the rivalry was different with Carmichael than it was with Stewart. “For us I don’t remember a time, whatever happened in the race, good, bad or ugly or whatever, there was always a handshake, whereas James and I, you wouldn’t even look at him but Ricky and i had a different rivalry, it was all left on the race track.”
On becoming friends, Carmichael said: “I think as soon as I stopped racing. It got better in 07, but I wasn’t racing for a championship. Obviously you can let your guard down when I quit racing professionally and then I became one of his biggest fans.”
While Reed commented: “I would say to go back a little bit and we started to become a little bit closer, was when I went to Suzuki and Ricky came down to my house and my track, that was that first moment where (you think), ‘ waow Ricky Carmichael is at my track.’ We did a photo shoot together and went testing and it’s funny, suspension wise we are completely in different plants but chassis wise we are actually really, really close.”
For the full interview on the topic see below:
