01-25-2008
No Pain, No Gain for Steffani Burton/MOTOCROSS
By CLINT WOOD/ Brainerd Daily Dispatch in Brainerd, MN.
This 21-year-old's cellular phone voice mail includes statements
like: "I'm out mobbing doubles and hucking triples. Ičll hit you
back when I run out off tear offčs"
It's just one example of how much Steffani Burton, a 2004
Brainerd High School graduate, loves motocross racing. This
racing jargon has become part of her vocabulary. Mobbing doubles
means attempting to clear two jumps somewhat close together on
one jump while hucking triples means jumping over three jumps a
few feet apart in one attempt.
Burton's love of the sport went over the top in the fifth-annual
2007 AMA/Women's Motocross Association Drill Tech Cup Nov. 24-25
at Cycle Ranch MX Park in Floresville, Texas. Despite racing in
two, four-lap motos with a broken top part of her right arm, she
finished second overall in the 100cc and Up Women's Beginner
class. She finished second in her first moto and third in the
last one.
Steffani Burton raced her Suzuki RMZ 250 in the 2007 AMA/Women's
Motocross Association Drill Tech Cup Nov. 24 at Cycle Ranch MX
Park in Floresville,Texas.
She said that she raced her 2007 Suzuki RMZ 250 to the early
lead in both motos. This also earned her $100, $50 for each hole
shot.
In both of these motos, she said her right hand, her throttle
hand, went numb.
"I led the whole first moto," she said. "Literally three-fourths
before the finish, this girl from Honduras Alexandra Lopez)
passed me. I could not hang onto my bike anymore. I dropped my
bike at the finish line." The second
moto she pulled the hole shot as well and ended up crashing.
"The second moto was in the mud, usually I can race well in the
mud. That's what we do a lot here in MN, but my arm just could
not hold on with the mud. Plus it was the end of the week, and
it (my arm) had enough." Burton worked her way up from 4th in
the second moto to finish 3rd.
Lopez, racing a Kawasaki, won both motos in the event, the
largest women's motocross event in history.
Burton, who underwent surgery Nov. 29 to repair her shoulder and
arm, also finished 12th overall in the 125cc D (Beginner) class.
Burton said her doctors said she had a "warped sense of what
pain really is" when they learned that she raced with this
injury since March.
Her shoulder injury was a Bankart Labral Tear where the labrum,
the rim orcuff of tissue around the shoulder socket, is torn
off.
"Which means I broke the top part of my arm," she said.
"My labrum was 180 degrees in the wrong direction."
She said an excessive amount of cartilage was removed and her
rotator cuff was also repaired. "My doctors said it was the
worst shoulder they have ever repaired."
Her injury came at a track in Phoenix during the start, where a
sweepingleft hand turn merged with the whoop (rhythm) section of
the track.
"I had my bike in fifth gear and tapped," she said. "All my bike
had."
She said she got pushed wide and hit the last whoop, her bike
started to swap back and forth until it finally high sided. She
was thrown off and run over by several of the other racers. "I
had the hole shot that time too. I
don't even really remember finishing the race, it's all a blur."
She said fellow racers said she looked like "a rag doll in the
air."
Burton, who competed in junior Olympic volleyball, Alpine
skiing, track and golf while in high school, has only been
involved in motocross racing for a little more than a year.
After graduating from high school, she also won a National
Championship in freestyle reining in July, 2004, at the 12th
annual Youth National Arabian and Half Arabian Championship
Horse Show in Albuquerque, N.M., and in the same year went on to
win the 2004 Canadian National Championship in Arabian Reining
Seat Equitation 14-17 in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada in August
2004.
A senior design major at Arizona State University in Tempe,
Ariz., Burton decided to get into motocross racing as something
to do in her spare time.
"So I hopped on a dirt bike," she said.
Burton's first ride on a track didn't start off well. She landed
wrong off a double, dislocated her left shoulder and broke her
arm.
"That was the first of the many injuries that I had in the last
year and a half," she said.
Her injuries have included both wrists also. With another wrist
surgery scheduled this coming February.
When asked why she keeps racing, she replied, "I absolutely love
it, I would love to be able to quit, but I can't.
"There's nothing like that feeling of being on the line, all the
bikes next to you are revving and you're getting ready to start
and the gate drops. There is nothing like that feeling in
the world."
Burton admitted that she rides "scared" on the bike. "If I'm not
scared, I'm not riding fast enough," she said. "What makes you
fast is you twist and hold. If I come into a corner way too fast
and I think I'm not going to make it, I just lay my bike over
and think 'Huh.' It was scary coming in because I was coming in
way too hot but that is how I ride."
After she is cleared by her doctors to race in May, her goals
this season are to place well in some of the amateur national
events shečll attend and win the Texas race. Her long-term goal
is to remain in racing.
"I would love to stay in racing, love to advance and actually do
something with it. Of course I need to have a real job to
support it," she said.
