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The Citadelle of Namur - MX Illustrated Feature
News Thursday 25th January 2012 By Eric Johnson
There is no doubt the most incredible motocross track I’ve ever cast my eyes upon was the Namur circuit in Belgium. Growing up as a young kind looking through issues of Motocross Action, I would see pictures of the track and read about it, but there was no just way I could totally visualize what the place truly was about.
In 2000, Stefan Everts – and this was the year where he had he broke his arm on a Husqvarna and could not race – invited Johnny O’Mara and I to his home in Belgium and to go hang out at the Grand Prix at Namur.
It was a horrible time for Stefan and he felt like his career was slipping away. In fact, while waiting for Johnny’s jet to land, we were sitting in a café in the Brussels Airport and Stefan was so down and dejected he actually started crying. Man, I felt bad for him. The next day, we drove up all those hills and arrived in the city of Namur – a French-speaking Municipality and Capital of Wallonia.
I even remember Stefan, wheeling his Mercedes station wagon like a F1 driver, pulling over at a curb before big café where we were to procure our credentials. Inside the mirror lined café numerous people were drinking coffee, smoking, talking in French… It was SO very foreign to me. Later that day, upon arriving at the circuit itself and parking before a huge hotel, Johnny and Stefan and I decided to walk the entire track. Along the way, I remember the first rider we ran into was Josh Coppins (on a Suzuki then).
We were standing next to a large Pommes Frites that was situated on the main midway. The smell of grease filled the air. As we spoke, I took a moment to look down into a massive valley and, man alive, it just dropped forever. It made me realize just how high up above the city we actually were.
Directly behind us was the Citadel of Namur, a huge stone fortress dating back to third Century and a site the Battle of the Ardennes in 1941 as well as the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 during World War II. From there we kept walking, watching the riders tear up the green park lands and streak beneath the ancient footbridge before diving down into the dark forest. That’s where we walked next and that’s when it got real weird. Cloaked in dark shadows, the sun was barely able to pierce through the foliage. To me, it was downright eerie.
One of the first obstacles we came upon was this huge, totally blind drop off jump. I mean it just dropped like an elevator shaft. And at the bottom of the jump was a massive old tree. The thing was practically in the middle of the track. It was SO dangerous. I asked Everts why nobody bothered to remove it and he just kind of shrugged and said, “I guess it’s been there too long.” Okay…
After passing by that sketchy looking tree, the track would wind sinuously all around the forest, go up and down hills, and at certain points, narrow down to a mere 6 meters at some points). It was much more like an Enduro circuit than a motocross track. At one point, we came across a small section of track that if a rider were to leave the course, he and his bike would tumble down a very steep and unforgiving ledge and into the abyss. It was here the track managers put up a huge wall of wood – a sort of fence that ran along the section to keep the riders away from the most treacherous sections of the ledge. The dilapidated wooden structure looked 100 years old. O’Mara and I looked it all over. Looked at one another and Johnny said something like, ‘There is no way in the world I would race at this place.’
Read the rest of this amazing feature at our FREE e-magazine Motocross Illustrated. Link below.
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