The Everts family is a Belgium dynasty whose motocross World Championship results and reputation are unrivalled. A legacy that has gone through decades and decades of Grand Prix battle, and has spawned 14 World motocross championships. Gary Freeman, a family friend went deep into the Everts family tree and talked to not only Stefan and Harry Everts, but also Liam. It is a brilliant article and well worth a read.

Although Harry and Stefan need no introduction, Liam (Stefan’s son) is the fourth in a dominant generational blood-line of talented achievers. Some will know the name Jef Teuwissen - the fourth motocross star in the Evert’s story. Jef was Harry’s uncle (his mother’s brother) and raced against the old Grand Prix stars such as Joël Robert, Roger DeCoster, and Sylvain Geboers. He never won a Grand Prix - preferring to stay at home, but Harry remembers uncle Jef racing a special CZ in a Grand Prix in Belgium when he was a kid.

“He could have won that GP easily, but he gave the race to Joël Robert - that I’ll never forget. He was also an MXdN winner at Fairleigh Castle in 1969 riding for team Belgium together with Roger De Coster, Sylvain Geboers and Joël Robert. Everyone called him The Sand King. He lived next-door with my mum and dad, so as a kid I was always in their garage looking at his bikes. Uncle Jef helped start my interest in bikes and racing.”

Name: Harry Everts

Date of birth: 6th February, 1952

Place: Maaseik, Belgium

Years active: 1970 - 1982

Teams: Puch, Bultaco, Suzuki

GP Championships: 250cc - 1975

125cc - 1979, 1980, 1981

GP wins: 25

“I got my first real break in 1974 when I signed to ride the factory Puch MC250 Twin-Carb and wow it was so fast and so light. Faster than the Japanese bikes. Puch always said that once they’d won the World Championship they’d stop racing. When I won in 1975 I had a contract for another year, so I stayed with them in 1976 and then I switched to Bultaco in 1977. The Bultacos broke so many times and I started looking at the Suzukis with envy. I really wanted to sign for them and there was a chance as Sylvain had retired and now worked for Suzuki. I made an approach via Sylvain, but by late 1978 there was no news, so in November that year I flew to Barcelona to sign again for Bultaco. When I arrived the boss had gone to Madrid, so I had to come home again with no deal. The day after a telegram arrived from Suzuki offering me a factory ride and I almost jumped through the roof with joy - so I flew to Japan and signed immediately. I needed that yellow bike and it took me to three consecutive World Championship wins.

“Stefan was born in November ’72 and within a few years he was on a bike, but I really didn't push him into motorcycles. If he wanted to go riding then we could go. If not it was no problem for me. But racing is an expensive sport, so I told him that unless he gets good results by the time he’s 18, then we’ll stop. His first race was in 1988 in Hechtel and at the time we had three Hondas. Three weeks before his first race Sylvain Geboers phoned me and said he’d seen Stefan riding and he couldn’t believe his speed - so he offed me Suzukis for Stefan. I explained that I had three Hondas, so I’d need a good offer to ride Suzukis - and I want the bikes that come in a wooden box, not the standard crate. We both knew what I meant because the hand prepared Suzukis always came in wooden boxes. They weren’t factory bikes, but they were special - very well tuned race bikes.

“Sylvain then called me back and said I could have two ‘wooden boxes’, so one week before Stefan’s first race we switched to Suzuki and the local newspaper ran a full page story about Stefan starting racing. This brought a lot of interest and the crowd around our tent was massive. I told Stefan to come out to meet the people, but he was shy - he didn't like it at all. In the race he crashed and crashed and crashed. And afterwards he cried and cried and cried. He said “Pappa, I will win the next race” - and he did.

“Once Stefan decided to race properly I changed my approach and became very tough on him - especially at the races. I remember at the 1992 250cc GP at Galarate (Malpensa, Italy) we had a big row and Stefan said he didn’t want my advice anymore, so at the next round at Schwanenstadt, Austria I took some medication to calm me down and just watched the race from the infield. After a couple of races Stefan wanted me back. Yeah, I was hard on him, maybe too hard, but when I was young we had nothing, we were so poor so all I knew was to push for success. Everything we made, we made on our own and Stefan also had to learn this - to work hard. But I must admit that he was the most professional I ever worked with - like a real pro-sportsman. My son, he was always perfect.

“When I see Stefan and Liam together I can see myself in them. Liam will be a good rider in the future - I’m 100% sure because I can see that he understands the bike and the track, but he’s still learning. For now he’s not complete, he’s too young and I cannot say he will be a World Champion but he’s already good and has a great technique, but we will have to make him hard - it’s the only way.

Name: Stefan Everts

Date of birth: 25th November, 1972

Place: Bree, Belgium

Years active: 1988 - 2006

Teams: Suzuki, Kawasaki, Honda, (Husqvarna), Yamaha

GP Championships: 125cc - 1991

250cc - 1995, 1996, 1997

500cc - 2001, 2002

MX1 - 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006

GP wins: 101

Being Harry Everts’ son was always going to be a tough ride. Harry himself an accomplished four-time World Champion (a few less then he really deserved) is a hard-hard man and a tough act to follow. But no-one really foresaw the GP wrecking machine that Stefan would become - and it’s still difficult to see anyone breaking his records.

Stefan Everts is the most successful Grand Prix motocross racer of all time and the statistics surrounding his successes are quite staggering. During his career he won 10 World Motocross Championships with 101 Grand Prix victories to his name and is still the only GP racer to become World Champion on all four Japanese manufacturer bikes. In 2003 he entered the International Six Day Enduro (ISDE) in Brazil (yes enduro!) for fun - and won. He’s a five-time Belgian Sportsman of the year and in 2006 was also presented with a Belgium Sportsman Lifetime Achievement Award for his services to motocross.

The focus and determination needed to win at world level is astonishing. But let’s remember that Stefan’s last six championships came consecutively in the second phase of his career. He retired in 2006 - so dominant that he was 210 points ahead of second placed Kevin Strijbos by the season’s end. With 25 points for a race win - well, as the saying goes - you do the maths. Yes, in points terms he was over four GP wins (that’s eight races) ahead and (theoretically) could have quit after the Czech GP August and still be Champion.

When Stefan retired it was an emotionally occasion to put it mildly. From the outside it certainly looked like he had many more years in him - way more fuel in the tank, but his mind was made up some three years earlier, as Stefan explains. “Back in 2004 I just woke up one day and something told me that I would retire in 2006. Once I’d made that decision I wasn't going to change my mind - so retiring wasn’t too hard for me. Looking back on my career I think I could have become a champion without too much help, but to become a real champion, a multi-champion that’s a big difference - and thanks for that goes to my father. The talent and knowledge I have - I got from him and my mother.

“When I was very young my dad just let me grow up in my own style and lead my my own life. I always loved to play outside, especially on my BMX bike – making jumps. And at one stage I was organising races in the backyard. I gathered all the kids together from the local community and organised BMX races on my motocross track and I would steal trophies from my dad’s collection and give them away to the winners.

“As a kid I also loved to collect stickers from the championship riders. These days the kids are looking for helmets and race shirts, but I was always collecting stickers. Then I started selling them to my friends to make money to go and buy candy at the shop. I always enjoyed challenges and I suppose organising the BMX races was the first early steps to me organising the Everts and Friends Charity Races which ran for 10 years and raised over €400,000 for charity.

“When I was a child my dad really didn't care too much what I was doing because he was so busy with his racing and travelling around a lot. I went to a lot of the races with him but I also had to go to school and sometimes I had to stay at my grandparents’ house, which was just next-door. I was always very sad when I couldn't go to the races because I used to love it. Then on the Monday after the race I remember being so happy to see them, but they were always so tired and didn't seem so happy to see me. That was always difficult for me to understand and accept. All of these years later I can now understand how they were feeling because I was also very tired on the Monday after race and I also feel it now after managing the Suzuki team at the motocross Grand Prix races.

“Now we have Liam; and like my dad never pushed me when I was a kid, I will not push him. I just let him do his thing now. Dad takes him riding and sometimes I also take him. I tell him the truth when I see an issue with his riding and of course this usually ends up with some ‘discussions’ between the two of us. If he knows I'm right he won't say anything, but if he thinks he knows better then I just let him go and do what he wants and he will learn his own way. I don't want to put any pressure onto Liam, but I do think it's very important that my kids are well educated and learn discipline from very early age. They need to treat people well, be polite and show respect to others – all the basics. I want Liam to be a good guy with people; and up until now I only hear good comments. I don't want to hear that he is a little bastard behind our back!

We already see Liam developing a standing motocross style similar to yours. How did you develop that style?

“I'm not completely sure. I used to ride a lot with guys who were into free riding trials bikes – in the forests and sand quarries. I rode with them and we use to do hillclimbing and some jumps. It’s possible to have a lot of fun in a small area on a trials bike. Of course you can't sit down, so really I think my motocross riding style came from riding trials bikes.

“One of the first things that I told Liam to do when he started riding was to stand up - and I'm certain this is the right way to ride a bike. When riding and racing, understanding your bike and understanding the track and finding traction is really important. If you sit down a lot you put extra weight on the rear shock which causes compression and rebound - and this wastes time. If you stand you can use your body to absorb bumps much easier and so acceleration and track speed should be faster. Also balancing the bike and standing into the turns is in my mind always the fastest approach. It’s also important to save the energy transitioning from sitting to standing and back again - this all takes energy. Actually I worked out a way of using bumps to kick me from seated position to a standing position, so on the occasions when I needed to sit, I looked for bumps to help lift me into a standing position and this also saved my energy.

Tell us how Harry taught you how to ride?

“He didn't really teach me how to hold onto the handlebars or where to put my feet. In the early days he just let me ride my bike. I really learnt the early skills myself and I also watched other riders and copied how they rode. Maybe my best and worst moment was the first time I ever got on a bike and twisted the throttle wide open and rode straight into a wall so hard that I broke the forks. After that I wouldn't get on the bike again for about three months.

“I think the biggest thing my father taught me was how to become a champion. He taught me hard work and showed me how to suffer. And I did suffer. I learned to suffer more and more and more going deeper and deeper and deeper. Some people automatically know how to suffer – it’s a natural thing that’s in them, but to me it was very tough to learn at a young age – to learn how to push my limits. A big thanks also goes to my (and my father’s) trainer Willy Linden. He was there for me every

day. He came to pick me up and trained with me, putting a programme together. I trusted him and never questioned anything that he asked me to do. It was very tough in the first five years learning to push my limits. There was also the mental side that he helped me with - especially in 1992 / ’93 and ’94. So it was first the physical side that I needed to get right, but the mental side . . . that took me longer to figure out. To get the system right in my head - to be balanced in the best possible way. You need experience to teach that and Willy helped a lot. After about 10 years of racing I started to understand everything a lot better and if I look back now I realise that I didn't know what I was doing in the early years. It's funny to admit this now, but this is how it was. Of course we expect the kids to learn all of this quickly now, but in the past we didn't expect a champion at only 17 or 18 years old. That was a crazy idea. But looking at Ken Roczen or Jeffrey Herlings or Christophe Pourcel - now we expect this.

When you talk about learning how to suffer, do you mean just in training or in racing too?

“Both. What you learn during the week you take to the race. If you don't learn how to suffer during the week then how can you suffer the weekend?

“Of course the training wasn’t easy and because I decided to race ‘properly’ my father became much harder on me. And if I didn't train the right way he was very very angry. I remember often going home really pissed off after a ‘discussion’ with my dad. So again, once I’d decided that I wanted to race to win a championship my father turned around completely from being easy-going to extremely tough. Certainly without having him on my side I really don't think that I would have become a multi-champion. I think I would become a champion but maybe not so many.

“My father taught me discipline and that doesn't come for free. You have to fight for it. And once the gate drops, everybody wants to take it from you and nobody can help you. Its just you and your bike and the track. It's a hard world and as a young kid you have to learn how to deal with all of that, but I grew stronger and stronger to a point where nothing bothered me anymore. It really didn't matter who said or did whatever. I was above everything and it would not affect or influence me and I think this is a key problem with those who are weak and fragile – they’re influenced far too easily and I even see this with Kevin Strijbos. He gets distracted and it takes away from his focus and results. How to achieve results in motocross is like a puzzle and if you're not focused enough to develop that technique you can never get that far in this sport.

At what point will you switch into a much tougher mode with Liam?

“In some ways I’m already tough with him, but life is different now to how it was when I was young and learning. Of course I experienced the way my father did it with me and I said to myself that I want to do it differently with Liam. I don't want to be a weight on his shoulder because he will have enough weight with the name Everts on his back. I want to be by his side to give him the right messages at the right moment and I hope that he will accept this and use it.

“My dad was always on my back, so I had double the weight to carry and it's this aspect I want to do differently with Liam. But I'm certainly going to be as harsh with him as my father was with me and he'll always get the truth - the good and bad. I am a black-and-white individual and I'm never going to change.

“In many ways Liam knows already what he does and doesn’t do well. From my side it's still good to add a little more fuel to the fire - to have a better result. We may have a few discussions about the right way, but he's never been right so far. At the same time I don't want to argue about every little point. I think sometimes they have to make their own mistakes to learn from. I don't want to try to prevent every mistake that he might make - I’ve seen some fathers do this. I just want to prevent the big mistakes so he rides in the safest possible way. I want to protect him and this is also the reason why I'm not pushing him right now because I don't want him to get injured. He's too young to get a serious injury.

“There are many championships for the kids to race in, which is very nice, but I'm not so interested for Liam to enter all of these races because it won't change anything for his future. If he becomes a World Champion, the smaller championship races will not really affect those chances. Certainly it's good to choose some of the youth championship races to build up his experience and this will also help him when the real racing starts. This also applies to media attention too. When I started, I started from zero and going into top-class racing - this was a big shock.

“Liam is like me in many regards though. He will ride his bike in until the gas is empty. I remember running out of fuel as a kid and getting so angry because I wanted to ride again - so I refuelled my bike myself and I forgot to tighten the fuel cap. All the fuel spilled out on my dick and it started to burn like hell. I came back in crying and my parents started to pour water on me to get the fuel off. It wasn’t my best moment.

Stefan is a father of two and since his retirement from racing he’s managed KTM’s MX2 Grand Prix team and took the Austrian brand to seven (yes seven!) MX2 World Championships before taking ownership of Sylvain Geboers’ GRP Suzuki operation at the end of 2015.

The GRP team hosts Kevin Strijbos, Arminas Jasikonis in MXGP, Jeremy Seewer, Bas Vaessen and Hunter Lawrence in MX2, Zachary Pichon in the EMX250s, Jett Lawrence in EMX85s and his teammate - a young and developing talent by the name of Liam Everts, son of Stefan and grandson of Harry.

Name: Liam Everts

Date of birth: 6th August, 2004

Place: Lummen, Belgium

Years active: 2001 - Present

Bikes / Teams: Yamaha, KTM, Suzuki

First championship race win: EMX65, St. Isidorushoeve, Holland 1st May, 2016

Liam, can you say how you feel when you ride your motocross bike?

“When I ride I feel empty inside and I like that feeling of being able to focus on one thing - just doing my thing, me and my bike. I sometimes have school homework to do, but when I’m on my bike I can leave all of that behind me and that’s nice.

How does your dad help you?

“My dad helps me a lot with riding and I try to remember everything he tells me and if I remember things like choosing the right passing spots like he tells me - then I can make the passes happen.

And what about grandpa Harry?

“My grandpa also takes me riding when my parents are busy and I like that because he teaches me some old stuff for the old days - and that’s what I like as well. It’s nice to ride with him. He tells me a lot to go into the turn a little faster. And sometimes I take a bad line and he reminds me to take the good line. He says that I look good on the bike and I hope I can look good at the races as well.

Liam & Stefan discussion

Stefan: “You remember when grandpa told you to stand up in that turn and you crashed two times?”

Liam: “I made a mistake two times - not crashing. I didn't crash, you’re not right. I am right.”

Stefan: “Grandpa said you crashed two times”

Liam: “Oh that turn! Now I remember. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He saw Bas take a good line and grandpa said I was too . . . “

Stefan: “Slow”

Liam: No. No. Not too slow. Too aggressive going into the turn so I started standing on the foot-pegs and it was better.”

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Do you like the ‘standing up’ way of riding?

“Yes, it’s much easier than sitting in the berm and letting it hang out. It’s better to ride easy and smooth everywhere. That’s the way I like, but I also like to try my own style. When I can stand, I do - but his [Stefan’s] style is his style. And my style is my style. Papa tells me that I turn out my left foot in the turns - and this is what they tell me grandpa used to do when racing. I like that.”

Can you say what you think is your personal style?

“Yes, but there are lots of things that need to lean still. I’m working on it and doing the best I can all the time. I’m not so sure what my style is, but most of the guys say I ride on the pegs. I’ll try to keep it that way and we’ll see what the future brings. I hope I can get one World Championship - then I’ll be happy and then we’ll see what the next goal is. My goal for this year is just to improve and get my riding better and not anything bigger then that for now.”

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Few would question the ethics of hard work, but getting the balance right between working too hard and not working hard enough can be a tough call.

Some will recall Ken Roczen’s battle to find a training programme that suited him when he moved to USA. Just weeks into the 2015 season it was announced that Roczen had split from trainer Aldon Baker, allegedly due in part to the rigorous regime the former mountain bike racer is known to put his athletes through. Perhaps there’s an example of a programme being too inflexible (meaning too hard) to cater for an individual’s needs. But Baker wasn’t a motocross racer and looking at what Stefan achieved in his 18-year racing career - he got it right in virtually every regard and there’s little doubt that he’ll take Suzuki to new heights as their new team boss. Just look at what he’s achieved with Jeremy Seewer and the virtually unknown (until now) Arminas Jasikonis.

Upon retirement Everts turned all of that experience and work ethic into unquestioned results for KTM’s factory MX2 team, not only winning them seven championships, but also setting up their entire MX2 Belgian based operation and advising on future rider signings such as Jordi Tixier, Pauls Jonass and Jorge Prado - a setup that he’s now having to compete against as he pushes his Suzuki MX2 team forward in the MX2 World Championship.

I’ll admit that I’ve heard it said on occasions that Stefan’s too tough, too inflexible, too stubborn. But he’s also the most successful GP rider on the planet with more Grand Prix race wins and world titles than any other rider to date. Those opinions are only opinions, we all have them, but it doesn’t make them right. Given the choice of being tough with 10-titles or weaker with lesser results, I know which most would choose.

Stefan Everts (like his father before him) is a legend, so let’s give him the last word:

“I am a black-and-white individual and I'm never going to change. The basics in life apply to everyone. Whether you’re a businessman or sportsman or an office cleaner. Work hard, use your intelligence and discipline and you will see the results. All of these life skills apply to motocross.

Practice. Practice. Practice. Listen to good advice. Control the bike, push your limits and the results will come. There’s only one way. But without hard work and focus - you can forget it.”