Between the Races: Jon Boucher

December 2, 2009 by Jesse Cecil
Filed under Between the Races

Jon Boucher is the creator of Next Moto Champion, a program designed to aid young road racers in transitioning from local mini-moto club racing to regional 125 or 250 series. Boucher plans to offer sixteen top youth riders a chance to compete for prizes and sponsorship. While being filmed for an upcoming series, Boucher says, the racers will face challenges and hone their skills in a two-week camp-like setting while battling for the grand prize: a $5,000 sponsorship package.

Next Moto Champion creator Jon Boucher with his son, Brad.

RRX: Talk a little about the idea behind Next Moto Champion.
Jon Boucher: The idea is that motorcycle racing in general is an expensive sport, and for [road racing], to really make it to the pros, you have to go through different steps or levels. There is a level that a lot of kids are able to get to that is basically the local racing clubs. They run on kart tracks, so these are bikes from 150cc four-stokes and lower—so, two-stroke 80s, a lot of NSR50s. That’s the local level, and when kids try to make the jump from the local level to a bigger level—the 125s and 250s—we lose about eighty percent of our athletes due to the expensive cost of the sport.

What Next Moto Champion tries to do is find talented riders at the local level and financially assist them in getting to the next level. We want talent to prevail. We don’t want racing to be all about who has the most money; we want it to be about which rider has the most talent, and we want to help those talented riders get to the next level.

And there will also be a TV show about it?
The Next Moto Champion show is basically going to travel the United States and search for talented riders. Then we’re going to invite the top sixteen youth riders in the country to a track where it’ll be really like a camp setting. These kids will be staying at the track, they’ll be doing tasks and challenges every day, and they’ll be practicing and riding over a two-week period. Then, in the last three days of that two-week period, there will be a race each day where we’ll take the total points of those three races to determine the Next Moto Champion. All the challenges up to that point will let them win prizes and equipment—toolboxes and all that stuff.

Twelve-year-old Daytona Anderson—2009 SCMINIGP champ—is one of the stars of Boucher’s pilot.

This is our first year, so we’re giving away a $5,000 sponsorship package. On the pilot we talk about $20,000, but it could be [more than] that, it just depends on which network buys the show. Next Moto Champion is really about helping kids get to the next level, so we do that through sponsorship [for] individual riders, and we also give away sponsorship packages. On the website you can see what the sponsorship package consists of—everything from leathers to tire-warmers to stands. We have a lot of coaching, a lot of training that’s pretty expensive, but we’re giving it away to help kids out.

Do you know where that camp will take place?
I do, but we can’t say because what we don’t want is kids going to that track and practicing. We’re trying to level the playing field; we’re going to have all kids on stock bikes. This is all about talent. There are a lot of kids out there who should be in racing and aren’t, who are very talented and just don’t have the money. So we want to put all these kids on stock bikes [and] we don’t want anybody to have an advantage on a track. There are tracks that not a lot of people can get to, and so we want a track that people aren’t really familiar with.

How will the show be formatted?
Well, for a season you’re looking at about twelve shows. So with the first two shows, you’re going to see three month’s worth of us scouting, which is traveling coast-to-coast to racetracks looking for talent, getting phone calls and e-mails every day, and chasing down those leads. And we do chase those; I physically get in the car and drive and go do that. In fact, this weekend I’m going to look at a kid in Alabama. I’ve got a partner on the show, Joe Kocsis; he represents the Western part of the United States, and I do it for the Eastern part.

Aaron Villasenor, 13, is another of the Next Moto Champion-featured riders, and a 2009 SMRRC champion.

So the first two shows you’d see the scouting, and then we’re going to have our top sixteen. In one episode we send home four kids right away. We want to make it a good experience for them, but maybe they weren’t fast enough or their times weren’t good. We’re going to bring them to the track and let everybody run, and the top twelve times will stay. Then, from that point on, the kids break into teams and go through challenges where they’ll win boots, suits, tires; all the stuff they need to race that year.

You are still looking for applicants, so who’s eligible?
December 4 is our cutoff and we’ve gotten some resumes, but we’d love to get as many as possible from 5-14 [year-olds]. Basically, the Next Moto Champion sponsorship package is usually going to go to a kid that is on a 150cc four-stroke or an 80cc two-stroke, because the next level for them is to go on to a 125 or 250. But we also have ten honorable mentions that can be on any bike from 150cc and down, so it could be on a 50cc NSR, 65s, 80s; the honorable mention really opens the door. A lot of people will call me saying they didn’t think their kid would be eligible so they didn’t want to send a resume in. They didn’t understand that their kid could get the honorable mention as easily as anybody else, especially if they’ve had a good season

What made you decide to start Next Moto Champion?
I was vice-president of three different companies in the last twelve years, really big into corporate America. I had a break in my career and had an opportunity to look at what I wanted to do, and this is something that has really been a passion for me. I used to race, and my son races. He’s ten years old and he’s an amazing kid, like all these other kids. I mean, they put their heart and everything they’ve got into it. They’re ten years old and they’re winning championships! It’s just been a great thing; probably one of the best things that has ever happened to us as a family is racing and the way that it brings all of us together. We spend a lot of time as a family at the track and around each other; it’s just been an incredible thing. That’s one of the hopes that I have for getting this show on TV, is that other people will be able to experience how awesome racing is.

Visit www.nextmotochampion.com to view the Next Moto Champion pilot episode or check out the sponsorship packages being offered.