ith tenacity and speed through the tree-lined courses of the AMA Grand National Cross Country Series and polished professionalism before and after the flag waved, Scott Summers elevated the sport of off-road motorcycle racing from amateur to professional status during the nineties.
Now, with a return to full-time competition in 2004, he’s elevating the profile of off-road’s top apparel, Moose Racewear.
     Summers joins four-time GNCC champ Rodney Smith and a host of other top-level competitors in flying the Parts Unlimited-Moose colors.
     “Not only is Scott a great champion, he’s a great ambassador for the sport,” said Jeff Fox, CEO for Moose Racing parent company Parts Unlimited. “He played a major part in raising off-road and GNCC racing to the level it enjoys today—national television coverage and major corporate sponsorship. We think he can again enjoy tremendous success, certainly his results at selected races last season indicate that he still has the speed to run up front. And we’re very happy to play a part in his return to full-time racing.”
     More than his five national GNCC off-road championships, it was Summers’ gift for public relations that made him a favorite of his fans and sponsors alike. Not only did he usher in a new era of off-road racing, it could be said that his insistence on competing aboard the XR600 Honda also preceded the current movement from two-stroke to four-stroke machinery—even if that bike of battleship proportions hardly resembles current racing motorcycles of the cam-and-valve variety.
     Highlighting Summers’ unparalleled resume includes these considerable accomplishments: He was the first rider to win both the Cross Country or Hare Scrambles series on a four-stroke; the first rider to win the Hare Scrambles title two years in a row; the first to finish a Cross Country season with a perfect score; has won both the Cross Country and Hare Scrambles titles twice in the same year and he’s been the AMA Cross Country series’ Rider of the Year six times, not to mention the three ISDE gold medals.
     Unfortunately for both Summers and the sport he helped build, a broken femur in 1999 followed by numerous setbacks with the same injury forced his retirement. Still, Summers remained involved in turning a once and still (by definition) “backwoods” sport into the largest off-road racing series in the country—and a profitable endeavor for both himself and the riders who took his place on the podium after his retirement—by helping his agent Fred Bramblett found OMS limited, which has become one of two-wheeled motorsports’ most prestigious and successful rider representation entities.
     Last season, while still contracted to long-time sponsor Honda as a spokesman—and not a rider—Summers nonetheless parked his time-honored XR in favor of a more current ride in the form of a CRF450 and tested the waters of current competition in selected events. The result was a pair of top-five finishes against the finest off-road talent in the world.
     Not bad for a part-time racer. Good enough, in fact, to prompt Summers to return to full-time status. And for 2004, the “Summers sightings” will also include showings of his new apparel sponsor, Moose Racewear. “I had some fun getting back to the races, now it’s time to get serious and go after another title,” said Summers from his home in Kentucky. “I trained this fall and winter as hard as I ever have and am confident coming into the GNCC season that I have a very legitimate shot at the title.”