For those who don't know me, my name is Mike Sleeter and I race in the lites class for the past few years. In the months to come, I will try my best give you guys the harsh reality of a privateer, trying to get his big break. I didn't have an outstanding amateur career and that gave me the up hill battle, trying to make it as a privateer in the highly competitive 125/lites class. This is where most people go wrong when they are hating on guys that have better help then them. We have all grown up racing the same guys on the same tracks in the same big races all of our lives. Stock, Mod it does not matter but what does is your luck and results. The generation that I grew up racing against goes as follows, Ivan Tedesco, Andrew Short, Sean Hamblin, and Brian Mcgavran to name a few. I was usually the 3rd place guy to all of these guys but take a look at where these guys are today. Ivan is a three time champ. Andrew is a Factory Honda rider and Brian Mcgavran is selling lifts for trucks because he couldn't make the transition from A class to SX. Brian beat all of those other guys his whole life. So what I'm trying to say is that we all had are chances to shine but to lack of preparation or injuries some have made it and some haven't. I had the injuries that changed years of my life.
I have had help from my family from the beginning and still do, but I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I have always showed good speed and heart but I could never put the two together until last year, when I got my break. Ryan Ragland the manager of KTM R&D called me to see if I wanted to make some money testing the new 250f KTM and I was thinking this could be the break that I have been hoping for, and to make a long story short that landed me a job as the head production test rider for North America KTM. That's right, I said test rider not racer! I get paid to test not race. When there is stuff that needs to get done for testing, racing takes a back seat until all is done. Yes, it is great to ride all day long because there is nothing that I would rather do, but trying to race with all the top guys who have their private trainers and tracks with there own schedule is a different story. This year I have put together a great program on my own with the help of Two Brothers who supplied an all-new state of the art truck! NCY gave me two bikes and that laid the groundwork to go racing.
To give you a little perspective on the differences between me, the bottom of the barrel privateer, and a guy like Grant Langston take notice to this!
The guy who is just trying to make the night show to get his 220 dollars has two bikes, one race one practice; he dropped his standard suspension off at Enzo or RG3. He then took his head off his race bike to Pro Circuit hoping to get some more power. His practice bike has a stock motor for reliability reasons and when he tries to find a SX track to ride he has to refinance his truck to ride it. (The minimum cost to ride a sx track is $75 per day) By the time the first round comes, he rode his race bike one time and the only testing he has done is clicking the clicker back and fourth on his suspension. My program is better then this, but I have to do all the legwork to get it done. My practice bikes' motor is stock but I have kit suspension on it. I have done a lot of testing but It's not always on my bike LOL… I get to ride the KTM track when the factory guys aren't to busy. The biggest difference is my race bike is bad ASS! That bottom of the barrel guy has no chance for a holeshot against the factory bikes. Trust me he has maybe 35 horsepower and the factory guys have almost 45. I’m very lucky because of the fact that all the boys in the engine room at KTM take good care of me when it comes to my race bike. The Factory guys have months of testing before the first race but they also have plenty of rest time to let there bodies heal up from long practice days and hard workouts with there personal trainer.
My results have improved so much this year because of the drastic change in my program. I want to let you know that I'm not complaining about where I'm at because this is my passion and I choose to race a long with everyone else, but there needs to be more prize money so us little guys can afford to put more into our racing which then would allow us to get faster.
I do not think that the top guys are over paid I just think that the small guys are underpaid. The bottom line is we all choose to race and we do not have to do this. MX is a hobby for most but there are the few that dream of making a living doing it. Good luck to those guys and thanks to all my sponsors for staying behind me all these years. NCY, KTM, Two Brothers, Shift, Fox, Toyota of Escondido, One Industries, SPY, Maxima ,Tagear designs, Bridgestone, Universal, Transworld MX, Etnies, Quicksilver, Borrego springs bottled water, JD Built, Regina, Asterisk.
Mike Sleeter #81
