The Ivan Tedesco Story

Words by Eric Jonhson | Photography by Drew Martin

Although none of the 32,000 fans crowding and shrouding the hills and flats around the Autodromo di Franciacorta in Northern Italy really knew it at the time, it would be the last major triumph of his racing career, and it was a big one. 

“Of course we can win,” said Roger DeCoster before the third and final moto of the 2009 Motocross of Nations. “Everyone around the team seems a little down, but we can do it.” 

Way down deep in the middle of the Italian auto racing facility, the British race announcer could be heard over the public address system, repeatedly proclaiming to the fans that they were about to witness the “biggest race of the year.” He had it right. With the points spread so close among the nation’s top state teams, and with all of them in possession of a moto score they could throw away, the final result of the Motocross of Nations was a toss-up. Meanwhile, way back in the parc fermé, Team USA 450cc racers Ryan Dungey and Ivan Tedesco sat atop their respective motorcycles and waited.

“I remember before that final moto, Ryan Dungey and I had a little pow-wow,” said Ivan Tedesco, smiling as he reflected back on that sunny Sunday afternoon. “We said to one another, ‘Dude, we’ve got to get this done.’ I don’t remember much more than that, but I do remember the vibe of the conversation. It was like, ‘All right, we’re going to do this.’”

Ivan Lee Tedesco was born on August 12, 1981, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with its riding areas abundant and skirting the high-desert community of approximately 1 million people. He followed his older motocross-loving brother Gio right into the sport.

“The whole dirt bike thing started for me with my brother Gio,”

said Tedesco, assuming a seat at a table nestled inside the Monster Energy/Pro Circuit/Kawasaki pit area at the second Anaheim round of the 2019 Monster Energy Supercross Series. “He’s about two years older than me, and ever since he was about four years old, he was just obsessed with dirt bikes. My dad bought Gio a bike when he was about ten years old. I was eight at the time. He brought my brother a YZ80 and brought it home, and I started crying because I wanted one. They went back down to the shop and bought me one. That’s basically how it started. I only got into it because my older brother was into it. Yeah, I cried, but I got a dirt bike!”

And as such things can transpire, the Tedesco family soon took to sportsman-level amateur motocross racing. “Basically, we jumped right in,” explained Tedesco. “We went to a local race about a month after we first started riding, and we also kind of found a local crew of guys that were racing and doing the amateur nationals and stuff. Actually, I went to Vegas for the World Mini about four months into racing. We just jumped in headfirst. Going into that race, I thought I was going to do pretty good, but I ended up getting 30th. I got smoked, and it was an eye-opener to me. It was like, ‘Okay, some of these kids are really good at what they do.’ From there, we just kept on going with it.”

Tedesco and family would return back to the Land of Enchantment and circle the wagons with a group of other young men who were also busily riding and racing away in an effort to make it in American motocross.

“I raced and rode with Justin Buckelew, and then there were all the Johnson brothers, and there was Ryan Clark; we all grew up racing together in New Mexico,” said Tedesco of his “little league” days. “There was a good group of guys that we all grew up together with. There was my brother and about five other guys. We were close in age, and it was pretty cool growing up in that group. We all rode with each other a lot and pushed each other.

“I’d say we got a lot more serious about the racing when I was around 12 or 13 years old,” continued Tedesco. “My last couple years on minibikes, I was winning some motos at some of those amateur nationals and running up front and showing that I was capable of being one of the guys.”

In the late 1990s, Ivan Tedesco, despite not winning an overall championship at the Loretta Lynn’s Amateur Motocross Championship, went into 1999 as a young racer with some potential. 

“My last year as an A-class amateur, I was a Yamaha kid. It was me and Justin Buckelew going for the premiere Yamaha ride at that time — which was the Yamaha of Troy ride. He was obviously better than me at the time, so he got the ride. I ended up getting a deal with Plano Honda, which was a privateer start-up team out of Texas. I signed with them in 1999 and rode my first two years professionally with them.”

By 2001, Tedesco was a top-five supercross rider — he placed fifth in the AMA 125cc West Region Supercross Series. Nonetheless, he knew he still had some ground to cover if he was to be a title contender in AMA Pro Motocross. 

“I got fifth in my first year in supercross in 2001, but outdoors was kind of a struggle for me. I did two years at Plano Honda, and then I signed a two-year deal with Yamaha of Troy in 2002. Yamaha of Troy was a solid team. At the time, it was almost as good as Pro Circuit. It was a top-level team, and they ran a good program. The whole time I was there, I felt like I was capable of winning a championship, but I just didn’t quite have it yet. I wasn’t mature enough as a rider.”

Ultimately, it all came out right for Tedesco, with his first major victory coming on April 5, 2003, inside the long-gone Pontiac Silverdome (destroyed in December of 2017). At my final supercross race with the Yamaha of Troy team — it was at Pontiac — I finally got a race win. I showed to myself that I could win.

You know, there is no feeling like winning. Winning is like a drug. You get an adrenalin rush, and you get addicted to that feeling of winning.

I think that’s where a lot of guys struggle, including myself. I got a taste of winning on the 250.”

As a member of the prolific Monster Energy/Pro Circuit/Kawasaki outfit, Tedesco reached for a higher gear at the opening round of the 2004 125WSX at Angel Stadium and simply took off like a scalded cat, winning six of the first seven main events, and waltzing his way to his first AMA title.

“Going into 2004, I had the speed, and I also had this feeling that I was mentally prepared,” pointed out Tedesco. “I felt like something clicked within me, and I won seven out of eight supercross races that year and pretty much dominated. It was a huge year for me. I always knew that I had it in me, but to actually go out and execute was pretty cool.”

One year later, Tedesco raced away in the glow of his greatest season as a professional racer, winning the THQ AMA 125cc West Supercross Series Championship and the AMA 125cc National Motocross Series title. Tedesco was also handpicked to represent Team USA at the Motocross of Nations at Ernee, France, a race Team USA won handily. 

“Going into ’05, I knew I was capable of winning, but I wasn’t included in any of the talk of being a potential champion outdoors,” Tedesco offered. “James Stewart was moving out of the class at the time, so the title was kind of open that year. I remember reading some interviews at that time, and there were probably five or six guys on the list of who was going to win the title that year, and my name wasn’t on it. I remember being so mad about that! I was like, ‘I’m going to win this title.’ It was pretty cool to be able to pull that off. I ended up winning both titles in ’05, but for me, winning that outdoor title was huge. I wasn’t very good at outdoors coming into the professional ranks, and I just slowly progressed, and I proved to everyone that I could do it.”

Tedesco was tapped to ride the 450cc classification in 2006, and as a result, signed a contract with Suzuki to be Ricky Carmichael’s teammate for both 2006 and 2007. And while he didn’t win a main event during his tenure with the Rising Sun brand, Tedesco slotted in at a remarkable fourth overall in the ’06 Supercross Championship. 

“I moved up to the big class with Suzuki,” explained Tedesco. “I kind of had the opportunity to go anywhere, but I chose Suzuki just to go under Carmichael’s wing and to learn from him. I felt like it was a good move.

It was about the time that Ricky was moving out of the sport, so Ricky was real open to teaching me everything he knew. We had a good relationship.” 

Tedesco would race for Suzuki again in 2006, a major highlight of the season coming at the 2006 Motocross of Nations at Matterley Basin, England.

“That was a crazy story, because I wasn’t expected to race the Motocross of Nations that year,” Tedesco said. “I was at Glen Helen watching the last National of the season, because I didn’t race outdoors that year because of an injury. I saw Carmichael go down, and I went back to the truck after the race. Ricky had banged up his shoulder and Roger DeCoster pulled me  aside and asked, ‘Hey, you think you can race Ricky’s bike in two weeks?’ I said, ‘I guess.’ From there, I basically trained for two weeks, went over to England, and we pulled it off. I remember being so nervous before that race because I wasn’t prepared; I wasn’t ready to go race des Nations. Since the bike was already over there, they had to have somebody from Suzuki race.”

Yet the team, certainly along with Tedesco’s contributions, won the thing.

Tedesco won his last AMA Pro Racing event at Thunder Valley Motocross in Colorado at the high point of summer in 2009. Guiding his works Honda CRF450R up and down the track’s radical elevation changes, Tedesco left Denver with the winner’s trophy, saying now that “it was just one of those days where it felt like nothing could go wrong. It was an easy race for me.”

Three months later, Ivan Tedesco was chosen to be a part of Team USA at the 2009 Motocross of Nations. Set to run in the north of Italy during the first week of October, 

Tedesco looks back with a smile. “That was a cool day. We were called the B Team, you know? I guess they could have sent a better U.S. team at the time, but Dungey, Weimer and me got the call. You know, as far as the dynamics of the team, it was just a small group that went over there. To go there and win it — and just the atmosphere of that race that day in Italy — is something I’ll never forget.”

“I led my first moto for 20-something minutes, and then I got the worst arm pump that I’ve ever had in my life,” mused Tedesco. “We hung on, and we ended up winning it. That was probably one of the coolest moments of my career. To rise to the occasion in that type of environment was pretty tough.”

For the 2010 racing season, Tedesco teamed up with longtime friend and mechanic Frankie Lathem to go to war for the upstart Valli Motorsports Yamaha team out of Northern California. And while the dynamic duo didn’t exactly set the ever-spinning motocross/supercross off its axis, the two did enjoy the hell out of the year.

“That was probably one of the funnest years of racing I’ve ever had,” declared Tedesco. “It was me and my longtime mechanic Frankie Lathem, and we just kind of did our thing. We had a pretty good bike, and we actually did pretty well that year.”

All things considered, and after his career trajectory finally stalled out a bit, Tedesco agreed to terms to race for the Hart & Huntington Kawasaki in what was the twilight’s last gleaming of his run as a professional race.

“I knew it was kind of winding down by that point,” said Tedesco. “The Hart & Huntington deal came up through Kenny Watson, who was a good buddy of mine. They did supercross-only, which at that time worked because I was getting a little older. I was like, ‘All right, maybe this will prolong my career a little longer.’ So I did the two years supercross-only with Hart & Huntington, and that was pretty much it. It was kind of the end of the road, you know? You kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel and you say, ‘All right, this is it. I had too many crashes and injuries.’ It just got to a point where I wasn’t having fun anymore with the results I was having. I had won and been successful, and it’s just not fun when you’re not doing well anymore. It takes the fun out of it. I had my day, and I had a long career, and it was time to make the decision.”

The final AMA race Ivan Tedesco ran was at Budds Creek, Maryland, in July of 2014. Shortly thereafter, the New Mexican called time on what had been an excellent, steady and fulfilling career.

“Retiring was probably the toughest thing I’ve ever had to deal with in my life, honestly.

I’ve heard that from other guys, and you think about retiring from racing and you think all of the positives — yeah, you don’t have the pressure, you don’t have this or you don’t have that — but you’ve worked since you were a little kid for this one goal, and you’re so busy facing that, and then boom! All of a sudden, it’s over. It’s kind of weird to wake up without having that goal inside you, you know?”

As they say, good things happen to good people, and while a bit was lost after the supermotocross war was over, all it took was a few visits to the Pro Circuit race shop off the 91 freeway in Corona, California, for a wayfaring Tedesco to stumble upon a new line of work.

“So I was looking to get back in the sport, and I started talking with Mitch Payton and the boys there,” Tedesco said. “They were looking to maybe have somebody help with the testing and development of their bike, and I rode it a couple times, and we ended up doing a deal. I’ve been doing that for the last two years. I’m the guy who basically feels what the bike is doing and try to guide the team in the right direction so we don’t go off into left field. Basically, what I do is that we kind of have a game plan of what direction we’re going to go on the bike, and I try to execute that and present it to the guys once it’s in more of a fine-tuned state. Luckily, it has been pretty good. Everything that I’ve come up with they have pretty much liked. From what I see, I think it’s working.”

When I asked Tedesco if he was okay with the way his professional racing career turned out, he just smiled that Hot Sauce smile.

“Of course. If you would have asked me that when I was 10 years old, and if you would have laid out my career in front of me, of course I’d be pumped. I was just a kid from Albuquerque who wasn’t expected to do anything. I feel like I made it to a pretty elite level in the sport. I can’t complain. The sport has given me a great life, and I’ve met a whole bunch of great people, and I’m still here. This sport is like a family to me. That’s why I’m still around. Otherwise, I’d be doing something different.”