It has been a busy and eventful year for Metal Mulisha rider Vicki Golden! After claiming a bronze medal this summer at X Games in Moto-X Best Whip and taking home her third gold in Women’s Moto-X Racing, the Golden Girl has not once stopped to take a break. We sat down with Vicki last week to find out what she’s been up to the past few months and get the scoop on what’s to come for the Golden Girl. Check out what she had to say below.
M/M: What have you been up to?
VG: Well I’ve been pretty busy! Last week I filmed with FOX Sports San Diego at Links house and then I went straight out to Ocotillo to do a little free riding with the team for an upcoming Mulisha catalog shoot. Then I pinned it to Reno for an arenacross race and kind of sucked it up and then came home.
M/M: It seems like you have been getting a lot of attention from the mainstream media lately! Tell us about your feature on FOX Sports San Diego.
VG: Yeah! I guess they are doing a feature on like 20 athletes from San Diego and I was one that they chose. My feature aired locally on the 21st! I also did a cool deal with Fox 5 San Diego last month (you can check it out here). It’s been pretty cool to work with media outside of the moto industry and kind of get my name out there and represent Metal Mulisha and the rest of my sponsors.
M/M: Did you have a good time shooting out at Ocotillo for the new Mulisha catalog?
VG: Oh it was rad! I’d never been out there before so I didn’t really know what the deal was or what to expect, but we basically just pulled up, parked wherever we felt like, and rode. I had so much fun (laughs)! It was basically a badass day of riding, a badass night of drinking, and then another badass day of riding.
M/M: What was the highlight of the trip for you?
VG: Hitting a bunch of jumps! I mean one it was cool that we were all in one place, so just going out and riding with all of the guys was so fun. You get like super competitive; at least I do and I know everyone else does too. We all wanted to be the first person to hit a jump or to find a new jump and see how big we can go and whip it. I mean they obviously compete with tricks and stuff and I can’t do that, so I just try to boost it and throw whips. It was just fun being around that many dudes that are that bad ass on dirt bikes. It was cool too because it wasn’t like we had any stragglers or anything like that. Everyone was busting it out and like quick too! It was crazy to have that many dudes out there and having everyone trying to out do each other. It was really competitive, at least for me, to just be hitting it as soon as I could compared to them, if not before them. It was cool to have all of the dudes just motoing.
M/M: Things got pretty crazy back at camp and there was a point where you were trying to get Fitz to break a bottle over your head. What was up with that?
VG: Well apparently I got all tipsy and wanted to break a bottle over my head. Fitz does it all of the time apparently, so he was trying to tell me how to do it. He was all like “You gotta do it just right so that it will break and you will only get a little cut. If you do it wrong, you will either knock yourself out or you’re going to cut your entire face open.” And I wanted to do it, but I didn’t want to do it to myself because I didn’t know what I was doing, so I was all like “you seem like the expert at it, so why don’t you just do it to me?” I was trying to talk him into it for a good couple of hours that night, but he wouldn’t do it.
M/M: A few members of the camera crew out at Ocotillo had never worked with the Mulisha team before. Do you think they had a good time out there with the crew?
VG: (Laughs) The camera crew was so terrified of us (laughs) oh my gosh. We had airsoft guns out there and I think like Fitz and Bell had real guns it was just crazy. Like everyone was trying to do their part of the photo shoot and Fitz just wanted to shoot them all of the time. And the crew was just sooo terrified (laughs) it was so funny. Then we got in some gnarly food fight and we were hucking a bunch of fruit at each other and they didn’t like that either (laughs) they hated us. Then we tried to be nice to them in the morning and I think at that point they were just over us.
M/M: You got to scope out the Maidens line while you were out there shooting for the catalog. What do you think of the new styles?
VG: There is some rad stuff coming out! The Mulisha design team has really been stepping it up and I’m looking forward to rocking the new styles when they are released.
M/M: So after Ocotillo, you packed up and drove to Reno for an arenacross race. How did that go?
VG: Well the wall looked real real appealing on press day, so I just went for it (laughs). There was a section where I was going two, single all the way over the table, and then three out, and when I went to go three out there was kind of a glare in my goggles because they didn’t have all of the lights on and they just opened up the doors, so I just kind of hit it how much I thought was good, and then the glare went away and I was like “Oh… yeah that’s not enough” (laughs). I nose into the face of the triple, bounced, and then kind of got bucked a bit. Then when I landed, I didn’t have time to break and I landed right into the berm, so I bounced again off of the berm and just went straight into the wall.
M/M: So how were you feeling after that little make out session with the wall?
VG: For what happen, I was super lucky just because I put my arm out and the part I ended up hitting was like a railing/pole, but my bike hit the cement wall. I hit my elbow on one of the poles and then tapped my head off one of the poles, so I got really lucky. Nothing was really that bad, but I subluxed my hip a couple years back and the crash kind of irritated that again. My leg and my hip went like into the handlebars, so it messed up my hip a little bit and it wasn’t feeling too good for the weekend.
M/M: Did you end up racing or did you load up and head home after press day?
VG: Well I decided to stay and try to ride. I waited until practice on Friday to try to ride again and I wasn’t really having it. I literally went out and did my first practice in 450 and just rolled around; I couldn’t do anything. They had two pretty decent size doubles there and I didn’t even have time in press day to even do them, so I told myself that I at least needed to go out and jump them. So when I went out for my first 250 practice, I just went out and jumped them and came back in. At that point, I was like “I don’t know if I can even race.” It was hurting pretty good, so I decided not to race, but then I took a vicodin and felt way better, so thought it would be a good idea to try to go out there. I compromised with myself and was like “Ok, I’ll just race one class instead of both.” So ended up racing the 250 class and it went pretty well. I went straight into the main from my heat, and then in my main I just slide out a little in a corner, which didn’t feel too good on my hip, so I just kind of rode around the last couple laps and managed to get like 12th.
M/M: Did you stick around to race Saturday?
VG: Yeah, I felt way better on Saturday! It was like night and day. My hip started to hurt a little in practice, but I was riding way better, so I decided to race both classes. Then when the night show rolled around, something started happening with my bike during my first heat race. It almost felt like I was in the wrong gear, and I thought I was just miss-shifting some how, but the bike kept doing it in my next heat, so we tried different gas thinking that the gas might have gone bad, but it didn’t really help. At that point, I was just kind of over it and didn’t really think it was worth it because the bike wasn’t running good, so I just called it a night. It sucked to end on that note though since I was feeling so much better and going so much faster, but it happens.
M/M: So what’s next for you? Do you have anything planned for this winter?
VG: Well I’m in the process of trying out for this new tour that Feld Motorsports is putting together. I’m also going to be racing the Kicker Arenacross Series as well as the AMA Arenacross series throughout the winter. I’ll be heading over to Geneva, Switzerland at the beginning of December to race, and I’ll also be jumping in the demo show there. On top of that, I’ve got some exciting things in the works that I can’t really talk about right now, but I’ll be sure to let everyone in on the details as soon as I can.
M/M: You have been doing more and more jump shows lately. Are you planning on learning some FMX tricks so you can throw down more than just your badass whip?
VG: Yeah I plan too! I’m actually sitting at Suzuki right now waiting for one the guys to come get me. We are talking about working on a deal to get two more 450’s, so right now I’m waiting on that. When I go do these jump shows on my 250F it is so stressful because the run in is so short most of the time which makes it so hard to get done what I need to get done just to clear the gap. Then trying to whip on top of it is just really hard on a 250F. So hopefully I’ll be getting some 450s soon, and when I do, I plan on tearing them all down and getting them set up for ramps. Then I’m going to start riding ramps on 450s and getting comfortable at different compounds and start learning tricks. I’m just waiting on the bikes right now, and once that happens, it’s going to be a whole new ball game.
M/M: What’s the game plan to getting some tricks in your pocket?
VG: Well anywhere I go ride the team is going to be there, so I’ll probably just go out with some of the guys and start learning! I’ll probably start out at Links Compound just because I’m already comfortable there and then start branching out to different compounds. I’m excited and definitely looking forward to it!
