Bultaco Legend Jim Pomeroy “airing it out” at L.A…

There are certain images in motocross that never fade: the sweep of a two-stroke plume hanging in stadium lights, the rasp of a carbureted bark echoing off concrete, a rider lifting the front wheel just a heartbeat longer than seems possible. For a generation of fans, “airing it out at L.A.” conjures a specific rider and a specific machine—Jim Pomeroy on a Bultaco—dancing across the Los Angeles Coliseum’s man-made mountains as if gravity were a polite suggestion rather than a rule.

Pomeroy’s legend didn’t start in Los Angeles, but the Coliseum distilled everything that made him special. Stadium motocross—what we now call supercross—was still a rough-edged experiment in the early 1970s. Promoters poured dirt into football cathedrals, shaped it into jumps that felt audacious for the day, and invited the best riders to see who could solve the riddle at speed. The L.A. Coliseum’s peristyle staircase, the long, arcing lanes under the torch, the run-in and run-out that demanded perfect throttle timing—this was theater, and Pomeroy was a natural on the stage.

The Bultaco bond

To understand why Pomeroy stood apart in that setting, you have to understand his bond with Bultaco. The Spanish marque was famous for building nimble, responsive two-strokes—the Pursang most of all—that rewarded finesse and punished ham-fisted inputs. Pomeroy’s style was a match made in magnesium and premix. He carried speed through corners with light bar pressure, kept his elbows high, and used the engine’s crisp midrange to float the bike into jumps rather than club it with throttle. Where others stabbed at the face to get lift, Pomeroy rolled in, set his balance point early, and let the chassis rebound do the lifting. On the Coliseum’s rhythm sections, that meant he could choose lines others couldn’t—diagonals that smoothed two hits into one, or a late-apex angle that lined up the next jump perfectly.

The spectacle was more than showmanship. It was a solution. Stadium courses, especially in that era, were built to unsettle. Landing zones were choppy, transitions unpredictable, and ruts formed in strange places because the dirt itself had been trucked in from multiple sources. Pomeroy’s fluidity kept the Bultaco planted where it needed to be and light where it didn’t. The result looked like “airing it out”—and it was—but it was also a master class in minimizing risk while riding at the edge.

The first American to crack the code

By the time he was thrilling L.A. crowds, Pomeroy had already carved his name into world motocross history. In 1973, he became the first American to win a FIM Grand Prix, stunning the establishment by taking the Spanish 250cc GP on a Bultaco and leading the world championship early that season. That victory wasn’t a one-off anomaly; it was a statement. Americans could adapt to European circuits, and Pomeroy could adapt to anything.

It’s impossible to separate that achievement from the stadium performances that followed. The Coliseum asked for improvisation—something road-book-precise European GP tracks rarely allowed. Pomeroy seemed to hear the same music on both kinds of courses. Where a teammate might struggle with traction on the same Pursang, Pomeroy found grip in patience and in his uncanny ability to load and release the suspension without wasting an ounce of rebound. Fans saw a guy floating longer. What they were really seeing was timing honed in the world’s most exacting arenas.

L.A. as a proving ground

If the first Superbowl of Motocross in 1972 proved you could sell dirt-bike chess in a football stadium, the mid-’70s proved who could play it best under pressure. Pomeroy’s Coliseum rides weren’t always the headline result on paper—stiff competition, mechanical gremlins, and the lottery of early-era supercross saw to that—but the eye test didn’t lie. He looked composed in chaos. That composure bred confidence, and confidence is a contagious thing in stands packed with kids who would go home and launch off whatever mounds they could find.

You could pick Pomeroy out from the far end of the bowl even without program notes: the dark blue Bultaco tank panels, the stance centered and quiet, the jump faces met with a subtle settle rather than a last-second yank. In a discipline that can make even great riders look ragged, he looked sculpted. He made the Coliseum’s infamous peristyle drop—part elevator shaft, part slip-and-slide—feel rideable, and he made the return climb back into the stadium feel like a runway to flight.

Technique before technology

Modern supercross machines are rolling miracles: fuel injection, four-stroke torque walls, suspension valving that erases square-edged nastiness. Pomeroy’s Bultaco didn’t have any of that. What it did have—light weight, a willing two-stroke, and a chassis that told the truth—suited a rider who trusted his senses. Watching old footage, you notice how little he fights the bike. He lets it breathe, lets it pitch a degree or two off axis in the air to correct a rut-kicked takeoff, then lands exactly where he meant to. The bike never looks trapped under him. It looks like it’s with him.

That trust came from work. Pomeroy didn’t just “send it.” He practiced the fundamentals relentlessly: eyes up, elbows out, head over the triple clamp entering faces, hips slightly rearward on landings to keep the rear tire driving. He was a believer in carrying momentum, in choosing the line that let the suspension work once rather than twice. On a track made of temporary dirt piled on concrete, that philosophy saved energy and parts.

A connective thread in American motocross

There’s a straight line from Pomeroy’s Coliseum flights to the later American dominance in stadium racing. Riders who would define the discipline—names like Hannah, Johnson, McGrath, Carmichael, Stewart—grew up with the idea that American riders belonged on any stage, anywhere. Pomeroy helped plant that idea. He also showed that a European brand could be a springboard for American success. For Bultaco, his wins and presence under stadium lights were priceless: the Spanish script on the tank gleaming under U.S. spotlights, the sound of a Pursang ricocheting off the Coliseum columns, proof that a well-ridden two-stroke could puncture myths about what was possible.

Memory, meaning, and the man

Pomeroy’s story has bittersweet notes—injuries that cost him championship runs, the cruel realities of motorsport economics, and his untimely passing in 2006. But when fans talk about him “airing it out at L.A.,” they don’t lead with melancholy. They talk about the feeling. The feeling of seeing someone ride light, of watching a bike leave the ground with intention and return to earth on a line you didn’t know existed. They talk about the smell of premix in the tunnel and the way a stadium can go quiet for a second when a rider commits to a big transfer, then explode when tires meet dirt and throttle snaps open again.

That feeling is why the image endures. In a sport that evolves every season, Pomeroy’s Coliseum moments are a fixed star. They remind us that motocross, for all its technology and tactics, is still poetry written in throttle and body position. It’s a rider believing he can draw a different arc through the air—and then doing it.

Why it still matters

Today’s supercross tracks feature triples measured to the inch and rhythms mapped like sheet music. Data tells riders where they’re losing tenths. Yet the essential currency hasn’t changed since Pomeroy’s Bultaco skimmed the Coliseum: vision, timing, and the courage to trust both in front of a crowd. When young riders study film, they can still learn from him—how to stay loose in chaos, how to create room to land by preparing earlier in the face, how to make a motorcycle an ally rather than an instrument to be forced.

So when you hear an old-school fan say, “Pomeroy airing it out at L.A.”—understand that it means more than a single jump or a single night. It means a rider who bridged worlds: European GPs and American stadiums, Spanish engineering and Pacific Northwest grit, the past and the future of a sport that never sits still. It means the Coliseum lights, the Bultaco’s song, and a moment when motocross felt like it could take flight forever.