Interview: Nasty Nick
by Dean Adams
Copyright 1998 Nick Ienatsch & Dean Adams
 

Little has been heard from motojournalist Nick Ienatsch since his departure from Sport Rider magazine two years ago. A Peterson Publishing employee for more than a decade, Ienatsch ingrained himself to readers around the world with his exploits. A great street rider, as a racer Nick went from fast club guy to national number-wearing 250 rider in about four years. As a 250 rider, he won a 250 Grand Prix race (Willow 1990) and finished second in the series in his last year of real competition, 1996.
Born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin but raised in Utah by a pilot father whose idea of a good time was to take Nick and his brother to a parking lot on Saturday afternoon to watch him do wheelies on an old Kawasaki H2, Ienatsch is a true enthusiast of motorcycles. He owns more cool bikes and cult machines than any one else I know.

I spoke with him at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway during the AMA national there in October.

Q. What's up with Nick since your departure from Sport Rider?
A. Well, I'm working on a freelance basis for Cycle World Magazine and also doing broadcast work for ESPN, including work here this weekend. I'm also the head instructor at the Freddie Spencer Riding School here at the LVMS, and recently I started working as an instructor for the Derek Daly driving school here at the Speedway.
I'm having a lot of fun and I really like the life that I have now. It affords me a lot of time to do things that I want to do.

Q. Any regrets on leaving the motorcycle publishing industry on a full-time basis?
A. Regrets would be a strong word. I really don't have any real regrets, I accomplished a lot in my period at Motorcyclist and Sport Rider.
I do miss being in the know on the new bikes and riding the new bikes and letting my readers know about them. I also miss the interaction I had with my readers. I enjoyed talking with them and hearing about their riding experiences and things like that. I made a lot of friends in the motorcycle industry and I still have a lot of friends in the motorcycle industry, I just don't get to see them as often as I once did.
I am saddened that the industry hasn't really continued on the educational journey that we started at Sport Rider to increase the skills of the riders, the readers of the magazine. I think in the last two years we were on staff there Lance (Holst) and I really tried to implore to the readers that the best thing many of them can do is to take a riding school and to practice their riding skills.
It's really amazing to me that the manufacturers just keep making these wonderfully faster motorcycles every year but that the same number of them end up being totaled by a insurance company. The hardware is great, to use a computer metaphor, but the software still sucks. The operating system that operates the bike needs a lot of work in many cases.

Q. You were married last year and now split your time between Vegas and California, right?
A. I married my long-time girlfriend Judy last year, yes. We're very happy. I keep most of my bikes in my garage at my house in La Crecenta and we just bought a house here in Vegas. I'm spending so much time here that it makes sense to live here (Dean wryly notes, and the lack of state income taxes in Vegas might appeal slightly to Nick's stockbroker wife). I'd taken the Derek Daly school at the LVMS for a story that was published in AutoWeek. Once I moved here I called them and told them that I was available. They hired me, part-time.

Q. How is it dealing with Car Guys?
A. Eh .... I still like motorcycle people better. In a lot of cases bike people are more serious about performance, and they're more passionate about motorcycles than car people are about cars.
A lot of car guys are just idiots, they don't want to learn how to drive better. Bike people crash a bike and they get up and say, 'Why'd that happen? What did I do wrong? How can I teach myself not to do that again?'; where car people just look for a convenient excuse and focus on that. It's too bad really.

Q. You work for Freddie Spencer and are friends with Eddie Lawson. Those guys hated each other for more than a decade, how do you swing being close to both of them?
A. (laughs) Very carefully! No, really I think those days are long gone for those two, and they have no reason now to be enemies. In fact, Eddie came out to the track (LVMS) not too long ago while we were doing a school. In the middle of of the track session I looked down the pitlane and Eddie and Freddie were standing there talking and smiling and laughing, all by themselves. They talked for about fifteen minutes and I don't think either one of them stopped smiling the whole time. They were sharing old times and catching up on new things too, I think.
You know Dean, there's a lot of bullshit that we have to put up with in being journalists, but we do get to see some special moments. That for me was a really special moment, those two former world champions standing there all alone laughing and talking. It was neat.

Q. You have quite a collection of cool bikes. Have you bought or sold anything lately?
A. No, not really, I had some daily rider streetbikes that I sold because they weren't being used, but other than that, no.
I bought the bikes that when I was broke and in college that I couldn't afford. I always wanted a Bimota so I have a couple of them, I yearned for a Suzuki XN85 Turbo and a GS1000S, now I have those. I always wanted an RC30, so I bought one of those, and I added a TZ750 streetbike to the list and some other things.
They're all the bikes that I craved and that I heard other people say, 'Damn, I wish I'd never sold that bike' when they talk about it. I hope that I never have to sell them.

Q. Do you still have the same passion to ride that you once did?
A. Oh, absolutely. Probably in many ways now more than ever. I still love motorcycles.

Q. How are things going at the school?
A. Great, things are going well there. We're adding more dates too. The thing that some people have a hard time getting past is that the school is more expensive than others. But you're not getting instructions from a three-time world champion there are you? Or a former AMA 250 GP # 2 rider, at those other schools.
I've always had a lot of respect for Freddie Spencer when he was a rider. I have even more respect for him now. He has a unique way of explaining this to people in the class that I think is unheralded. He's an amazing man.

Q. Do you still have the burn to race?
A. Sure, but I just don't know if I have the time to devote to it that it requires. People see you on the track and think it's only a couple of day investment in time. But in reality, it's a 24 hour a day deal where you're basing your whole life around one activity. I'm not sure I can do that any more.
We all have a very short period of time to do the things that we love and you have to find some balance. I remember being with Malcom Forbes in Japan in the late eighties and while we were there, the mayor of Tokyo was coming to see him. And we also learned that there was a Bimota dealership down the block--one that was closing in an hour. We were late to meet the mayor. You gotta do what you want to do.
--Dean Adams All Rights Reserved

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