Unadilla Valley Sports Center has been hosting races since the late 1960s, making it one of the oldest motocross tracks in the nation. The track has always runs a high profile, too, hosting big events like U.S Grand Prix, Trans-AMAs and Inter-Ams, even the Motocross des Nations. So there’s a lot of evidence of Unadilla history out there, a lot of photos, a lot of video, a lot of memories from a lot of fans.

Those memories include stories of triumph and heartbreak. Bob “Hurricane” Hannah had been the fastest man at Unadilla for ten years, but never could get into victory lane until the twilight of his career, when Johnny O’Mara ran out of gas while leading the 1986 Unadilla USGP, allowing Hannah to sneak through. This year, James Stewart came into the race facing a Unadilla jinx, with three-straight tours through the facility ending with ambulance rides to the hospital.

Today’s Unadilla track isn’t that same as it was back then, but it looks the same on the surface, which means you can compare the riding style of guys like Hannah with guys like Stewart. Back in the day they used to launch down into and out of the massive Gravity Cavity jump, but today, riders scrub it off the top and bottom. Back in the day, riders used to hang off the back fender of the bike and try to keep the rear wheel driving through the massive bumps. Today, riders can stay up over the bars, doubling and tripling through bumps that appear the same in size, but feel a lot smaller on modern equipment.

Beneath those obstacles, the dark soil that really gave Unadilla its character has changed quite a bit. Most of the good natural dirt is gone, which left a hard, slippery, rocky base underneath. This year, the Robinson family that runs the facility trucked in (literally) tons of sand, but the new stuff never really mixed in, which meant the same rocky surface in the main lines, with big sandy berms somewhere along the outside edges.

So that meant Unadilla ’08 would be just as tough as Unadilla past, and when rain and lightning rolled through, it only got worse. Ten minutes into the second Lites moto, the red flag came out and the riders where told to head back to the pits for fear of the lightning striking a rider. After the storm cleared, racing resumed with another 30 minute moto, and Ryan Villopoto won it just like he did the first.

The 450 riders were greeted with a really muddy track, and Stewart had his hands full with New Zealand’s Cody Cooper, a Suzuki privateer who has really opened some eyes this summer. The muddy track played to Cooper’s advantage, and he kept Stewart closer than any other rider had this year, at one point closing to within two seconds of Stewart, and nearly taking the lead when Stewart fell coming out of a corner. Stewart used his speed to pull out another gap and win the race, and then he dropped his bike and started kicking the mud in celebration.

The new sections and new soil didn’t do much to change the Unadilla track. It’s still heartbreak hill for the superstars of the sport, but it still gives them a chance to redeem themselves as well. Surely, Stewart will have much fonder thoughts of the place when he looks back at old photos and video of himself somewhere down memory lane.