Chad Reed en route to winning the 125 East event at the Daytona Supercross in 2002. Reed, a then rookie in American racing, went on to win the AMA 125 East Supercross Championship. (Steve Bruhn photo)

After winning a couple of national titles in his native Australia, Chad Reed raced the Motocross GPs in 2001 where he finished ranked second in the 250cc class.

In 2002 Reed decided to test himself against the best Supercross racers in the world when he signed with Boost Mobile Yamaha to race in the U.S. Reed was an immediate success. He won 2002 the AMA 125cc East Supercross title. Along the way he came to the prestigious Daytona Supercross for the first time. The fast Aussie wasn’t intimidated by the grueling circuit. He pulled away from Mike Brown and Grant Langston to take the victory in the 125 class.

 This photo was taken by Steve Bruhn. Bruhn was one of the first Supercross photographers to shoot digital. Amazingly Steve broke into the game shooting with inexpensive digicams before moving up to the then ultra-expensive digital SLR. Shooting digitally allowed Bruhn’s work to get to the still new Web faster than the other photographers of the day. Steve was also ahead of his time starting a website called MotoNews that featured MotoTalk, the first really big motocross/Supercross web discussion forum.

TFS

Bruhn became somewhat of a celebrity, something extremely rare for a racing photographer. He traveled the country in a motorhome, uploading to the web via a satellite connection. He even had stickers made up with a caricature of him and his online identity of TFS (The Factory Spectator). Not sure what Steve is up to these days, but it was a pleasure hanging with him at the races in the early 2000s.