Posted: Monday, 25th September, 2006 : 9:47 PM - - 4,200 Reads

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The 33 year old Belgian will head-up the internalised MX1 and MX2 set-ups, consisting of David Philippaerts, Jonathan Barragan, Tyla Rattray and Tommy Searle, at all 15 Grand Prix on the provisional ’07 calendar and also focus heavily on the rider’s preparation in a one year deal.

The company trust that Everts’ experience in an eighteen year career with ten World Championships and 101 Grand Prix victories will be an enormous asset in their quest to succeed in both MX1 and MX2. The World Champion retired after a clean sweep at the Motocross of Nations and will begin the next phase of his career at the end of the calendar year.

Mr Pierer and Mr Beirer also commented that the MX3 wing of the Motocross effort will be run from current manager Jacky Martens Belgian team but only with factory supported material.

Stefan Everts: "I had an offer from Yamaha and an offer from KTM and the most interesting was KTM’s because the goal of helping the younger riders get to the next level and win GPs - and then hopefully titles - was a big motivation for me. It is a completely new start in my life and the next stage after retiring from racing. I am a guy who likes a challenge and having that new goal gets me excited. I will be at all the GPs and I wanted to come to the races and do more than just watch. Working and riding sometimes with the younger guys will be great as well as doing some physical work with them. It will keep me on the bike for a few more years instead of just stopping immediately, which would be very hard. I will need to have some time to grow into the job and get adapted to it because it is not so easy to go from white to black, but we will go for it.”

Pit Beirer, KTM Motorsport Director: “It is an enormous pleasure and honour to welcome Stefan to KTM. A motocross legend will be working with us next year and with all his experience we know that this is one of the most important appointments KTM has ever made for our Motocross division. Stefan is still racing at the moment so the finer details of his move will be worked out in the next month or two but he will be looking after our MX1 and MX2 teams at the track and our Belgian base while I will be co-ordinating things from the workshop and Austria. We believe this is the extra ingredient we have been looking for with our motocross racing.”

Stefan Pierer, CEO: “When we took the decision to move all the factory activities back within the factory we were looking for the best motocross person and there was no-one better in our eyes than Stefan. I tried to sign him for many years, and now finally we have a partnership. He will take care of the riders’ education, training and practicing and be our main guy on the race scene as the Race Director. This is the first step in a long term programme and we are sure he will be taking over the team later.”

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