Gillette dives headfirst into supporting — then owning — an ATV racing team

June 25--LA CRESCENT -- Rich Gillette was warned. He saw how much fun his son was having riding a four-wheeler for the first time. When he asked how much one would cost, a man who knew the rabbit hole he was about to fall down tried to set him straight.

"He looked at me squarely and said 'You do not want to do this,'" said the 43-year-old Gillette, who lives in Onalaska and owns La Crescent Wine & Spirit. "This sport will own you."

When Gillette said he was going to enter his son, Alex, in his first ATV motocross race, the warnings from the man grew louder and more pointed.

He was told he'd sell his two boats, he'd sell his motorhome and get a different one, he'd sell his vacation house up north and his winter home in Arizona to buy one in Texas, closer to where there were more race tracks, more excitement, more fun.

"I was like, 'OK, yeah, right, whatever," he said. "And here we are, nine years later. And everything is true. To a T."

Gillette is now the owner of Root River Racing, and his team manager is Rod Mickelson, an electrician who tried to warn Gillette of things to come.

And it's probably gone beyond what Mickelson thought possible.

"He wasn't saying it as a bad thing," said Gillette, who has invested millions -- yes, millions -- into his team and the sport. "It's more like, at the races, everyone is so much fun to be around. And the races are fun and your kid will do really well ... it's addicting."

What started as sponsoring Mickelson's two sons in a local motocross series ballooned into Gillette starting his own team. Today, Root River Racing has eight riders from seven families all over the country, and it also sponsors an additional 11 riders on the Mountain Dew AMA ATV MX National Championship series, the only ATV racing series sanctioned by the American Motorcyclist Association.

The team, which is the most popular on the series, includes his son, Alex, a student at Winona Cotter High School, as well as riders from Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Texas.

All will be in action this weekend at Spring Creek, a motocross track just north of Millville, Minn., at the Mountain Dew Spring Creek ATV National, the sixth round of the nine-stop ATV MX National Championship.

All races are held on dirt bike tracks, and the two-wheel drive "quad" that does everything a dirt bike can do.

"It's amazing to watch these kids take these machines and do what they do with them," Gillette said. "It's incredible to watch, especially up close and personal."

"These races are a lot of fun."

Gillette is having the most fun of them all, and he doesn't even compete. The team owner, who said he wasn't allowed to play with anything that had a motor as a child, can't get enough.

"It just kept building and building," Gillette said.

It started with sponsoring local racers and races in Minnesota and Wisconsin. In 2008, along with Mickelson, he started Root River Powersports and had a team of seven riders who competed in the Minnesota Quad Motocross District 23 series.

In 2009, the team entered three ATV MX National Championship races -- like the one that's coming to Spring Creek this weekend -- and at the end of the 2010 season, Gillette felt that more could be done at the national level, so that's where he spent most of his focus.

In 2013, Gillette -- with the sport, as Mickelson predicting, taking over his life -- used his connections at Pepsi-Cola to bring Mountain Dew in as a sponsor of the series in the hopes that it will gain more attention. He was named series sponsor of the year.

Not satisfied, this past year he brought a national marketing firm on board. He's hired a film crew to follow his team around at races. The highlight videos are available to view on YouTube, and at the end of the year Gillette plans to sell copies to interested parties.

And people will be interested.

It's a costly venture, but Gillette, whose grandfather Norman started several Pepsi-Cola franchises in the 1930s, has the means.

Instead of the cabin and the boats and the toys -- he had those, too, but as Mickelson said would happen, they've been sold -- he has his racing team.

The costs add up. The machines, which Gillette buys new every season, fuel -- both for the rigs to get the ATVs to the tracks and for the ATVs themselves -- insurance for the rigs, salaries for the crew, race apparel, helmets ... it adds up quick.

Gillette said he'll spend more than $1 million out of his own pocket on the team and sponsorships this year alone.

He has people that tell him he's crazy. All the time. And it starts at home.

"My wife is usually the first one to tell me that," Gillette said.

But doesn't she miss the cabin, the boats and the vacations?

"Well, I'm on my second wife," he admitted.

And while he and his wife, Theresa, did recently take a trip to Hawaii -- it was Gillette's first real vacation in nine years -- he spends most of his money on racing. He'll help out as many riders and families as he can.

"Just seeing the struggles that families were having not being able to make this race or that race because their kid crashed," Gillette said. "And it's not because of injuries. It's because the bike needed to be fixed."

That's how he first came in contact with Sean Taylor, the only rider on Root River Racing to race in the pro division.

"They helped me out with discount parts and stuff like that," said Taylor, a 25-year-old rider from Montezuma, Iowa, who's in his third year with Root River Racing. "They got to know my family, just from being at the races. At the end of the 2011 season, I was hurt for most of the year, but they asked me if I wanted to be a part of their team."

Taylor said that Gillette is known as a generous guy, and Root River Racing is known as one of the better-run teams in the sport.

"Everyone wants to be part of the Root River team," Taylor said.

Root River has won nine national championships. Last year, Bubba Hicks, also of Montezuma, Iowa, was the 450 A champion, while Sam Rowe of Menasha, Wis., was the College champion, the second straight year a Root River rider won that division. In 2012, Dylan Tremellen of Lancaster, Pa., won the division.

This year, Tremellen is the points leader in Production A, Rowe leads in 450 A and Open A and Manshack leads the women's class and has four first-place finishes.

Alex Gillette, who commutes to Cotter from Onalaska, is fourth in the 450 B Class and won a race earlier this season. He's also 10th in the Production B Class.

Only Taylor races in the pro class, but Gillette sponsors two pro riders -- Joel Hetrick and John Natalie, who are both tied for second.

Gillette said his goal is to develop the riders to a point where they can go their own way as a pro rider or start their own team with corporate sponsors. He also wants to continue to develop the series and help it gain more exposure nationally.

Until then, he'll continue to be involved, trying to help as many riders as he can and doing anything possible to help develop a sport that truly has taken over his life.

"The core group that I have going right now on my race team, from my employees to my son to the riders I have on my team, as I see them disperse or move off my team or go pro or retire, it will be where I start falling back," he said. "Once I know the series has strengthened enough ... I don't feel obligated. It's definitely a choice of mine. As long as it's a choice of mine, I will continue to help the series as much as I can."

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