WE NEED WHAT?
WHAT WE NEED
Do you know what the Motocross industry needs? It needs more podcasts. When every rider, former rider, coach, super coach and former rider super coach has a podcast, then I will be happy because too much knowledge is never enough.
Now, full disclosure, I’m not really a podcast guy. Very rarely do I have the time to listen to someone’s life for three hours, nor do I want to hear a corner-by-corner account of the weekend’s race when I just watched it.
I’m all for people expressing some opinions, but I think we have now reached saturation point with podcasts. Nevertheless, until we get the top 20 riders in the US and the top 10 in Australia doing a weekly podcast, we just don’t have enough podcasts.
I want to know that if I need a full analysis of the lever setup on someone’s bike, I can get it. I need to know that they tested the bike during the week and made some changes, and now it’s much better — until they don’t get a better result, and then they are back to still searching for setup.
WHAT WE DON’T NEED
We don’t need to know race calendars and event schedules well in advance. I like the “let’s just throw everything into a van on Friday and drive across the country” thing we have going on at the moment. And I think we need a longer season. Eleven months isn’t long enough. In fact, I’m starting a petition, podcast, and a street march to head office for a race on Christmas Day because 11 months simply isn’t cutting it.
I understand a calendar is tough to put together, but the more lead-in time you give riders, teams and families to prepare, the more chance they will be able to compete as they can organise staff, budgets, time off work, and all the normal life things that are required.
As for the season, most races fire up around early February, national races start in March, and the last race of the season is either the last week of November or the first week of December. Name another sport that goes on for 11 months. For me, I would rather do more races in a condensed period than a long, drawn-out, neverending series, as even when you win, there is no time to enjoy it as the next race, series or season is upon you.
WE NEED MORE RIDER BRIEFINGS
I can’t tell you how many of those things I have been to in my time, but damn I love them. 250 riders standing around with disinterested looks on their faces, kicking the dirt, just wondering when an appropriate time would be to fully disengage from what is being said and start swiping on their phones.
And you know what makes a rider really mad? When they have stood there for what seems like an eternity and finally think it’s coming to an end, but the steward asks for any questions, and some super nerd sticks up his hand and asks for an exact rundown on the start procedure or if the stationary yellow means he can or can’t pass, and the steward then has to give a 20-minute rule book definition, which turns out to be completely different from the last event the rider was at, and the remaining 249 riders have to stand around for longer.
WE DON’T NEED MORE SUPERCROSS TRACKS
If we want Supercross to succeed in Australia, then we need to provide a learning environment for riders from the age of 12. Very few riders decide they want to take up Supercross at the age of 17 or older, so the younger we can get them on a track and let them learn the basic skills, the more chance we have of bringing numbers and depth to our fields.
At the final round of the Australian Supercross Championship last year, there were 36 Australian riders racing that night. That number simply isn’t sustainable and if we don’t start investing in them, that number will only continue to shrink as the older riders who have Supercross experience retire from the sport.
THE JETT
And just a final comment on what Jett Lawrence is doing in the US right now. There is plenty of debate about his credentials, how deep the field is, and whether he is on the same level as other riders like Ricky Carmichael and James Stewart. I will throw this out there: Name another 19-year-old rider who has performed consistently as well as Jett has in the MX1 class, in any era.
To ride the biggest-capacity bike in any discipline of racing takes a certain physical and mental maturity. James, Ricky, Ken Roczen, Stefan Everts — all these riders are mentioned in the same conversation as Jett, but they didn’t do the things he is doing in their first season on a 450. Sure, they won races here and there, but they also crashed often and never secured a championship. Does it mean he is the best ever? No, it means he is having one hell of a season and riding a class that has proven to show that experience counts. Regardless of whether it becomes the perfect season or not, it has been amazing to think how far he has come in such a short time.