Honda Canada Racing Presents The Monday Gate Drop

Good day and welcome to the first Honda Canada Racing Monday Gate Drop of December. Other than May and September, this is my favourite month of the year. I have always loved Christmas and the build up to it, and obviously, since my wife and I had our son, Christmas has taken on a new meaning. So as busy and as hectic as this next month will be, try to enjoy it as it really is the best time of the year!

After an exciting opening two rounds last weekend in Chilliwack, the Future West Canadian AX Championships was back at it Friday night at the Heritage Arena. With no Shawn Maffenbeier at Round 3, it left the door wide open for other riders to step up. Two new riders in the field were Cade Clason and Brad Nauditt, who both are no stranger to racing on Canadian soil. In the Pro-Am Lites class, Nauditt was able to finish in second place, but in the Pro class he only managed an 8^th place finish. For Clason, he was his normal aggressive self on the tight Chilliwack track and found himself on the top step of the podium in the Pro class on Friday evening. It was a great final race of 2018 for Clason as in January he goes back to attending every round of the Monster Energy SX Series as a rider rep for FXR Racing.

So that was Friday night. Sadly, during Pro practice on Saturday, Clason collided with a flagger, and that was that for the rest of the day’s program. According to someone onsite, the flagger inadvertently stepped onto the track and Clason had nowhere to go but into her. The flagger was badly injured and had to be taken to the hospital. Clason was pretty banged up as well but he’s going to be okay. In the end, Health and Safety showed up, and since the flagger was working for the event, the entire event was shut down for the rest of the day for an investigation. It was a very unfortunate incident and one that had to be taken very seriously. By the sounds of it, everything is going to be okay moving forward as the next round isn’t until February. My best wishes go out to all involved as it sounded like a very scary situation.

With Christmas and the New Year right around the corner, now is the time to start looking forward to the 2019 Monster Energy Supercross Series and Round 1 in Anaheim, CA. With defending 450SX Champion Jason Anderson looking good so far in his off-season races, this series should once again be an exciting one. With riders like Eli Tomac, Justin Barcia, Ken Roczen, Cole Seely, and even Chad Reed also looking good, Anderson is definitely going to have his hands full at Anaheim 1. Judging by how good Zach Osborne looked this past weekend at the Geneva SX, he is going to be very good in 2019. Finally, we can’t forget about the Orange Team with Marvin Musquin and newly signed Cooper Webb. We all know how good Musquin can be, but I think Webb may be the dark horse as he will be comfortable aboard his new KTM by then. Oh yes, for 2019, this class appears to have the perfect mixture of speed, experience and aggression. Hopefully all of the riders can remain healthy for the entire series.

In the 250SX West class, there will be a host of fast riders looking to solidify themselves as the top guns. I would think that Justin Cooper and Austin Forkner will be two riders that will be going for wins each weekend. Thankfully, we Canadians will have Jess Pettis to cheer for as he plans to line up for at least the first five or six west coast rounds. As reported last week, Pettis is all but confirmed to race a KTM in 2019. With Kevin Tyler from MX101 Yamaha announcing last week that the team is looking for another rider to race alongside Marco Cannella next season, the writing is on the wall and it’s written in ink. I even heard from one of my sources in the US that Pettis actually received a phone call from Roger DeCoster trying to convince him to go down the orange road. I’ve never received a call from Roger, but I’m assuming it would be hard to say no to him. Anyway, Pettis did post late last week that he was on his way to California to begin training for 2019. Once this deal is announced we can then speculate at just how strong the Red Bull Thor KTM Team will be next year with Cole Thompson, Tanner Ward, and presumably Pettis. Speaking of 2019 and the Canadian Series, it all gets underway on March 16^th in Calgary, AB with the opening round of the Rockstar Energy Triple Crown AXTour Series. Here is the tentative 2019 AXTour schedule:

March 16^th Calgary, AB

March 30th Penticton, BC

April 6th Abbotsford, BC

April 20th Barrie, ON

April 27th Sarnia, ON

With 2019 not too far away, this down time gives us a great opportunity to reflect on this past season, and to make a list of what went well and what things we need to improve on. In each issue of MXP Magazine we feature a column written by Toronto based Sports Psychologist Sean Poitras. In his latest column, Sean talks about what type of mental things we can work on during the off-season. Here is an excerpt from Sean’s Mental Side column from the latest issue of MXP Magazine. If you want to read the rest of Sean’s article, it appears in our latest issue.

“Another season is in the books, and with the winter months approaching it is time to gear down and pack it all away until next Spring. However, just because you are not physically on the bike practicing or competing does not mean that your training is complete. Mental skill training does not have an off-season. I strongly believe in a break from the sport, both physically and mentally, to recharge and re-ignite that passion to compete again next season, but just like everything else, it must be done with a purpose.

One habit I always try to encourage all of my athletes to do is to practice the routine of reflection and closure following every game, event, competition, or in this case season. As it is with most sports and performances, there can be ups and downs, highs and lows, and positives and negatives to every outing. And there are takeaways and lessons to be learned from all of them. Unfortunately, our brains tend to focus primarily on the shortcomings, missed opportunities or mistakes made. These recollections often fester in our heads and create more negative thinking patterns in our personal self-talk. These kinds of thoughts are usually useless for our performance development and can make it much more difficult to find closure for that particular event.

To counter this, I always recommend to my athletes to limit themselves to a purposeful and structured reflection of their performance immediately following the event. The addition of a physical action or routine along with it can be helpful. For example, utilizing the time spent after an event removing your equipment as your allotted time for reflection. Typically, this is a private time where you are alone with your thoughts and you can symbolically structure your reflection around this block.”

Well, that is it for me this week. I hope everyone has a great week and most importantly a safe week. I also want to send best wishes to young Dexter Seitz and Zach Ufimzeff. Both riders were injured during Thursday night practice in Chilliwack and will be out of action until the new year. Anyway, enjoy the first week of December and thank-you for reading this week’s Honda Canada Racing Monday Gate Drop.