Sailun Tire Canada Presents The Monday Gate Drop

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Well, after a weekend off the 2022 Monster Energy Supercross Series resumed in St Louis on Saturday evening, and boy it was a crazy time for everyone. I’m not sure if it was because some of the riders were a little rusty after a week off or because it was Triple Crown format, but for whatever reason, we witnessed a lot of carnage at Round 13. What started as one of the most competitive SX Series in recent memories has quickly turned into a gong show with more and more riders getting injured each week. Heading into St Louis, Cooper Webb was the latest rider to announce that he had injured himself and would not be lining up. It’s been a challenging season, to say the least for Webb and it will be interesting if we see him again before the outdoor series begins in late May. It was also revealed last week that Webb has returned to the Baker’s Factory to train with Aldon Baker full time. This is great news as Webb appears to be a rider that needs that type of structure training to be at his best on the weekend. As I said, it’s been a tough month for injuries, and then sadly after media day on Friday, it was announced that Cameron McAdoo wouldn’t be racing on Saturday. During the opening rounds of the 250SX East Series McAdoo was one of the only riders capable of battling points leader Jett Lawrence so it was most certainly another blow to the series to now have him out as well. As for Canadian riders, with Tanner Ward now focusing on his 450 riding Guillaume St Cyr was the lone Canuck on the St Louis entry list and he would once again be racing in the 450SX class.

Once the gate dropped on Saturday the racing in all six main events had a strange vibe to it as the St Louis track dictated that the riders had to be cautious. The whoop section was challenging, the dirt was a little softer than normal, and the layout had the riders battling hard to make passes. In the 450SX class, the technical track seemed to suit Marvin Musquin and he capitalized on an off night by Eli Tomac and crashes by a few other riders to win his first SX of the season. Now, I don’t want to take anything away from Musquin as he has been riding great in recent weeks, and with Webb and Plessinger out with injuries, he’s now the only KTM factory rider on the gate. Musquin excelled on the awkward track and with him getting off to great starts in all three main events as well as finding some good speed in the whoops, he was tough to beat on Saturday night. Behind him, Tomac was quick to recognize that this was not the track to try and make something happen on and he did his best to minimize any damage to his massive points lead. Chase Sexton was also fast on Saturday evening but a bad start in Main Event 3 ruined his chances at the overall win. Jason Anderson was having a good night also until a bad start and crash in the third main event kept him off of the podium. As I mentioned, it was a strange night and it was like the top riders weren’t feeling the track and tried to ride safe. Unless you’re in a points battle right this is a tough part of the SX schedule as the series is slowing windy down. Riders are tired, most likely battling some sort of injury, and outdoor riding and testing are beginning to creep into schedules.

Unfortunately, a couple of riders couldn’t escape St Louis without some serious injuries. In the 250SX East class, poor Kyle Peters got landed on during the early stages of Main Event 2 and ended up with a broken neck. Thankfully, Kyle didn’t lose feeling in his arms or legs and by the sounds of it, he’ll make a full recovery. Before one of the 250SX East gate drops, Daniel Blair spoke to Phil Nicoletti (who rode great all night long) and Phil mentioned how chaotic the opening laps of each main event were. With the shorter races that the Triple Crown events have riders are forced to hang it out a little more during the first few laps and that might have added to the chaos. In the second 450SX main event, Dean Wilson had a big crash when he got sideways in the whoops, went off of the track, and hit the metal structure that supports the finish line sign. As Dean was ejected off of his bike he must have caught his butt on one of his razor-sharp footpegs and it sliced him open. As he said in his post-race video from his hospital bed he all of a sudden felt a warm sensation as he was lying in a pool of blood. It was an ugly incident and hats off to the Alpinestar Medical Crew for tending to Dean and doing their best to get the bleeding under control. Since his crash, Dean has gone through multiple surgeries and he might have a few more in his future.

Okay, maybe by now you get a sense that a rant is coming after witnessing what we witnessed on Saturday night with regards to the Wilson incident. First off, why would the track designers put the finish and finish line metal structure adjacent to a section that we’ve seen cause the most issues for riders this season? I think we call all agree that the whoop section is always challenging and in St Louis they had the riders hitting them faster than we’ve seen in weeks. With the speed and difficulty level of the whoops on Saturday night of course a rider or riders at some point are going to get out of control and take a trip off of the track. Having the finish line structure in that location was the perfect storm of causing added injury to some unlucky rider. Had it not been there Deano still would’ve most likely crashed but he would’ve avoided the ‘sudden’ stop that you always want to avoid. To me, it’s just bizarre to have the track set up like that, and unfortunately, Dean paid a high price because of it. Also, once Dean crashed and the medics and officials knew that they were dealing with an emergency, why wasn’t the main event red-flagged so they could attend to him without dealing with race conditions going on around them? I hope that SX does a post-race meeting each weekend to go over what took place and if I was the Alpinestar Medical Crew as well as the Team Manager’s, I would be really upset that the officials allowed that race to go on with Dean on the side of the track losing blood. Between Friese almost killing Craig in Glendale, idiots fighting, to multiple other big crashes, we have sure witnessed a lot of carnage in 2022. Anyway, heal up Deano and hopefully, we see you back on the track when the outdoor series begins on May 27th.

Okay, enough about SX, not let’s get to some Canadian moto news. With the opening round of the 2022 AMO Racing OPC Series set to kick off in less than two weeks, riders in Southern Ontario are busy dodging snow storms and cool weather as they try and get some practice laps in. I’ve said this before but it’s times like this when I really love Social Media and things that people post. If you scroll through Instagram and Facebook you will see that riders right across the country are riding and having fun as they prepare for the 2022 race season. Photos, videos, and just about everything else is being posted these days and it gives us a real sense of what everyone is doing. This is the earliest that any Canadian race season has begun in two years so it’s exciting that we’ll be going racing again in April. As usual for the opening race of the season in Ontario, Gopher Dunes will be the perfect host for this two-day event on April 23, 24.

As for our pro riders? Most of them are still down south training for the 2022 Triple Crown Series which begins on June 5th in Kamloops. I say most because some have returned home now that the weather is beginning to improve. Dylan Wright for instance was riding at Gopher Dunes over the weekend as he returned to Canada a few weeks ago. Jess Pettis is still in California riding and training with Ryan Hughes. Pettis will be heading to ClubMX soon to join his teammates Jacob Piccolo and Sebastien Racine to continue training before heading to Quebec for their team’s photoshoot. TLD GASGAS Team riders Tyler Gibbs and Sam Gaynor are also at ClubMX still, however they will both be returning to Ontario soon. Marco Cannella and Tanner Ward are still in Georgia training but both will be home in a few weeks. Finally, the cagey old veteran Shawn Maffenbeier is still in California getting himself back into race shape on his MX101 Yamaha. All of the above-mentioned riders will be back on Canadian soil in the next month as the weather continues to improve here.

Well, that is it for me this week. I hope everyone has a Happy Easter long weekend and hopefully the weather is decent in your area so you’re able to get out riding! Also, don’t forget tonight over on PulpMX Steve Matthes is celebrating his 500th show and as special guests he will have Jeremy McGrath and Ricky Carmichael on. Thank you for reading!