DeCal Works Presents Monday Gate Drop

Good morning and welcome to another edition of Monday Gate Drop. This week’s Gate Drop is brought to you once again by DeCal Works, hands down the best graphic company in the World. If you need to spruce up your used bike for this season or you have a brand new bike and you want to customize your graphics, all you have to do is visit www.decalmx.com and in minutes your new graphics are designed.

So here we are nearing the halfway point of the cold month of January and sadly if you want to ride a dirt bike in Canada you have very few options. Thanks to Social Media we’re getting constant updates from almost every Canadian rider on what they’re up to at this time of year. For instance, the Medaglia brothers are down at Josh Wood’s GPF compound in Georgia breaking in their new bikes. Tyler has moved from an orange KTM to a white Husqvarna for the 2015 season. There aren’t too many differences between the two machines so he should have no trouble adapting to his new 450.

With what Shawn Maffenbeier went through in London last week, this could’ve been his mug shot.

Jeremy Medaglia is back on a red machine for this season, riding for the new power team in Canada, GDR Honda. Getting used to the Honda should also be no problem for JDags as he rode a Cycle North Honda last winter on the way to an Arenacross Championship. My first thought last winter when I saw Jeremy on a Honda was that he looked completely comfortable on it. It’s my opinion that the new Hondas mostly suit riders that are smaller in stature (although Colton Facciotti would argue with that), and they also seem to suit riders that use a fairly forward riding position on the bike. Since Jeremy isn’t the tallest rider on the circuit and because he uses that aggressive, forward riding stance, I believe the new Honda CRF250 and Jeremy will be a perfect match in 2015.

Another top Canadian rider who has done more racing during this off-season than he ever has before is Shawn Maffenbeier. Shawn competed in the Future West Canadian AX Championships last month, and in hopes of continuing his racing efforts Shawn headed over to Europe last week to team up with Ross Johnson for an assault on the German SX series. However, because of a less than perfect passport photo, British customs refused his entry into their country at Heathrow Airport. With Shawn MIA in an airport jail, Ross Jonhson, Kourtney Lloyd and Shawn’s dad Randy frantically worked the phones trying to locate Shawn. The only thing they knew was that Shawn had sent Ross a text as he was about to pass through British customs to say that he’d see him in a few minutes. When the minutes turned to hours, no one knew what had happened to poor Shawn.

Well, thankfully this story has a somewhat of a happy ending as after a night in a holding cell with a few less desirables, Shawn was put on a flight back to Canada and was told to update his passport photo. Although Ross Johnson felt awful at the thought of leaving his buddy behind in England, he was forced to continue on with his travels to Germany. Shawn is now back home in Saskatchewan and is preparing to head down to the Todd Schumlick boot camp in California. This adventure will no doubt make for some great story telling for years to come for Shawn as their aren’t too many pro riders (thankfully) that get to see the inside of an airport holding cell.

As our MX1 Champion Colton Facciotti shows us in this Facebook photo, when you travel with children you have to bring a few extra bags.

As you can see, our top riders are beginning to execute their training for the 2015 season for the next few months. In case you’re wondering how our 2014 MX1 Champion Colton Facciotti is doing, Colton and his family headed out to BC on Saturday for one final vacation before his hard training begins down south. While out west he will attend the Vancouver Motorcycle Show to sign autographs and hang out with his west coast fans. Once back home Colton will head down to GPF in a few weeks to meet up with his new teammate, and begin riding and training for his MX1 title defense this summer.

So as a few of our Canadian riders begin their 2015 training programs, our American supercross cousins are now two rounds into the 2015 Monster Energy AMA Supercross Series. I once again tried to stream the Phoenix SX on Saturday but apparently my computer is the only one that Hola.org doesn’t work on. Anyway, as I did with Anaheim One, I watched the race on Sunday morning on Youtube. For the second week in a row I was a little disappointed with the track as again the racing didn’t seem very exciting. While I thought the Phoenix layout was a little better, I’m not sure why they didn’t take a little extra time to groom out some of the deep corner ruts after the Lites main event. Since the 250Fs usually enter those bowl corners a little wider (to maintain their hard sought after momentum), their ruts always start higher and sooner in the corners. When the 450s got out on the track for their main event, the racing sometimes looked awkward as the riders would land before a few of the corners and then have to go wider than needed just to get into the entrance of the already made deep ruts. Anyway, this is just my opinion, and when all was said and done it was great to see Cooper Webb and Eli Tomac get their first wins. It was also awesome to hear the usually quiet and reserved Ryan Dungey call out a few members of the media during his podium speech for their criticism of his aggression level at the opening round in Anaheim. In this day and age it’s easy to criticize just about anyone and anything through social media, so to hear Dungey call a few of them out was pretty refreshing.

After two rounds of the 2015 Monster Energy AMA Supercross Series Davi Millsaps is still looking for his first podium. photo by Frank Hoppen

Even after just two rounds of the 2015 Monster Energy AMA Supercross Series, a few things are beginning to be apparent. First is the raw speed of the main event winners thus far. I mean, how fast was Eli Tomac on Saturday night? He had to have been very disappointed with his result at the opening round, so when he got close to the lead in Phoenix he just wouldn’t be denied. These young riders are going to be hard to beat in 2015 as they’re all so focused, well trained and seemingly confident. Veteran riders like Chad Reed, Andrew Short and even Dungey (who has been around for a while now) are going to have to search hard for a way to beat these young guns.

Speaking of Chad Reed, when is he going to find that magic that he showed at the beginning of last season? Or will he? So far, the common theme for Reed has been bad starts in the first two rounds. If Reed is going to continually start outside the top ten in this series then it’s going to be a long and frustrating one for him. When he went on his run last year, getting good starts was one of his strongest assets. I’m sure he’s doing everything possible so hopefully he can turn it around soon. Sometimes starts are just about confidence, and when you believe that you’re going to get off the gate well, it just happens. Reed needs a holeshot very soon so he can get some confidence back and get up front early to race with the leaders.

I guess we’ll see what happens in the coming weeks as the series now heads back to Anaheim for round 3 and retro night! This round is always cool as the teams break out the throwback graphics and the riders dawn their one-off retro gear. I can’t wait to see what’s in store this coming weekend at Angel Stadium. In the meantime, I hope everyone stays warm and has a very safe week.

While Chad Reed has been riding good so far in the SX Series, he could use some good old fashion start tips from Mike Alessi. photo by Frank Hoppen