Decal Works Presents The Monday Gate Drop

As always this week’s Monday Gate Drop is brought to you by one of the coolest companies in motocross, Decal Works. With the 2015 riding season just days away, now is the perfect time to order a new set of custom graphics for your bike. Just go to www.decalmx.com and in minutes you can order your very own set with anything you want on them. Decal Works also offers seat covers now to complete your new graphic package and help make your bike look the best in the pit area.

Although it’s not very spring-like in some parts of Canada today, we are after all almost into the month of April and with it the 2015 race season. In Ontario, tracks like Moto Park and Gopher Dunes are hoping to open this weekend for their first open practice of the year. While the forecast doesn’t exactly look promising for riding, at this point I think most people would take anything as long as the ground isn’t frozen. I will try and update everyone this week as to what tracks will be open and what the conditions might be like.

Before I get right into the news from the past week, I’d like to first wish my father a very Happy Birthday today. William Ray Pomeroy turns 72 today and, knock on wood, he’s doing pretty well and feels good. Like most motocross kids, my Dad was the one who introduced me to riding many years ago and together we spent my amateur career travelling across Canada, parts of the USA and of course our home province of Ontario. Those years definitely made some great memories, some my Dad remembers quite well but some are a little foggy. We also spent a few years pretending we were farmers on the 75 acres that my family owned. Those years were both fun and miserable all at the same time. But we did it and looking back I wouldn’t change a thing about how I grew up. My Dad did all of this while still holding down his real occupation as an airline pilot for 35 years. I don‘t know how he did it all, but he did and I‘m obviously very thankful. Anyway, Happy Birthday Dad!

This has definitely been an interesting few weeks in motocross as the safety of our sport has been called into questioned by more than one person. With the tragic passing of Tyler Hoeff in Texas to the Weimer/Canard incident in Detroit, there has been a lot of unfortunate crashes in the past two weeks alone. Safety in this sport is both an interesting subject and a touchy subject as well, however it seems as though it’s something that we all must look at. Tackling safety in motocross is a very difficult project as there are many different levels and different factors to consider. There are things like track safety, safety equipment and of course the tasks of helping riders make better decisions while they’re riding. Let’s look at each separately.

Track Safety:

I believe that with the odd exception, tracks right across Canada are doing a much better job of making their facilities safer than say ten or twenty years ago. If a certain section has caused problems, then in most cases that section has been changed or removed to help make the track safer. We must remember that every track has had to almost reinvent itself in the last ten years with the changing machines that the riders are now riding. A section that might have been no issue on a two-stroke years ago may now be way too fast on a modern day four-stroke. The tracks have had to do all of this with limited funds and rising operating costs. But, they’ve done a good job of adapting and listening to their users, and they must continue to be proactive with everything inside their gates.

Safety Equipment:

With inventions like neck braces and knee braces in the last ten years, I certainly think that motocross is leading the way with regards to its safety equipment. The quality of helmets, goggles and boots are also better than ever so I’m not sure if there is any more we can be doing right now in this area. As I said above, the machines most of us are riding these days are faster than ever, and if you’re travelling around the track on an average of a few MPH faster than you were ten years ago, well, chances are if you crash the impact is going to be that much harder. It’s simple physics. The equipment out there is better and more innovative than it’s ever been. It’s just up to the consumer as to which stuff they decide to buy and wear.

Decision Making:

This is a part of the safety equation that I believe is the toughest to monitor. What goes on in a riders head while they’re in the heat of competition is hard to control at the best of times, and there will always be those situations when seemingly dumb things happen. Just like in every sport, motocross will always have those few athletes that sometimes make questionable decisions on the track. This season in the Monster Energy AMA Supercross we’ve seen one particular rider cause a lot of damage. Now I love Trey Canard and his life story and how resilient he’s been throughout his career, however, like we saw with Chad Reed at A2, if I was Jake Weimer I’d be pretty unhappy with Mr. Canard. Weimer’s list of injuries from last weekend reads like a soldier who is returning from battle, and to me it was all so unnecessary. Again, like he did with Reed in January, Canard made a poor decision that caused both crashes. I can’t help think that if Canard wasn’t given such a free pass after taking Reed out and if the powers at be in SX hadn’t overreacted to what Reed did after the fact, maybe, just maybe Canard would’ve become more astute on the race track. Canard landing on Reed was deemed to be just a racing incident and nothing was done about it. I’m sorry but when you land on someone the way that Canard landed on Reed or on Weimer, that is not a true racing incident and it should be dealt with accordingly.

For instance, in the NHL if a player has another player lined up for a hit against the boards, if the player who was going to get hit head-on unexpectedly turns and gets hit from behind, that play, as unfortunate as it is for the player that had a perfect hit all set up, is a penalty for hitting from behind and that player is penalized. If the same play happens again to the same player, the league gets involved and that player is now on a watch list. This disciplinary process doesn’t seem to exist in SX for incidents like the ones we’ve seen from Canard in 2015.

Solving these types of bad decisions is a tough one, however I think the sport could do a better job of educating certain types of riders that not only injured other riders, but also riders that are constantly injuring themselves.

This past week, Kevin Windham chimed in on our sport’s recent tragedies and spoke very eloquently about what can be done in the future to prevent these types of events. One of Kevin’s observations that I really think we can all do a better job of is the monitoring of what types of crashes riders are having. By trying to examine as many crashes as we can, maybe we can get a better idea on how to prevent them. I know it’s hard to do in motocross because of all of the factors involved, however I believe it’s possible. A simple ‘crash report’ that gets filed and then logged and tracked with other crashes can go a long way to getting a better understanding of the root causes. I guess it just takes everyone working together both on and off the track to keep this sport as safe and as fun as possible as we head into the second half of this decade.

Well, that is it for me this week and standing on my soap box. I want to send the very best wishes to Colton Facciotti, Shawn Maffenbeier and young Tanner Ward for a quick recovery from their recent injuries. All the best guys and hopefully we’ll see you back riding soon. I hope everyone has a safe week as we finally say goodbye to winter and hello to riding season. Finally!! Happy Easter to everyone this coming weekend!