Covering the sport of Supercross means covering all aspects, which, unfortunately, means also covering crashes. It’s never fun seeing a rider get hurt, and it goes against your instincts to shoot photos of it, but you’ve got to tell the entire story when you’re at the races. Crashes are part of that story.
This is the story of 2017, and the season that started off with so much promise for Ken Roczen, and then everything changed at Anaheim 2.
Coming off of second place in the series in 2016, and the 450 Motocross championship, Roczen had made the switch from the RCH Suzuki to the might Factory Honda team for 2017. And man did things look good right from the start. Roczen made it look easy, taking the win at the Season Opener at Anaheim and then backing it up with another win at round two, in San Diego. It was looking like Roczen and Honda were an unstoppable combo. It looked like more of the same at Anaheim 2 as Roczen took the heat race win, but in the main, his first bad start left him hovering around the top 10 in the opening laps. With complete precision, he started slicing through the pack and before long had made it to third, where we would proceed to battle with his teammate, Cole Seely, for second place. After a few laps though, disaster would strike, as he got kicked in a rhythm section and ejected over the bars. It was a terrible crash, and immediately you knew that something was wrong.
In that situation, you start shooting. It sucks, but he was the points leader and was on his way to the front of the race, so it was a major storyline that he crashed. As they finally got him off the track, you could see the pain and you knew that the shot of him on the mule, really told the story of his race. It’s sad, but after being so dominant to start that season, we’ve seen flashes, but he’s never been quite the same. I think the number of surgeries he’s undertaken has really taken a toll.
There’s not much to say about technical settings when it comes to a shot like that. You just shoot the shot and move on. I can definitely say that I enjoy races much better when I don’t have to make those types of shots.