Motocross Performance Magazine Canadian Motocross news leader
After a few weeks of Gate Drop being about what took place at the Monster Energy Motocross Nationals, I have decided that I’m going to change it up this week. If you would like the full results from yesterday at Deschambault, you can go to www.cmrcracing.com and check them out. I can tell you that the racing was awesome and it made the return to the Deschambault track well worth it.
This week’s Gate Drop came to me this past weekend while I was speaking to one of the young MX2 riders. I’m not going to mention his name because it really doesn’t matter. He could be one of the many riders that line up each weekend at the Nationals because most of them are in the same boat. This rider is very fast, and with a good start and some good luck he could be a top five finisher in every moto, but this is racing and it always doesn’t work out that way. Although he’d love to be one of the top guys making some decent money, at the end of the day he knows he’s doing something that he loves to do. Along the way in this journey, he’s learning valuable life lessons that will help him well past his years as a pro motocross rider.
In this sport, people love to compare today to yester-year. Usually people talk about how tough it used to be, how the tracks used to be tougher and everyone used to have to walk ten miles to school into the wind, both ways in fact. Well, I was lucky enough to line up on the gate in a few different eras of Canadian motocross, and while it was extremely tough to race four national motos on a hot day against the likes of Ross Pederson or Jean Sebastien Roy, I think in many ways things were a lot simpler because back then we kind of had it easy. Let me explain.
After winnng the MX1 overall on Sunday Jeremy Medaglia gets a big hug from his mom. Motocross really is the best family sport in the World.
To make money back in 1997 the formula was simple: you had to race every weekend and sometimes more than once in a weekend. This was pretty clear and it gave a rider more chances to try to make a few dollars. Today’s Pro riders don’t have as many races during the year so when they do race, the pressure is immense to try to make the most of it. As with any job, it’s easy to get down if you don’t think you’re making enough money. In Canadian motocross today you have to be extremely focused and not lose sight of the big picture, especially if you have a few bad races in a row.
Another thing that was easier back then was the machinery. If a rider of today raced as many times as we did in the 1990s, he or she would need six bikes just to make it through a summer. All we had to do was throw a top end in to have a fresh bike. Off the bike, we didn’t have to deal with near the scrutiny that the modern rider does. Twitter, Facebook, texting and the media have all made it so easy to criticize a rider’s performance that there is no hiding from anything. If I had a bad race in 1997, all I had to deal with was John Nelson telling me that I stunk and I should do better next weekend, then we would laugh about something totally off topic; pretty simple.
My point to all of this is that the riders of today have it pretty tough and they should be commended for the effort that it takes to race these days. Yes, some of them make money and there still is the same old adage that if you want to make more money all you need to do is finish better. However, there is a large chunk of riders that don’t make much money at all. They do this because they love it, they’re riding one of the best series in the world, on the best bikes ever made and more importantly, they’re doing something that only a fraction of the population ever get to do.
The Deschambault track was in fine form all week. The ECAN and the National were a huge success.
For some reason talking to this unnamed rider and listening to his perspective on racing and life really emphasized the fact that this sport is tough to compete in at this level, whether it was 1990 or now 2013. Racers are racers and if you’re doing this for the money then you’re in the wrong line of work. To watch these riders battle for seven rounds of the 2013 Monster Energy Motocross Nationals has been a lot of fun and truly eye opening. Being a Pro motocross rider is one tough occupation! Now it’s late on a Sunday night and I will have an eager five and a half year old son waking me up at 7am that will want to hear all about the racing at Deschambault. Have a great week!
