Motocross Performance Magazine Canadian Motocross news leader
When you look back at this past year in Canadian motocross there are many great stories and many great performances. In both the amateur and pro classes, we all witnessed riders push their limit on the racetrack while battling for moto wins and championships. As I’ve done for the past five seasons, this is the time of year that I sit down to compose my annual Golden Elbow Awards that celebrate the memorable moments from the past year. Whether it was Dylan Wright’s title runs in the 250 AXTour and MXTour Series or Phil Nicoletti’s Triple Crown Championship, there were multiple moments that will leave people talking for years to come. For this year’s Golden Elbow Awards, let’s now look at the winners of the 10 categories.
The second 450 moto in Prince George was a beauty. Photo by James Lissimore
When choosing this award I really had to go into my memory vault to visualize all of the races I witnessed during the past year. I even went back to Anaheim in January when I watched six very entertaining main events in the first Triple Crown event of the 2019 Monster Energy Supercross Series. There were plenty of great races for me to choose from in 2019 in both the pro classes as well as the amateur classes. All three Supermini races at the Walton TransCan come to mind, for sure, and they are races I’d love to see again. However, for me, the winner of this Golden Elbow Award is the second 450 moto from Round 2 of the Rockstar Energy Triple Crown MXTour Series in Prince George. During that moto Colton Facciotti and Phil Nicoletti were pretty much feet apart for almost 25 minutes. Even though the series was three motos old at the time, this would be the first time that these two warriors would battle to this extreme. Lap after lap, with Facciotti out front and having to deal with lapped riders and deteriorating track conditions, Nicoletti was parked right on his rear tire waiting for an opening. Finally, with three laps to go, Facciotti was able to turn in a lap time that was two seconds better than Nicoletti’s, which allowed the Honda rider to increase his lead from 0.933 to 3.773. Think about that for a second. From Lap 6 until Lap 15 Colton’s lead over Phil was less than a second. It was an amazing performance by both riders and it was kind of an introduction to each other as it gave them a glimpse of how tough each man would be throughout the series.
