Stories Revisited: How To Be A Good Pro

By Chris Pomeroy

Photos by James Lissimore

How To Be A Good Pro

 

When almost every young child begins playing sports, their dreams are big and the sky is the limit. With a child in deep imagination, pretending to be their favourite athlete is easy. I think everyone has a story of imagining they were Michael Jordan shooting hoops, or in hockey crazy Canada being Wayne Gretzky setting up the Stanley Cup winning goal from behind the net. In motocross, I doubt there is one rider out there who hasn’t dreamed about lining up at Anaheim 1 against the legends of the sport. This is how it all begins, and for the superstars that were at one time dreaming, their journey to super stardom began exactly the same way.

Rising through the amateur ranks is a long and difficult journey in any sport. Along the way a young athlete has to deal with such things as pressure from coaches and sometimes pressure from parents, untimely injuries, missing out on normal kid things, and unavoidable life events like puberty. They have to do this while balancing schoolwork and the effort of trying to be a somewhat normal kid. If any of these items get out of sorts and turn negative, it can throw off the entire balance of a young athlete’s life. In hockey, for instance, the proper path for a young player is supposed to be full of skill development and fun, both on and off the ice. Hockey Canada, through their research, has determined that skill based knowledge, as well as the need for pure enjoyment while playing the game, is an absolute must for any successful player. Obviously, work ethic and other necessities are needed for a player to make a big impact on the game, but first you need skills and the desire to practice these skills. This is where the fun part comes into play. If a young athlete is allowed at an early age to work at their craft and enjoy that process, he or she will be much better off later in their career.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed countless young motocross riders who appear destined for greatness but for whatever reason fail to reach their full potential. When I was 13 years of age I had the pleasure of racing against multi-time Canadian Amateur Champion Steve Bulyovsky. Back in 1986 and then again in 1987, Steve was virtually unbeatable in Canadian amateur motocross. In fact, in 1987 alone he won the 125, 250 and 500 Junior Championships in Manitoba, and then moved up to Intermediate and won all three classes the very next weekend. This was an unbelievable accomplishment; few people doubted that Steve wasn’t going to have a long and successful career when he turned pro the very next year.

After doing so much winning during his amateur career, Steve found the transition to the pro class very difficult. When things didn’t go very well in 1988, he started to think about life after motocross. Soon after he enrolled in university and that was it. For anyone who watched Steve Bulyovsky ride 30 years ago, everyone would have agreed that he didn’t lack talent, speed or fitness. I believe that because of his pressure packed childhood, filled with expectations. By the time Steve turned pro however, he was already tired and was over the constant weight of having to perform every weekend.

So what is the perfect balance for a young motocross rider to have as they follow the long and winding road to the Pro class? When you look at a few of our current top pros, while they may have different styles on a motorcycle, they all seem to share the same attributes. First, they all started riding at a very young age and have logged a lot of seat time. Going back to hockey for a minute, Hockey Canada did a study and determined for an athlete to be an absolute professional at what they do, they need to have invested at least 10,000 hours of practice time. When you think of it that way, it’s no surprise that riders like Colton Facciotti, Cole Thompson and Kaven Benoit have all been riding dirt bikes since they were kids. That is a lot of hours of painstaking motos under the hot sun, a lot of gas burned, and also a lot of unfortunate crashes. We all know, the more we ride, the more our chances of crashing and getting injured increases. For any rider who spends hours upon hours practicing, you all know that there comes a point during the season when you’re almost always sore and at least one part of your body is hurting. This is one reality that many people might not understand about being a pro. Other than maybe the off-season, almost every top rider is injured with something during the course of a season. One time I asked Bobby Kiniry how he managed to stay healthy during the long Supercross series. He replied, “Don’t kid yourself, by the halfway point of the series, almost every rider has some sort of injury. You just have to deal with it and keep going.”

One point that is overlooked when talking about the 10,000 hour rule is the amount of practice doesn’t just teach us the skills we need to be a successful pro, it also teaches us perhaps the biggest lesson we need to learn, and that’s how to be resilient. Think about the amount of ups and downs pro riders have during their careers. They have their good days and good motos, and then they have their moments they’d like to forget. However, the top riders regroup and keep coming back for more. Throughout their 10,000 hours, they’ve learned not only how to ride a dirt bike extremely well, but they’ve also learned that if they keep working and stick to their program, things will turn around.

I spoke earlier about some of the traits that all of the top riders in our sport share. I believe that for any rider to be successful they need the following three very important attributes:

 1. Talent – Without an abundance of natural talent, very few athletes are able to succeed at the pro level. This doesn’t mean that a rider has to be super smooth on the track and look like Cole Thompson all of the time. However, they do need to have a firm grasp on how to ride a dirt bike efficiently and how to make it do what they want it to do. They also need to be able to adapt to changing track conditions and be able to pick good lines. All of this falls under the talent umbrella and it’s a must for any good pro rider.

 2. Drive: Having a strong drive and the desire to work hard is absolutely imperative for any successful pro rider. In any sport, the road to the top is long that has many twists and turns. The ability to stay the course, not give up, and self-motivate is so very important. Also, our most successful riders are also our most fittest riders, so training and eating right must become not just something they do during racing season but it has to become their lifestyle. As the age old saying goes, work beats talent when talent doesn’t work. These are words that every rider should have written above their beds.

 3. Confidence: The third and final item that is mandatory for any successful rider is the need to believe in yourself. Without a lot of self confidence, it doesn’t matter how hard you work or how much talent you possess. When you’re sitting on the starting line with 39 other riders who all want to beat you, believing in your abilities is all you have at that moment. This sport will knock you down, stomp on you and leave you to rot if you don’t believe that you can overcome any obstacle, then it will eat you alive. Every top rider from Brett Metcalfe to Dylan Wright truly believes they are capable of anything. For some, this is tough as it can take years to build one’s self confidence. However, if you surround yourself with the right people and take the proper steps, you can achieve this great feeling and fly very high. 

There are three qualities that any rider must possess if they hope to be successful in the Pro class. Over the years we’ve seen many examples of riders who have exemplified these traits, or at least possess part of each trait. If you think back to riders like Blair Morgan, JSR, Darcy Lange, Tyler Medaglia, Cole Thompson, Kaven Benoit and Colton Facciotti, each of them is a poster child for these three important items. They each had or are still having successful racing careers simply because they were all talented, they performed the work, and they all believed in their abilities. If you want to be a good pro then you need to follow in these riders’ footsteps when it comes to their attributes and maturity. Being a professional athlete isn’t easy, if it was then everyone could do it. However, it’s a dream that every young rider can make into a reality. All they need to do is try and follow the proper road, regardless of how tough that road may be.