MXP: Hey Newf! We saw you were riding and doing a riding school last weekend. Spring is here and with it is the beginning of the riding season in Canada. The opening round of the Future West MX Series is fast approaching. How is 2025 looking for regional MX in BC?
RL: This is the time of year that we are always waiting for after either a white or rainy winter. Last weekend was opening day for a bunch of tracks here in BC, and it appeared that the tracks were busy. We were up in Kelowna, and it was awesome. I love this time of year. We are about three weeks away from Round 1 of the Future West MX Championships, and things are looking strong. People are excited to go racing, so we are on track to break 500 entries at round one.
MXP: The Seattle SX took place last weekend and we had several Canadian riders on the starting line. Cole Thompson had his best race of the season with a solid 9th in the 250SX West main event. Tyler Gibbs also had a strong showing. What are your thoughts on how our boys did in Seattle?
RL: Cole was great for sure and I believe that was his best finish of 2025 thus far. I really thought we would see Julien Beneck in the main and he did put himself in a position where he should have made it out of the heat race. He ran 7th for pretty much the whole thing till he made a mistake. The expectation for him is main events now anytime he lines up, so I would say he had to be disappointed. For Gibby, I really thought he had a strong shot at the main and he did ride well in the LCQ, but it’s extremely hard to just show up for one round and get into the flow. All in all, I thought our boys rode well!
MXP: The final question this week is regarding Haiden Deegan. He showed up in Seattle with some custom Thor prison gear, which looked cool. He then got into a heated exchange with Julien Beaumer for the world to see after the main event. All of that aside, do you think that if you’re Deegan and you have all of this sideshow stuff going on at the end of the day you’d better go out and win?
RL: All this Deegan stuff is too much for me and he’s taken it too far. I understand what they are trying to do from a marketing side but it’s a distraction and a little bit of a clown show. He is the best rider out there hands down and he needs to focus on the job at hand, and that is to win races. Yes, it’s entertaining for the fans cause you never know what he is going to do or say but come on, it’s just a bit much at this point. Ride your motorcycle and win races.
