Greetings! I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving weekend. Whether you’re riding, working, spending time with family, or perhaps doing a little bit of all three, I hope your 2024 Thanksgiving is a memorable one. As far as my family goes, we’re having pretty a low key weekend with no riding or racing. My son’s U18 hockey season began this weekend with games on Saturday and Sunday, so we spent a lot of our time inside arena’s cheering him and his team on.
Speaking of racing, the final AMO Racing event of 2024 took place this weekend at Gopher Dunes. Fall racing is always special at Gopher Dunes as the colours of the adjacent forest provide a scenic back drop. Also, with the deep Gopher sand, it doesn’t matter that much how the weather is. As long as it isn’t snowing, the track is usually in good condition. I was looking at all of the results this morning and the turnout looked solid for the final Ontario race of 2024. Even the Pro/Am class had a great line up with top riders like Tanner Ward, Sebastien Racine, Wyatt Kerr, Quinn Amyotte, and Tanner Scott. In the end, Tanner Ward won the battle yesterday with a 3-1-1 moto score, but Racine won the war and took home the series title, as well as the rather large payout that went with it. By all accounts, soon to be new Daddy Tanner Ward looks great on his new Priority KTM, and that is great news for the 2025 season. Overall, it was also great that Ontario pro riders had the 2024 AMO Racing Series so they could earn a little extra money. These days, unless your name is Dylan Wright or Jess Pettis, it’s challenging for our pro riders to make some money. In many ways, we’ve returned to how things were back in the 1990s when pro riders had to race if they wanted to make money. Nothing was promised, nothing was guaranteed, if you wanted a chance to make some cash you had to line up and do your best to earn it. Ryan Gauld, who raced himself in the second half of the 1990s knows this, so as the AMO Racing CEO it was great that he put together this shortened pro series, within his larger Ontario Provincial Series. Congratulations to Racine, as well as all of the AMO OPC Series champions! Now, at least in Ontario, the official off-season is upon us. With that said, I hope everyone has a safe winter and we’ll see you, most likely at Gopher Dunes in April 2025!
Down Under, our SX hero Cole Thompson was racing the opening round of the Australian SX Series just outside of Brisbane. Cole was a really late addition to the Honda Racing Team. However, since he had raced two of the three SMX rounds in the USA, Cole was race ready and jumped at the opportunity to fly across the Pacific Ocean to once again be a part of this exciting series. Cole is no stranger to the fans in Australia, as this will be his third season racing Supercross there. Last year, he ended up second overall, so heading into the opening round this past weekend, Cole was certainly one of the favourites to win. After an adventurous night of racing on Saturday, which saw several of the top riders crash and finish further back than anticipated. Cole returned the following evening to finish second overall behind his teammate Shane McElrath. Despite being a little inconsistent, Cole sits second overall in the SX2 points standings after one weekend of racing. In the SX1 class, Honda Racing teammates Joey Savatgy and Dean Wilson split wins over the weekend, in what was an exciting two days of racing. Round 3 goes on November 2nd in Wollongong, which is beach town just south of Sydney. With Round 3 being 17 days away, I’m assuming Cole will remain over in Australia to ride, test with the Honda Racing Team, and take in the sights and sounds of one of the coolest countries on the planet. Even though this is his third time over there, I’m sure there is still a lot to experience.
Now that we’ve had a week to digest Team Canada’s results from the 2024 MXON, I feel like the consensus is still that our boys had a good weekend in the UK. On Friday, we welcomed Ryan Lockhart back as he was once again answering your questions in the Matrix Concepts 3 Q’s featured story on mxpmag.com. Like most people I think, Newf was satisfied with the result, but also felt like Team Canada could’ve perhaps moved up to 11th or 12th OA. Regardless, 15th OA is good, and it was a heck of a lot better than last year in France. Dylan Wright’s 13th in the final moto stands as the team’s best moto finish from Sunday. At one point he and Jess Pettis were battling just inside the top 15 before JP15 made a small mistake and dropped back. Looking ahead to next year and the 2025 MXON at Ironman Raceway, and you have to think that we have an opportunity to finish inside the top ten once again. With Benoit moving out of the 250 class, it will be interesting to see if Ryder McNabb will be able to return to his top form next year, or if not, which rider do we send to compete against the worlds best in this class? Would we go with some new blood in say Wyatt Kerr or Sebastien Racine, or would it be better to move one of the veteran riders like Tyler Medaglia or Tanner Ward down to race the 250 class. These are just some of the decisions that will have to be made next summer by the Team Canada selection group. One thing that I think is for sure in 2025, is that despite Team Australia winning the MXON this year, heading into Ironman, Team USA will be a massive favourite to win on home soil. If Chase Sexton is healthy, he will be on the team, the same goes for Haiden Deegan, and if the stars align, the 2025 MXON will be Eli Tomac’s final race of his career, and you know he’ll want to go out on top. Sexton, Tomac, and Deegan is a team that will be very hard to beat, especially with the race being on a track they all know very well. Finally, after thinking about Dylan Wright’s great ride in the final moto last weekend, I decided to go back and watch the final moto from Red Bud in 2022. In that moto, Dylan got off to a solid 7th place start before settling into 10th. That is where he would remain until the finish in what was an amazing race for him. With that moto consisting of the MXGP and Open classes, Dylan’s 10th place stands out as one of Canada’s best ever finishes at this prestigious events.
Well, that is it for me this week as it’s finally time to go and eat some turkey. I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving weekend, and cheers to a great week ahead. Also, good luck to Team Canada as they are over in Spain competing in the annual Six Days Event. Thank you for reading and if you have any questions or comments please email them to me at editor@mxpmag.com.
