Yamaha Motor Canada Presents The Monday Gate Drop

Good day and welcome to the final Yamaha Motor Canada Monday Gate Drop of the month of January. I don’t know about you but I’m pretty excited to be saying good-bye to January. It’s such a gloomy month with unpredictable weather. Thankfully we’ve had Supercross to get excited about, and of course all of the latest Rockstar Energy Triple Crown Series news. February is a short month and then hopefully Spring will be right around the corner.

Before I get into the moto news from the weekend, how sad was it yesterday to hear about Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter getting killed in a helicopter crash, not to mention the seven others that perished in the accident? I’m not a big basketball guy but I did grow up being a fan of Michael Jordan and then Kobe after that. I was always amazed at how both men competed on the court and how you’d always hear stories about how they were the hardest working players on the team. Kobe transcended that game and in recent years was becoming almost as successful off of the court as he was on the court. He was a husband and a father of four, and although he was larger than life on the basketball court, he owned the mistakes he made in his personal life as well. I could never picture myself taking a basketball to the rim and dunking it over a 7′ tall opponent, but I could imagine sitting there, saying sorry and admitting that I’d made a mistake. I’m sure we all know what that feels like. I know that tragedies happen and people and celebrities die way too often, but for whatever reason, Kobe’s death yesterday felt a little different.

From the saddest news of the weekend to the happiest news, how good was the racing in Glendale on Saturday evening? I love the Triple Crown, and as I’ve said on a few occasions, I don’t want to see this format every weekend but when it happens, I’m all in. Like we saw two weeks ago in St. Louis, Ken Roczen is really riding well this year, and one of things that gets me is how in control he now looks. His bike looks great and Ken is just flowing around the race track. Now, he did get a little lucky with the restart in the final main as he was outside of the Top 5 on the opening lap, but other than that his starts have been incredible. As I said, his bike looks great on every part of the track, which has translated into Ken looking and feeling incredibly confident. Every rider has been there before, maybe not to the extent of Roczen but all of us have had set backs and have lost our confidence at some point. In some cases, it takes a long time to return, but when it does it’s such an amazing feeling. Roczen appears to have that feeling again and it’s great to watch. On Wednesday I’ll be posting an interview I did this morning with Shane Drew from the HRC Honda Team. Shane is a former Canadian pro racer from Thunder Bay, ON and currently he’s the man in charge of setting up Roczen’s and Justin Brayton’s CRF450 chassis. Shane has been in the industry a long time and has seen pretty much everything. Obviously, he and the rest of the Factory Honda Team are pretty excited with how 2020 has started and they look to continue that success in Oakland this weekend.

Even though we didn’t witness the same high level of drama in Glendale that we saw the week prior in Anaheim, Round 4 still had its share of excitement. With the three shorter main events that the Triple Crown format has to offer, the riders appeared to be pushing a little bit harder. Because of this we saw even the most talented of riders making big mistakes. In the 250SX West class, points leader Justin Cooper had an awful day and night in Glendale, and if he didn’t pull out a win in the third and final main event of the night, he would’ve lost the points lead. In practice, Cooper crashed hard over the small jump leading into the sand section, in the opening main event he went down twice, in Main #2 he was leading and crashed again, then as I said he held on for the win in the final race. Up until this weekend, Cooper has been remarkably consistent so I’m not sure what was bugging him in Glendale. He’s my pick for the 250SX West title so I hope he gets it back together this weekend in Oakland.

Moving away from Supercross and getting into the snow in Aspen, how about our Canadian Snow Bike riders? Blair Morgan continued to impress everyone with his 7^th overall in the Para Snow Bike class. That main event was won by former motocross champion Doug Henry. Blair had a tough main event with a few crashes but he held on for a solid finish. How these guys ride these bikes without the use of their legs is beyond me. I guess it shows just how much upper body strength these legends have. In the Snow Bike class, it was Cody Matechuk with the win in front of Yannick Boucher and Jesse Kirchmeyer. Josh Hill was 4^th and Brock Hoyer rounded out the Top 5. If you’ve never seen these Snow Bikes ridden at a high level it really is a must see. I tried riding one two years ago and really struggled with it. However, Hoyer was there that day, and to see him ride one is pretty amazing. Also, congratulations to Mitch Cooke who was in Aspen racing for the first time. Mitch didn’t make the main event but he rode well and had a blast. Look for Mitch to be much better next year as he’ll go into this huge event with a little more experience.

Well, that is it for me this week. I hope you enjoy these final few days of January; I know I will. Also, here is the link for the interview I did late last week with Ryan Lockhart. Newf and I had a good chat about the Supercross Series as well as the upcoming 2020 Rockstar Energy Triple Crown Series: https://www.mxpmag.com/honda-racing-canada-presents-mxp-chatter-with-ryan-lockhart/ Have a great week and please be safe!