Cycle News

Cycle News 2013 Issue 50 December 17 2013

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

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INTERVIEW P76 AMA SUPERCROSS/NATIONAL MOTOCROSS CHAMPION RYAN VILLOPOTO LIFE AS THE FASTEST MOTOCROSS RACER ON THE PLANET ISN'T A PARTY FOR RYAN VILLOPOTO DOMINANCE THROUGH DETERMINATION STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE COX M onster Energy Kawasaki's Ryan Villopoto has secured legendary status for himself over the last few years. All you need to do is look at the numbers, as he now boasts three AMA Supercross Championships – and with all of them coming consecutively, he is only the third racer in history to accomplish that feat (Jeremy McGrath and Ricky Carmichael being the other two). He also has a total of eight AMA National Championships (tying himself for second place on the all-time list with McGrath). That's some serious company surrounding RV. However, at only 25 years of age, RV is already staring down retirement, publicly stating that all of his contracts end after 2015, and as of now, he has no reason to believe he'll continue racing past that season. Much to the chagrin of everyone racing 450s in the AMA, though, he plans on giving it everything he has between now and then. >>2013 This past season marked quite a few milestones for Villopoto, and some of them were milestones he would've rather not dealt with. To start, it was the first time he left the Anaheim 1 series opener without a win since 2010. To make matters worse, he went down hard twice at the opener, scoring a 16th-place finish and trailing points leader Davi Millsaps by a full 20 points. He followed that up with second place at round two in Phoenix, but that was a race he could've and probably

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