AMA PRO MOTOCROSS 250MX AND SUPERCROSS 250SX WEST CHAMPION AARON PLESSINGER
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Interview
for the outdoor title. It's crazy. A
couple people just asked me how
it felt and I told them it's like a
dream come true. I never thought
I would be up here like this."
He said that late in July, mere
days before he and fiancée
Kendall Taylor awaited the arrival
of the stork with their new son,
Jake, who entered the world on
July 30, 2018. Will this lead to
another father/son champion
duo? It's happened in the Pless-
inger family before. You see,
Aaron Plessinger's dad, Scott,
also excelled as a motorcycle-
racing competitor. A four-time na-
tional champion with two Grand
National Cross Country titles
(1994 and 1995) and two AMA
National Hare Scrambles Cham-
pionships (1989 and 1992), Scott
Plessinger slithered out of the
streams, silt, bedrock and greasy
trails of Ohio to become one of
this nation's greatest off-road rid-
ers on the 1990s. Now his son is
one of America's elite motocross
and supercross racers. But the
family didn't really see it coming,
believe it or not.
Scott says, "Aaron and I were
at the Atlanta Supercross in
2010 and I kind of asked Aaron,
'Do you think you can do this?'
And he said, 'I think I can.' It was
funny back then because if he
lost a race, I mean, he might
be mad for 10 minutes and then
you'd never even know that he
raced. If he won, it was like any
other race. He didn't really show
it too much. Even back then, he
pretty much did well at every-
thing. I come from going pretty
well in racing, so I had high
expectations of him."
And so it is now, the off-season
between the 2018 and approach-
ing 2019 racing seasons, that
Aaron Plessinger, the 2018 AMA
250cc Lucas Oil Pro Motocross
and AMA 250SX West Champi-
on, begins a new journey that will
see him moving up and arriving
behind the gate on a 450 for the
opening round of the '19 Monster
Energy Supercross Series set
for Saturday, January 5, 2019 at
Angel Stadium of Anaheim.
"I've been getting testing done
on the 450 and have been able
to catch my breath a bit," says
Plessinger, enjoying a Decem-
ber day off from the Yamaha test
track up in the hills of Corona,
"The Motocross of Nations didn't
go as planned, but I'm not mad.
I went to represent my country as
best I could, so that's what I did."
