Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1063250
AMA PRO MOTOCROSS 450MX CHAMPION ELI TOMAC Then you end up chasing it the rest of the season. Yeah, you're chasing the rest of the series and it's hard to get yourself out of that hole. At the Las Vegas Super- cross, you said you enjoy racing and doing what you do now even more than you did in the past. Is that true? It is. I think maybe it just comes with age, right? You know that this is what you're doing and I do still enjoy it. I just realize that more now than maybe a couple years ago. I still have fun at riding and racing and I realize how lucky I am to be in this position. That's kind of my thought process with it all. Pressure? Do you like it? Do you thrive off it? Yeah, I feel that way. Going to the races, that's what I feed off of. I feed off the racing. Winning is the best thing in my mind. If the situation calls for you to go out there and you've got to make it happen, yeah, I like it. It's good. Okay, and with factoring in all the fallout from the Moto- cross of Nations, there is a lot of talk right now about who is the best overall motocross racer in the world. Jeffrey Herlings is brought up quite often. However, to be the best rider on planet earth, one has to be great at both motocross and supercross, correct? I'm right there with you. In this day and age, they're kind of turn- ing into two different disciplines. To call yourself the best rider in P140 Interview the world? Yeah, you've got to be good at both. If we spent the entire year dedicated to moto- cross here in the U.S., I know that we would be at another level above where we are at now. It's tough to make that claim, especially when Jeffrey didn't even win all the motos at the des Nations. Well, to that point, Dutch rider Glenn Coldenhoff hand- ily won both motos at the '18 Motocross of Nations and a hell of a lot of people were singing his praises. Truth be told, though, Coldenhoff failed to win a single MXGP moto in 2018. Sorry, but nobody can say that Glenn Coldenhoff is one of the best overall racers in the sport. The Motocross of Nations has sort of turned into an odd deal, hasn't it? It is an odd deal and it's tough to judge off one event, right? I think to really claim that you'd have to have everyone together racing an entire season. The best guy wins and he's the best guy in the world, but we just don't have that situation right now. What went wrong at the Motocross of Nations? I can try and make an excuse, but it's hard to even make an excuse. We just got beat, you know? The track was a lot differ- ent than our normal RedBud, but I guess that's part of it. I know I wasn't feeling 100-percent by any means with me riding and being out on the track and with my bike. For the rest of the guys, Aaron [Plessinger] had a big crash in qualifying and that defi- nitely set us back. We all fought hard, we just didn't get it done. That's all there is to it. Word is that you want to go back in 2019 and race it again. True? Oh yeah. I want to go back Even Ken Roczen didn't have anything for Tomac, but he was coming off an injury. A healthy Roczen could make Tomac a little nervous in 2019.