P108
CN
III EMPIRE OF DIRT
BY STEVE COX
I
f most fans or pundits would've
been told that Monster Energy
Kawasaki's Eli Tomac would
finish every race but would be
without a single win after four
rounds of racing (prior to the San
Diego Supercross) they wouldn't
believe it. But it's true. The ques-
tion is, why?
That's not easy to answer, be-
cause the only people who know
for sure are him and his team,
but I'll break down the possibili-
ties and probabilities here.
First off, there was a rumor in
the off-season that Tomac suf-
fered some kind of injury to his
back. Back injuries are a tough
thing for a lot of reasons, but
suffice it to say, supercross and
motocross are tough on your
back even when your back is
healthy. Jake Weimer had a back
injury for the last handful of years
he was racing, and whether or
not it slowed him down, he had
to adjust his training to do a lot
more core exercises than he
would do otherwise in order to
support his chronic back injury.
Regardless of whether it actu-
ally cost him any level of racing
success, since it was something
he specifically had to train for,
it's safe to say that it was at least
on his mind, and that, alone, at
the top level of racing can be the
difference between winning and
losing.
And the other potential issue
with even a relatively minor injury
is that if it's enough to prevent
a racer from racing at absolute
100-percent of the speed they're
capable of racing, their bike
THE
SMART
PLAY
Is Eli Tomac waiting to attack?
