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III ARCHIVES
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
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quin, Blake Baggett and Justin
Barcia. We talk about an era of
tremendous parity in supercross
but five winners in a season is
about average.
A total of 48 riders made
an AMA Supercross main this
season. That's the second high-
est number of riders to make a
premier class SX main in a single
season in the last 10 years. As a
comparison, the lowest number
of riders to make a main during a
season in the previous 10 years
was only 38 riders during the
2013 season.
There were just two first-time
winners in 2019, Webb and
Baggett.
for the Austrian maker from 2015
to 2017. That's as many champi-
onships now as Suzuki has won
in the series.
Webb becomes the 22nd rider
to win the AMA Supercross. We
think of Supercross as a young
championship, but 2019 was the
46th season of the series.
With Jason Anderson and
Cooper Webb, this is the first
time Supercross had seen two
back-to-back first-time champions
since 2011 when Ryan Villopoto
won his first Supercross crown
the year after Ryan Dungey did
the same.
There were five race winners
this season: Webb, Tomac, Mus-
Cooper Webb
experienced his
first ever 450SX
win and 450SX
Championship in
the same year.
P
re-season predictions on the
2019 Monster Energy AMA
Supercross Series centered
mostly on defending champ Ja-
son Anderson, the Ken Roczen's
comeback and high expecta-
tions placed on Eli Tomac and
perhaps to a lesser extent Marvin
Musquin. No doubt some pundits
were also talking about Cooper
Webb, but after finishing ninth
in the standings in 2018, his
second season of 450SX class,
many felt the two-time 250SX
Supercross West Champion
might need maybe another year
of seasoning. But now the 2019
Monster Energy AMA Supercross
Championship is in the books
and Webb emerged triumphant
aboard his Red Bull KTM 450
SX-F Factory Edition.
At this moment the Webb
championship doesn't seem
all that surprising, he did, after
all, win a series-leading seven
rounds, but going into the sea-
son in January, most experts and
fans viewed Webb as a longshot.
Think about it—Webb hadn't
even won a premier supercross
main event coming into the 2019
season.
This marks KTM's fourth AMA
Supercross title, following on the
three straight Ryan Dungey won
SUPERCROSS 2019
BY THE NUMBERS
