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/1122949
VOL. 56 ISSUE 21 MAY 28, 2019 P131 believe our lying eyes. "It was one of those deals where halfway down the start straight I'm thinking to myself, like, 'All right, they've got to red- flag this thing,' because Chase [Sexton] about took the hinges off the gate next to me," said eventual winner Adam Ciancia- rulo. "I hit the gate a little bit, pulled back, and luckily—I was super-late; I mean, the gate was fully on the ground before I left—but somehow my gate was good enough where you kind of got a good drive. And the whole first lap, in the back of my mind, I'm like, 'All right, do not go crazy and get your heart rate up to like, you know, 190 right away,' and then I was watching it as we came by the finish line, and I was like, 'All right, I guess we're doing it!'" So, not only did the gate-flinch cause the start of the race to go poorly, but a lot of racers were calculating that it would be re- started, so they weren't pushing that hard on the opening lap. It's hard to go from a (not uncom- mon in the opening laps) 190 BPM heart rate to stopped on the line, ready to do it again. It takes a physical toll, and the rac- ers know they need the energy to last the 30-minute-plus-two- lap race duration. The AMA could've just asked the official in the box—whose job it was to release the gate to fall— if he had to do it twice because that's what causes the gate to flinch; a failed attempt at falling the gate. Even worse, Justin Cooper said the gate actually flinched before the sighting lap, too. "Obviously, we all thought it was going to be a red flag, so..." said 250MX second-overall Coo- per. "Obviously, you don't want to let up on the first lap, in case that doesn't happen, but yeah, I saw the green flag waving [when he went by at the end of the first lap], so I knew the race was on. I was kind of mind-blown by it, honestly, because I thought an AMA official would catch on to it or something. I saw it happen on the sighting lap; it looked like they tried to drop the gate to let everyone out, and it stumbled, and then the gate dropped like two seconds later on the sec- ond attempt to drop it. So, that's exactly what happened again. It looked like he tried to drop it, it flinched, and on the second attempt—which was obviously right after that—it went, so it was like we went, then pulled back, then went again. It was really hard to even get a good start at that point, but I knew it had to happen for everyone else, so we just did the best we could, I guess." The AMA's Canfield has been around this racing thing for a really long time. He knows more about the sport than almost anybody. And frankly, I think he had to know, deep down, that the gate flinched. But if I had to guess—and I can't prove this, but it's just a gut feeling—I would guess that the AMA, and pro- moter MX Sports, are perhaps less concerned about things like a fair start to a moto than they are about sticking to the sched- ule for television. If they would've restarted the race, they'd have lost at least five minutes, and that would've nullified fitting post- race interviews and other assets into the TV package. I think if it were a downed rider, mean- ing that a racer's safety was at stake, the AMA would have certainly thrown the red flag, but a gate flinch might not meet that same standard of urgency right now. We could mitigate this in the future if, for example, we changed the outdoor format to a 30-minutes-plus-1-lap affair (rather than the current 30-min- utes-plus-2-lap format), as AMA Supercross is working just fine on a 20-minutes-plus-1-lap for- mat, but regardless of the solu- tions, the fact is that the second 250MX moto at Fox Raceway should have, in my opinion, been restarted. And if I'm right about the reason for that not happening, that's not good at all. TV broadcast should not take precedence over the fairness of the sport. CN