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/1193082
P186 CN III OBSERVATION CHECK BY KIT PALMER T here have only been a handful of multi-time Cycle News Rider of the Year recipients since we resurrected our CN Rider of the Year tradi- tion at the end of 1991. We gave it to three-time world champion Wayne Rainey, and our pick for rider of the year has routinely been featured on the front page of CN on our year-end issue ever since, and only a few ROY's have been pictured there more than once. Ricky Carmichael quickly comes to mind, and he did it three times, two of them were back to back. Marc Marquez now joins the shortlist of two-time CN ROY winners. We also gave Mar- quez the recognition in 2013. Most of the time, selecting a rider of the year can be an ardu- ous process, but when it came time to lock in our votes this year, well, let's just say Marquez made it easy on us. Our selection—the 26-year-old from Cervera, Spain— was unanimous. Not that there weren't several other deserving riders. We threw out some names certainly worth considering, but no one had the year Marquez had. Even if you're not a Marquez fan or a huge fan of road racing, you cannot deny what the Span- iard accomplished in 2019. It's beyond impressive. The guy won 12 GPs this year, which included the 50th of his career, but what impressed me almost as much was Marquez finishing no worse than second place 18 times in the 19-round championship! And the one race that he did not finish in the top two was a DNF, which came as the result of a mechanical-related crash while leading at Austin. (And I'm not going out on a limb at all to say he would've won that race.) Think about that: 18 top two's in a long 19-round series— none longer in our world—that featured a deep field of highly tal- ented racers. Not just any racers, but the best road racers in the world aboard the best machinery in the world! That's rider-of-the- year material to me. Hands down. As I mentioned, there were other ROY candidates, as well, such as Briar Bauman, Cooper Webb and Ryan Sipes. I also felt that Taylor Robert deserved discussion for winning the WORCS Champion- ship, winning his class at the ISDE, and winning off-road races just about every time he threw a leg over his KTM. And, of course, he was a member of the winning U.S. ISDE World Trophy Team. And then there is Andrew Hines; he had an astounding year in NHRA, as did Kailub Russell in GNCC. If versatility was the only factor in deciding our ROY award, then ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER DECADE Chad Reed, racer and former team owner, is a strong candidate for rider of the decade. PHOTO: KIT PALMER