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/1513380
P122 INTERVIEW I AMA ENDUROCROSS & U.S. HARD ENDURO CHAMPION TRYSTAN HART Does he ride or race still? He doesn't race anymore, but we still ride every so often. He actually is pretty good about riding once a week, pretty much all summer long. He still likes to ride. There was a ride we did earlier this year, and he was beating me on a couple of hill climbs. He doesn't let me forget it. Is he older or younger than you? He's two years older than me, so that played a pretty big role in me becom - ing the rider I am because he is naturally talented, so he was just good, but a little bit older. He was always just a little bit better than me, which just drove me nuts and pushed me to get better. You took your first Enduro - Cross Pro Championship this year. You were very close last year and entered the final race in the points lead but had an off night and lost the title to Jonny Walker, but this year was the opposite. Yeah. I actually had a pretty big points lead last year—I think it was 18 or 20 points with two to go, and that's when I flew to Spain to do a hard enduro, and I came back, and I got sick for the rest of the series. It all just kind of went downhill. Between that, not riding, getting sick and then the pressure, I just cracked under the pressure at the last race. Kind of similar to what Johnny did this year. He had a massive points lead after the first two races, and it just dwindled. That's really what happened to me last year. Yeah, so you flipped it. You came in not in the points lead and managed to flip it. That's got to be cool for you. Yeah. Honestly, I wasn't fully expecting to win. I knew I had a good chance, but even if I won the final race in Reno, he had to finish third for me to win [the championship]. So, there was just a little bit of doubt in my mind because I knew even if I did everything I could, there was a chance I wasn't going to get the championship. So, it's just hard to believe you're really going to be champion when there's a dark cloud looming in the sky like that. This is your first EnduroCross Champion - ship, but in North America, you've dominated outdoor hard enduro events for at least the last three years, and then a couple of years before that, I know you were battling with Cody, as you Hart says winning this year's EnduroCross Championship, his first, was 10 years in the making. "This year, I've been telling people my home base is the airport, the airplane, a hotel, and our rental car.