INTERVIEW
P76
AMA SUPERCROSS/NATIONAL MOTOCROSS CHAMPION RYAN VILLOPOTO
LIFE AS THE FASTEST
MOTOCROSS RACER ON THE
PLANET ISN'T A PARTY FOR
RYAN VILLOPOTO
DOMINANCE
THROUGH
DETERMINATION
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE COX
M
onster Energy Kawasaki's Ryan Villopoto
has secured legendary status for himself
over the last few years. All you need to
do is look at the numbers, as he now boasts three
AMA Supercross Championships – and with all of
them coming consecutively, he is only the third
racer in history to accomplish that feat (Jeremy
McGrath and Ricky Carmichael being the other
two). He also has a total of eight AMA National
Championships (tying himself for second place
on the all-time list with McGrath). That's some serious company surrounding RV.
However, at only 25 years of age, RV is already
staring down retirement, publicly stating that all
of his contracts end after 2015, and as of now,
he has no reason to believe he'll continue racing
past that season.
Much to the chagrin of everyone racing 450s
in the AMA, though, he plans on giving it everything he has between now and then.
>>2013
This past season marked quite a few milestones
for Villopoto, and some of them were milestones
he would've rather not dealt with. To start, it was
the first time he left the Anaheim 1 series opener
without a win since 2010. To make matters worse,
he went down hard twice at the opener, scoring a 16th-place finish and trailing points leader
Davi Millsaps by a full 20 points. He followed that
up with second place at round two in Phoenix,
but that was a race he could've and probably