VOL. 50 ISSUE 50 DECEMBER 17, 2013
P79
"
I MEAN,
DEFINITELY
I'M GOOD AT
SUPERCROSS,
BUT I'M GOOD
AT OUTDOORS.
THEY'RE JUST
TWO COMPLETELY
DIFFERENT
ANIMALS.
(Above) Ryan Villopoto will be trying
for his fourth straight Supercross
title in 2014.
(Left) Motocross or Supercross?
Villopoto says he prefers racing
outdoors than indoors.
"too late" pretty quickly in Supercross, especially with Millsaps,
Ryan Dungey, Justin Barcia,
Trey Canard, James Stewart and
Chad Reed in the field.
"I mean, I was quite a few
points down, for sure, and then
I was able to get my shit together and turn it around," Villopoto
says. "Because before you know
it, you won't be able to."
Villopoto won rounds three
and four, then finished off the
season with eight wins in the final 11 rounds of the series. In the
end, it wasn't very close at all.
And his dominance continued
outdoors, where he won 18 out of
24 motos and only had one moto
finish outside the top five (sixth,
in moto one at Millville) the entire
season. For that matter, he only
finished outside the top three
four times.
Pundits have always assumed
that Villopoto's more natural at
motocross, despite his three
consecutive 450cc SX titles, and
he actually finds it difficult to even
compare the two disciplines.
"I mean, definitely I'm good
at Supercross, but I'm good at
outdoors, too," Villopoto says.
"
"They're just two completely different animals. They both have
their own areas that are hard. I
guess it kind of comes down to
whatever you're in the mood for,
you know? We race Supercross
and we do it for pretty much 17
rounds straight, so you're pretty
much over that by the time outdoors is rolling around. But it's
the same with outdoors. You're
over that when it comes down to
the end."
However, in today's American
motocross, the truth is that the 12
weeks of outdoor racing – with
a few weekends off – basically
comprise all the outdoor riding
any of these top guys do in a year.
"I mean, we're on Supercross
longer, yeah, and it's because
our season for Supercross runs
straight into outdoors," Villopoto
says. "And when we do go outdoor racing, it's still on the same
baseline setup. Obviously, we do
change it for outdoors, but all the
stuff we learned indoors, we use
