VOL. 51 ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 4, 2014 P71
Landon Currier in 2010, and
without a place to race for Kawa-
saki in the pros, Jason Anderson
signed with the Rockstar Energy
Suzuki team, alongside Trettel,
and both made their rookie SX
debuts in the 2011 250cc East-
ern Regional SX Series.
>>FEAR & DOUBT
Anderson had raced a lot with
Trettel, and traveled around with
him. And as teammates both ex-
periencing their rookie years in
the pros, they had never been
closer. Then, in practice at the
2011 Daytona Supercross, Tret-
tel went down hard. Trettel suf-
fered a traumatic brain injury in
the wreck and was in a medi-
cally induced coma for nearly a
month. Anderson came apart at
the seams.
"Whenever you see a team-
mate, someone that's close to
you, getting hurt like that, it defi-
nitely makes you second-guess
what you're doing," Anderson
says. "Because our sport is
gnarly and there's a ton of inju-
ries, and they can happen at any
moment."
Anderson's results went down-
hill immediately, and frankly never
recovered in 2011.
"It's kind of crazy because my
first year, outdoors, I was trying
my butt off during the week and I
was still getting like 11th and 12th
[or worse]," Anderson says. "[I
was] not very good on the week-
end. I was definitely kind of lost.
Just the whole transition of go-
ing from amateurs to pros wasn't
smooth. It was a shocker with
how gnarly the pros are, and that
weighs on you mentally."
And it doesn't help, at least
at that time, when you feel like
you're doing everything you can,
and your team actually asks you
not to come to the races for a
while. That happened to Ander-
son in 2011.
"I actually got sidelined for
two races because I wasn't in
shape and I wasn't putting in the
results," Anderson says. "So, it's
like, you get sidelined and they
don't even want you out there
racing? That's kind of crazy. The
next year, I didn't know if I was
going to have a ride or not. Like,
who was even going to support
me to keep going? I didn't even
know if I was going to be racing,
even though I knew by then that it
was what I wanted to do."
With Trettel was forced out of
the sport with his head injury, the
team saw results that Anderson
started putting in near the tail
end of 2011, and they signed him
back up for 2012.
"Well it's not like I never did
anything they asked of me," An-
derson says. "I mean, they saw
me put in the work in the off-
season before Supercross, and
it's not like I was a guy who was
scared of hard work. So, they
told me I had to buckle down and
I had to get my shit together, basi-
cally. And through the outdoors,
toward the end, I got maybe one
top-five moto at Southwick and
then two top-10 overalls, which
was huge for me. Like, it was re-
ally big. I mean, the first moto at
"
WHENEVER YOU
SEE A TEAMMATE,
SOMEONE THAT'S
CLOSE TO YOU,
GETTING HURT
LIKE THAT, IT
DEFINITELY MAKES
YOU SECOND-
GUESS WHAT
YOU'RE DOING.
"
