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/434045
INTERVIEW 2014 CYCLE NEWS RIDER OF THE YEAR KEN ROCZEN P64 The 450cc class in the USA includes 29 races— basically double the MXGPs, where he started his professional career. After faltering a bit as the Supercross series dragged on in 2014, which is not unexpected of rookies in the class, Roczen began the outdoor series much like he began in Supercross—running up front, and winning. He built up a points lead early in the series over his teammate Ryan Dungey and Suzuuki's James Stewart, among others, but late in the championship, Roczen was bleeding points on a weekly basis to his teammate Dungey, and his shot at the 450cc outdoor championship started to look pretty shaky. And it comes back to the learning curve he needed in working with Baker, according to Roczen. "I felt like I crushed it the first half of the season," Roczen said. "I won and I won and I got second and I won and I won, that as soon as I got third or I went off the podium it was, 'Wow...'" And Dungey was catching fire late in the cham- pionship as well. "Look, he's been riding the big-bike class for five or six years," Roczen said of Dungey. "And I was flat at one point. I disagree sometimes with Aldon's program, but you either trust him or you don't. I just got to a point where I got tired and [felt like] I didn't have anything in the tank. My legs felt shitty. I just felt shitty every single day, every single weekend. But what are you going to do? If you stop everything completely it's not going to help you. So, it was really tough. That's why it's so tough to win a Championship in your first year. Plus that level is so high at this point." A lot of racers have a hard time con- vincing themselves to work less, rather than more. In training for pro motocross, there have been a lot of racers with a lot of trainers, and without trainers, who worked really hard on fitness, only to come to the races and do poorly. Then, the answer is often that they go home and work even harder. But that's not always the right move. Sometimes, their body needs rest, and sometimes a diet regi- men can work against racers with certain physical attributes. Roczen, though, hasn't really ever had a problem making time for fun, as we covered a bit earlier, so he handled this better than some other racers have. "I'm the kind of dude that I usually do better with doing less," Roczen said. "Meaning, that's just where I came from. Like, sometimes in Eu- rope, when we went from race to race, we didn't even ride during the week sometimes. But that's because you have so much practice the whole Saturday. [There's a lot of Saturday practice and qualifying in the GPs, then more practice on Sun- day before the races start.] It's just a whole differ- ent deal over there. I had a system over there that worked. I just had to figure it out [here]. Coming here, it threw everything off. The travel, the heat, the schedule. Everything. It was just so much at once I feel like. It wasn't the easiest thing." Roczen had some help from Mother Nature at the penultimate round of the 2014 championship when rain hit the new Indiana MX National. Euro- peans are usually known for riding well in the mud, and Roczen did exactly that, while Dungey lost a lot of points getting buried in the pack. This eased Roczen admits that he likes to have fun, which, for him, is a key ingredient to his success on the track.