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/564551
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE R yan Dungey and Jeremy Martin were certainly impressive in their 2015 repeats of the respec- tive Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross Champion- ships. Like any racing season we all look back and wonder what if. What if Eli Tomac hadn't face planted at Thunder Valley; what if Ken Roczen hadn't cracked his back days before the outdoor nationals started; what if Justin Barcia would have figured out he was super-fast before the latter part of the season; what if Cooper Webb hadn't busted his ankle in the final Supercross event; what if Marvin Musquin's KTM hadn't stop running in the first moto at the last outdoor round when he was just two points out of the series lead? The un- known, the unpredictable are part of what makes motorsports so much more volatile—especially Supercross and motocross where injury is almost ubiquitous—than other sports and perhaps one of the reasons we enjoy it so much. Regardless of what happened to the stars of the series who didn't make it to the finish line, the fact remains that motocross rolls on each year producing new winners and new stats in the record books. The AMA Pro Motocross Cham- pionship is becoming a mature series now after 43 years (the Super Bowl is only five years older) and the records are piling up to the point that you can get a good historical context of how today's riders compare, at least statistically, to a previous generation of riders. One thing is clear by now: Ryan Dungey, at just 25, is already creeping up into the elite list in many all-time motocross racing categories. At his age you wonder how far he'll climb on the all-time lists. Dungey had already accomplished some pretty interesting stats coming into the season and after a season of earning another championship and seven more wins, the Minnesota native con- tinues moving up among the ranks of the sport's greatest riders. Dungey already owned the distinction of being the first class rookie to win both the AMA Supercross and AMA Motocross 450 Champion- ships—that happened five years ago. Since then it's only gotten more impressive. This year Dungey scored his third 450 Mo- tocross title. That places him in elite company with only five other riders in series history who have won that many titles in the class (for the purpose of brevity I will refer exclusively to the AMA 450 class here even though it was once the 250 class and the same for the 250s, which was once the 125 class). Dungey now stands alongside Gary Jones, Tony DiStefano, Rick Johnson and Jeff Stanton as three-time AMA 450 Motocross Champions (technically Jones won four, but his first in 1971 was before there MOTOCROSS STATS: 2015 P118 Ryan Dungey has as many 450 MX titles (three) as Gary Jones, Tony DiStefano, Rick Johnson and Jeff Stanton. PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE COX