Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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INTERVIEW 2015 AMA HARE & HOUND CHAMPION IVAN RAMIREZ P124 for sure. We'll have four good riders and we're pretty close. They're all great riders and racers. I've been working really hard and I feel confi- dent that I'm going to be stronger than this year. This year, I had an injury, too, and I wasn't able to ride for two months. The new 450 XC-F is really good. It's amazing and it's going to be a better pack- age with the bike and my body's also better. My training's a little bit higher level now so I'll defend the title for sure. Will you ride the ISDE again for Mexico? Yes! We're actu- ally working on getting the bikes dialed in for Spain ahead of time. Usually, we just show up and rent the bikes. They're good bikes and they're raceable, but just being com- fortable with the linkage, my own practice bike or race bike from the States, it's going to be a big change for us. The whole Mexican team and KTM from down there and the people, they're excited about Six Days. Slovakia was pretty good for us, for Eric and me. I'm excited for that; we've got to help these kids out. This year will be my last year on the Junior World Trophy team and I want to do good; I want to be one of the top Junior guys there so I'll keep training for that, for sure. For most of your practice, do you mostly do motocross or go out to the desert? I do both. I try to make it fun. I love making my training fun, not just going and going and going to the same thing every time. You get tired of it otherwise, the same as work somewhere eight, nine hours a day doing the same thing all the time—you're over it. I try to have good balance in my training and riding. I go moto and I go trail riding and have fun or just go ride and not train, just mess around—go over logs or whatever; keep it fun. You went down and spectated at the latest Baja 1000. Are you still interested in racing in Baja? For sure, 100 percent I want to go back and race there. Watching it from the outside and another perspective, the whole race is pretty crazy. It's different seeing it from down there as a spectator rather than being on the bike. It's really hard to control lots of people along hundreds of miles of remote race course, espe- cially when the race goes down the whole penin- sula. I believe the Kurt Caselli Foundation is going to do big things. They're already doing big things and making a lot of progress. Once it's safer, we'll go back. As I told Antti, I keep asking him, "When are we going back? You know I want to go back; I'm ready to go back and get the 1X plate for Kurt. "I don't want to go down with another brand or whatever. I want to go back with KTM and when- ever you guys are ready and think it's safe, I'll be down there with you guys. If it's in one year or two years or whenever, I'll wait for you guys. I want to do it on KTM and dedicate it to Kurt." That was one of our main goals as a team. I know and I believe that KTM and us, we can do it. Your girlfriend is Kelsey Abbott. How is it having five-time AMA National Hare & Hound Champ Destry Abbott so close to you now? It's awesome! He's a great, great guy. I love the whole family; they're really cool and like a family we're really close. CN Ivan Ramirez plans on defending his number one plate in the 2016 AMA National Hare and Hound Championship Series.