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/615690
P214 CN III OBSERVATION CHECK BY KIT PALMER I t truly is amazing how time flies. It seems just last week we were driving down the free- way to Angel Stadium for the annual Anaheim I Supercross Thursday pre-race press confer- ence. Blink! Suddenly it's December and we're already talking Anaheim I 2016 and what a great season it's shaping up to be. At least that's how fast the year seemed to go. Looking back on 2015—well, let's just say that it was another remarkable year of motorcycles and mo- torcycle racing, which makes our job of choosing our an- nual Cycle News Rider of the Year that much more difficult. By now you probably already know that we gave Kailub Rus- sell that title this year, and we made that decision with a lot of confidence via what was a unanimous decision among our Cycle News staff. Still, it really wasn't a slam-dunk decision, especially at first. There were quite a few names that emerged right off the bat when the subject first came up, like Ryan Dungey's name, of course. This guy really is something special, after all, it's not easy winning a Supercross championship, let alone backing it up with an outdoor National Motocross title. Only a few riders in history have won both a Supercross and an outdoor National Moto- cross title in the same season and he's done it twice now, first in 2010 when he still rode for Suzuki and now with KTM. Ryan Sipes was also a frontrunner for Cycle News ROY honors. Sipes is adjust- ing nicely to the off-road world after making a good living rac- ing motocross and Supercross and proved that by becoming the first American to win the International Six Days Enduro (ISDE) outright. Even though the ISDE is a team event, there is still the prestige and pride of being the top individual finisher, and this year in Slovakia it was the rider from Kentucky who surprised the world by coming out on top. He joins a long list of phenomenal off-road racers who have earned top individual rider honors at the Six Days, legendary racers like French- man Giles Lalay and Stephane Peterhansel, Italian Giovanni Sala and Australian Shane Watts (who did it on a 125cc motorcycle, which still amazes me to this day). Sipes, however, is still looking for his first win in GNCC, which is his primary focus nowadays, but he fin- ished second at the last round DON'T BLINK QUICK LINKS IN THE WIND 44 BARCELONA SUPERPRESTIGIO 184 VOL. 52 ISSUE 50 DECEMBER 15, 2015 INTERVIEWS CHATTING WITH THE CHAMPS: RYAN DUNGEY CAMERON BEAUBIER JARED MEES ANDREW HINES ROBBY BELL IVAN RAMIREZ CODY WEBB 450 MOTOCROSS SHOOTOUT AND THE WINNER IS… 2015 CYCLE NEWS RIDER OF THE YEAR RIDER OF THE YEAR KAILUB RUSSELL