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CHAMPION ZACH OSBORNE VOL. 54 ISSUE 50 DECEMBER 19, 2017 P119 to a pit stop and an 18th-place finish. He went from leading the points by nine to trailing by 10. "I had won three races out of the five or six that we had done at that point," Osborne said. "I had the red plate and just like that, none of that mattered. It was all gone. The whole cham- pionship looked to be in pretty serious jeopardy at that point just because it's a short series and I think I scored three or four points that night, and all my com- petitors did quite well. So that was definitely a pivotal moment, but like I said, it's something that's completely out of my con- trol no matter how hard I work or what I do. I can't control the other 40 people on the starting gate, or 20 in that case. That's something that's just kind of su- per unique about our sport." There were only three rounds left, and Osborne went 3-1 in the next two, which landed him tied for second in points with Joey Savatgy, a single point behind new points leader Smith. It would all come down to the East/West Shootout in Las Vegas, and that race will end up going down in history as a contender for the greatest performance in the history of supercross. ONE TO REMEMBER The East/West Shootout com- bines racers from both coasts, and it also pays points based on actual finishing position, so even if a racer on the East were to finish 10th, it's conceivable they could still "win" in terms of beat- ing everyone in their own cham- pionship points chase. Trailing by one point behind Smith, and tied with Savatgy for second in points, things looked absolutely dire for Osborne at the start of the East/West Shootout in Las Vegas. Osborne went down in the first turn and was delayed in returning to the fray by the oth- ers in the crash with him. Mean- while, Savatgy started second, and Smith was right behind him in third. "When I went down it pretty much was like, 'Well, that sucks,'" Osborne said. "There goes what could have been." While Osborne just tried to get back up to speed, Smith looked like a man on a mission, dispatching of Savatgy (who had some mistakes of his own in the opening laps), but then Smith went down really, really hard on the fastest part of the track and was forced out of the race. This left the championship in Savat- gy's hands as he ran fourth. "I have a pretty good aware- ness of what's going on around me the whole time in the lead or wherever I'm at," Osborne said. "I'm watching everything else that's going on as well, because I just feel like that's kind of the responsibility that you have as a racer. You need to know every- thing. The race kept going and I could see Joey [Savatgy]. We were kind of halfway through and I was like, 'You're going to be close, but you're not going to get there. You're not quite going to make it.' Even with two laps to go, I still had to pass three guys to get to him. Then even when we came back in the stadium on the last lap, I still had to pass Mellross to get to him. I was just like, 'I'm going to be really close but it's going to be what could have been' at the end. It's history now.'" While Osborne was slicing his way through the field, a few laps from the end of the race, the fans caught on that there was a chance. As he inched closer and closer to Savatgy, the crowd sensed it and one could feel it like electricity in the air. As Osborne made the pass on Mellross, hair stood up on the crowd's arms. "Trust me, I could feel it," Osborne said. "I could feel the crowd kind of building with me. It just kept getting closer and clos- er. I just felt like at some point he "So many people have come up to me and said this was the greatest race ever in supercross, and I'm like, 'But I got seventh!'"