SUPERCROSS CHAMPION RYAN DUNGEY
P172
INTERVIEW
your thing during the week and you want to win
and go out there, but you know that this guy—it's
just like when me and Marvin [Musquin] and Jason
[Anderson] are at the track, we push each other.
It kind of drives us. You're like, 'I don't want that
guy to catch me,' so you either run him down and
try to pass him or you try to break away, or vice
versa. With Kenny [Roczen], he was a competitor
and it motivates you in a way that you don't really
understand. Then the injury happened and things
turned. That guy who was there, who motivated
you, is gone. We didn't know Eli [Tomac] was go-
ing to do what he did. But everybody's saying, 'It's
Dungey's now, and everybody's going to hand it to
him.' I'm thinking, 'This is the exact moment where
you don't underestimate people.' You're almost
cautiously aware of your surroundings and what
the guys are doing. Sure enough, here comes Eli
the next week on fire. Bike setup's good, he's feel-
ing good; everything's just clicking. It wasn't [click-
ing] for us. It was like, 'Wow, here we go.' That
was round four of 17, so that's when it started."
In the end, though, Dungey held on to win his
third-straight supercross title, and it turns out the
team tactics from the week before the Las Vegas
finale were unnecessary. Then Dungey hung it up.
DETERMINED TO THE END
Even though Dungey had already decided that
he was going to retire at the end of supercross,
there was never a moment where he didn't give it
everything he had, even during his last supercross
season.
Twice in 2017 he went down in the beginning of
the race and dug really deep. The first time was at
Daytona, where he battled down to the final lap of
the race, bullying his way past Cole Seely—physi-
cally moving Seely out of the way—on the final lap
for fourth place. That garnered Dungey two very
valuable championship points.
Then in Seattle, he did it again, passing Davi
Millsaps on the final lap to snatch fourth place and
take two more points after coming from basically
dead last.
"It was those rides like Daytona and Seattle,"
Dungey said. "You're dead last—this is going to
count towards the end some way, somehow—and
it did. I could have settled and lost the five points
