P138
CN
III EMPIRE OF DIRT
BY STEVE COX
M
otocross has to be the
roughest sport on the
planet. It's physically
grueling, often punishing, and
the mental side of it can be even
worse. For example, Monster
Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki's
Joey Savatgy was easily the fast-
est rider at the Colorado round
of the championship, but instead
of scoring a win, his bike died
in the first moto while he was
leading with two laps to go. He
ended up with the last gate pick
in moto two, then tried to sweep
into a holeshot in the moto so
he could come away with at
least one win on the day, but he
didn't get to the first turn in time
and ended up crashing heav-
ily with defending champ Zach
Osborne.
Since that day, Osborne,
injured from that crash with Sa-
vatgy, has had to exit the series
with a torn labrum in his shoulder
and a previous thumb injury, and
Savatgy has gotten a 6-DNF-6-7
set of scores. It's easy to imag-
ine that if Savatgy had won the
opening moto in Colorado, he'd
be on some sort of win streak by
now, because that's how mo-
mentum works in sports like this.
Momentum, and even domi-
nance, in the sport of motocross
and supercross is a fragile thing.
You can look at Honda's Ken
Roczen in 2017, winning the first
two AMA Supercross rounds,
then mangling his arm so bad at
round three that he was forced
to sit out almost a year. And then
even when he came back, de-
spite his incredible, defiant grit
and determination, he ended up
breaking his other hand in San
Diego, and he's just now getting
back up to speed again. Without
that big crash at Anaheim II in
2017, who knows what heights
THE ROUGHEST SPORT ON EARTH?
Jeremy Martin
knows what it's like
experiencing the
extreme highs and
lows of motocross.
