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Red Bull Motocross of Nations - Rider lineup?

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News Sunday 18th July 2010 By Geoff Meyer

With the Red Bull Motocross of Nations still more than two months away many of the nations that will compete are busy finalizing their final lineups. Teams such as Belgium, New Zealand, Great Britain, Estonia, and France have already made pre-selections, while nations like Unites States, Australia, South Africa, Italy and Germany have their main rider combinations pretty much decided through results of their riders.

The most exciting news a week ago was the fact that Christophe Pourcel is in fact interested in riding and wants to race a 450 machine in the MXoN. Many see Pourcel as the fastest man on the planet at the moment and his participation would be huge for the race.

Of course with James Stewart also looking at riding and just starting his return to action it will be interesting to see if he can return to form and find himself in the team.

Team America already has Ryan Dungey in the lineup, and while it isn’t official the AMA Supercross Champion and defending MXoN champion is a must for Team USA. Trey Canard who has won the last two rounds of the AMA Lite class is looking like a strong bet to be picked for the MX2 ride and the third rider might just be Stewart or possibly Andrew Short.

Dungey, Short and Canard would enter the event as favorites, although Team France with Pourcel, Musquin and possibly Steven Frossard would also be a good chance of taking victory.

What is always interesting is to see how many AMA riders will be selected and at this present moment it could be as many as 15 with names like Dean Wilson, Tyla Rattray, Grant Langston, Tommy Searle, Chad Reed, Brett Metcalfe, Jake Moss, Ben Townley, Martin Davalos joining the likes of Dungey, Canard, Short or Stewart, and Pourcel.

With a little luck we might even see the top five from both the 450cc and Lites class racing against the leading FIM World Motocross Championship riders. I can’t think of a year in recent times that we have had that.

American the defending champions and heavy favorites for the event could actually field two or three teams, so we decided to look at that possability anyway.

France have the same situation as America with a bunch of riders possible for their line-up, and Belgium also have at least five or six riders capable or racing at this level. After those three nations the other teams would struggle to run more than their three selected riders. Another interesting aspect is the fact Pro-Circuit riders have great results in Colorado, which will make the job of Marvin Musquin all that more difficult. Pro-Circuit will have Tyla Rattray, Christophe Pourcel, Dean Wilson, and possibly Steve Frossard and Jeremy Van Horebeek in the field although it seems as though Frossard and Pourcel will race on 450's.

Below are some possible riders for teams for the event.

Team USA

Ryan Dungey, Trey Canard, Jake Weimer, Andrew Short or James Stewart

Team USA B team

Josh Grant, Justin Barcia, Mike Alessi or Zach Osborne

Team France

Christophe Pourcel, Marvin Musquin, Steven Frossard, Xavia Boog or Gautier Paulin

Team Italy

Antonio Cairoli, David Philippaerts, Alessandro Lupino

Team Australia

Chad Reed, Brett Metcalfe, Jake Moss

Team Belgium