With Red Bull KTM Factory rider Antonio Cairoli possibly in his final Grand Prix season it is maybe a wise idea to realize we all wrote the Italian legend off back at the end of 2016, after he hadn’t won a World motocross championship in two years and the youngster were coming. 

Tim Gajser would go into the 2017 season as the defending champion, and another called named Jeffrey Herlings was joining the MXGP boys. Romain Febvre who had won the 2015 MXGP championship was in amazing form, and it just seemed that Cairoli was done.

Well, for the record King Cairoli came out and won the 2017 MXGP championship and on that day at the Assen circuit he was sure to tell everyone, including myself that we knew nothing about the sport, so he didn’t listen to us (the media).

“For sure we didn’t start as favourite (in 2017),” Cairoli said. “With a lot of people talking about it, this is for them. I know what I can work for, and I know what it takes. We made it, and I am happy about this. An amazing season, one of my best. After 15 years of world championship, I am proud of this. I think we can work to get better in some cases, but I want to enjoy this title.”

As Tony said, he didn’t really get motivation from the some people, but he did want them to eat their words, as we did. He was still the King, and it didn’t really mean a thing that the title came after injuries to Herlings and Gajser, but the last man standing deserved his victory.

Throughout that season we talked to some of the smart people in the sport, Pit Beirer and Stefan Everts, and below are some of their comments about the Italian legend. Beirer who re-signed Cairoli in the middle of the injury years never lost faith in Cairoli.

“I think I had an interview on mxlarge,” Beirer said. “I told you I didn’t believe it was the end of the road. I knew he has two bad injuries and they were holding him back. Sport is brutal, you are either there, or you are not there. There is no credit if you are not fit. If you are not 100% then the other guys catch you, you can’t have the smallest disadvantage. I mean of course there is a risk with a rider around 30 that they can go downhill, but I knew if Tony was fit, he would come back strong. That is also why we made a new contact with him, after already one year of struggling with injuries, because I still trusted him, and today he gave us the pay-back.”

Stefan Everts, who has the record for the most world motocross championships (10) and the most Grand Prix victories (101), was starting to feel the pressure of losing his records, but he also enjoys watching a legend at work.

“I enjoy watching Tony,” Stefan Everts said. “He has been off for a few years due to injury or other problems. He is back, it’s like the old Cairoli, also in Qatar you could see it there. If he gets the record I can only congratulated him. It would hurt me a little of course, because I want to be the best ever, but records are there to be broken. You have to accept it, I have no problem if Tony is the guy to beat my record, because I have a lot of respect for him, and he has a lot of respect for what I did.”

“I am pretty impressed all year so far,” Everts told us. “He had a few difficult years, and everyone gave up on him, and he has come back, like his good old days, well actually his good old days are still to come, but he is back like he was before. He is like wine, the older he gets, the better he gets. I think he has his act together and he has shown why he is one of the best. He is the best ambassador out there, and he is a professional guy so it’s good to see him riding like this.”

So now, as we head into 2021, and we don’t rate Cairoli to win the championship again, lets all go back to the end of 2016 when we all started to write him off. As we mentioned in a story this week, the Italian has finished on the podium at the opener in the last four years and usually comes in strong. Let’s wait and see what we get in Russia in a week before we write the Sicilian off again.

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