Always good to catch up with fellow media guys and this week, we got to speak to one of the voices of the sport in America, Jason Weigandt. Now, Jason has a long history in the sport, first as a fan in the 1990s and now working for RacerX as their online director of editorial.

His face can be seen often during the AMA racing season, as he also does a lot of work with Feld for the AMA supercross championship and MXsports with AMA motocross.

In my opinion, along with his good mate and owner of RacerX, Davey Coombs, they is the best media guys in America. Always honest, always neutral in their comments and never going the negative way, or making up fake news, or rumours.

Some of this might come because he studied public relations at University, so he knows a little about the correct way to deal with situations involving media/fans/sponsors and everything else involved in our sport.

Back in 2001, Weigandt applied for an intern job at RacerX and found himself knee deep in motocross for the rest of his life. Public speaking experience eventually led him to try announcing while doing PR for the Grand National Cross Country Series, which eventually resulted in doing TV work for the tour.

Now the voice of American supercross and motocross, Jason doesn’t need a lot more of an introduction and it was a pleasure doing this two piece interview with somebody who loves our sport enough, to give it credit, rather than try and tear it down.

MXLarge: First, thanks for doing this, Jason. It’s been a very busy season for you, but how are you feeling now its off-season?

Weigandt: I am trying to recover. Most of the time at the end of the season, it’s like, let’s do a couple more. For us, they have ramped up these final three races (SMX) to be such a big deal right. So, its like this, you go to the final supercross race and its like, this is the biggest deal, then you go to SMX and it’s the biggest deal and then two weeks later, we have des Nations and that is also the biggest deal. After all that, I am like, I don’t have anything left.

MXLarge: I totally get it. I am semi-retired and only go to maybe half the GPs now. I always admire those that go to all the races and even more so, those that do it in America, because at least here in Europe, we often have a different calendar, which means different countries, different cities, different tracks, and its just 20 rounds, but you guys have like 30 rounds and its always to the same places. That would kill me, if I am honest.

Weigandt: Yes, you are probably right. It is weird though, and you probably have it at some races, where you know, you will be at this restaurant on this date, every year. It is like, you kind of get nostalgic for it. What I like, is we go to des Nations and it’s like this three-day event, where you are all hanging out at the track and its pretty fun and pretty social. We get to have a lot of conversations. The races here are like a drive threw fast food deal, we get in as late as possible and leave as early as possible. In out, in out, no thrills, no fun, no anything.

MXLarge: My favourite races, are the fly-aways, because we arrive on the Thursday and leave on the Monday and everyone is hanging out in the same hotels and stuff. I really enjoy that, not to mention, those fly-aways are also often in places I find cool. I am older and my kids have moved out, so I don’t have to go home in a hurry for anything. For you, it’s more about work, you are much more professional than me, so I guess for you are more on the job.

Weigandt: Yes, here, you are five minutes away from, okay, what is the next thing. That is what was refreshing about the Nations, we could sit there for an hour just chatting and we are not missing anything. It has been stressful this year, and maybe because we are three years in with the SMX and its all coming to a head. I don’t know. I don’t know what everyone else thinks, I just felt that way.

MXLarge: You got into this as a big fan, and I think most of us probably got into it because we are fans. Maybe Adam Wheeler got into it and had studied journalism I think, but the most of us are fans who got lucky. Davey (Coombs) might have done something like that, but most are fans, some more educated than others, some have better riding skills than others. Where do you sit in it now, are you still a fan, or is it just work, because you obviously have a family you need to spend time with?

Weigandt: Yes, I have had to check the fan thing out unfortunately. When people ask me, who are you a fan of, or who are you rooting for, I just don’t even think about that in the longest time. When I was like 10 years old and Jeremy McGrath started winning supercross and I was like, where did this guy come from, its meant to be Stanton, or RJ (Rick Johnson) just got hurt and I didn’t like that. Now, they say in the journalist business, you root for stories not people. For sure, if somebody has a huge win streak, you want to see an upset, you want to see something different happen, but for me, it doesn’t matter who that person is, you just want to see a change-up. I do get revved up when the racing is good, or the championship is closer, or some drama on the track. In general, I do get pumped up on that, but you know what, I don’t want to be the fan, because if you go for somebody on year, maybe two years down the track, you need to root for somebody else. I try and keep it in the middle, so you don’t sound like a dork a year later.

MXLarge: I must say, that is one of the things I admire about how you work, because you are very neutral. I mean, I am not neutral at all, I am Grand Prix all the way when it comes to AMA riders at the Nations. Jeffrey Herlings, the Lawrence brothers, I will cheer for those guys above others in their selected championships. But I admire that you are neutral, and I also see that with Paul Malin, he does a great job in being neutral in his calling of the races. You two guys are the voices of the sport as far as motocross goes.

Weigandt: I do try to, and as you know, Deegan got a little crazy at the last race of the play-offs. It was obvious what he was doing, and I was just trying to let people know, this is what he was doing. Everybody watching could feel, this is terrible, or its great, but it wasn’t my job to decide what it was, even if I had my opinion. We had Ricky Carmichael and James Stewart giving their opinion, but it didn’t really matter what they thought, because every fan has their own opinion. I mentioned, he is trying to knock Shimoda down, but everyone can come up with their own opinion. If somebody has a strong opinion, it doesn’t matter what I say, so why even bother.

MXLarge: What is something that is irritating, when we get a media guy, who hasn’t raced at this level trying to tell the fans what a motocross racer is thinking, or what they should do, because we cannot know, or at least, our opinion is worth nothing to the fans. That is why the podcasts with guys like RC and RV, Paul Malin and Jason Thomas, Adam Cianciarulo and Justin Brayton are so good, these guys know what the riders are thinking, because they did it at a level. Paul Malin is brilliant during his coverage giving us stuff that only a race of that level can really know.

Weigandt: Well, there are two reasons for that. First, if you have an opinion on that, the fans will find a way to try and prove you wrong, so that is the first thing, so why even bother, when somebody will tell me, “well, you never raced”, so I don’t do that. Second, our television coverage is very clear, we have two of the best riders ever and they want to hear from those two guys, or Langston in the past. The TV people are smart enough to know; people want to hear what they think and not what I think. Geoff, you have interviewed people for a living, or course you want to hear what they think.

MXlarge: For guys like us, who don’t have the race experience, which is when you do learn, from listening to these riders and what they think, then take that in next time. So, we have some experience on what a lot of great riders think about things, but again, nobody is interested that we know that it’s just handy when interviewing the next generation or riders.

Weigandt: Yes, and, I do try and explain to people, when I am explaining something, that I get this information from the best riders, I don’t get into riding techniques, even if I do have opinions and I know what I am seeing, but as you said, nobody cares about my opinion, but if I am saying something, its from my experience of talking to so many people over so many years.

MXlarge: You must be so busy with AMA supercross and AMA motocross, you still don’t do GNCC events, or stuff like that anymore, do you?

Weigandt: Finally, pretty much out of that. I did it for 12 years but now I am full time supercross and motocross. People might know me from the television; I also run the whole digital side of RacerX. The magazine is still Davey’s thing, but doing the content, or editing it, or planning it, that is the hard part of my job, because talking about dirt bikes on television for four hours, which is pretty easy.

MXlarge: You are not an old guy, like me. I am 64, still love doing my website, but don’t go to anywhere near as many races anymore, and enjoy sending news out on MXLarge. I still love going to some races, often because of the country, or the track or the city we visit, but do you have a time frame on how long you want to keep doing what you are doing?

Weigandt: Yes, I want to keep doing it, because there will be a sweet spot, where this travelling for a living will become a positive thing. It is definitely tough in this 20 year span, when we are having kids, but I say it all the time, I will do 52 races in a year, if I can bring my wife with me and enjoy the experience a little more. I will go to Paris Supercross, AusX Open or anything else, if somebody is picking up the tab for the flights and hotels. You would have dealt with this, and while every race seems important, those moments when you are trying to raise kids to be good humans, those moments are more important than any one race. It is hard to balance both, really, really hard.

MXLarge: Something I really have a lot of respect for about yourself and RacerX, you don’t do rumours. It’s all just 100% correct news and facts. We see so many websites now running so many rumours, some are correct, some don’t turn out to be even real, some might be fact at the time, but things change and it doesn’t happen, which makes the rumour wrong. What is the reasoning for you not running rumours?

Weigandt: There are two seasons why we don’t run rumours. I give credit to my boss Davey (Coombs). We don’t seek out the numbers, and we don’t live or die by the amount of clicks we get or how many views. It’s the same with the riders, if a rider does his job right, he will make the money, we here at RacerX don’t need to fight or scrap for dollars and if we do what we think is right, we will get the views. Second, and you know this as well with your website, you might be told something and you keep it to yourself, if you put something out there and it puts a rider or a team in a bad spot, you still have to deal with this people for another 30 races next year. Big picture, we have to keep good relationships with the people we have to interview, or work with. People get angry, we all know that Eli Tomac is going to KTM, we also know where Tim Gajser and Jeffrey Herlings are going, but if you put these guys in a tough spot, where they actually say it themselves, they can lose a lot of money, they can lose pay cheques and we don’t want that, we don’t want to have anything negative involving these riders or teams.