World Motocross - Keep Positive

Posted on March 18, 2020

While we all sit home, and try and be positive, because being negative isn’t going to help anyone, we need to spare a thought for not only our fellow humans, but also our life-style changes.

The World is struggling at the moment, deaths from coronavirus are going up, but fortunately, apart from Italy, Spain and Iran, where the death rate is staggering, most countries seem to be handling the virus well, and numbers are not as bad as the three previously mentioned countries. Most countries have closed schools, bars, restaurants and shops, and I hope that works. Being that I work from home and go out just once a week for a beer, my lifestyle hasn’t changed too much, although I sure am getting itchy feet to get to a motocross track again, or board a flight to another country.

Again, today changes in the MXGP calendar today, with Maggiora and Teutschenthal move into July and August, meaning the best-case scenario will be the MXGP championship back on track in Russia on June 7, followed by Latvia on June 14. I sure hope this is the case, and fortunately, both Russia and Latvia have very few cases of the virus, and also fortunately no deaths until now. Let’s hope those statistics remain the same, and not only does the virus not cause those two countries too many problems and the MXGP championship can continue.

I was speaking to Davey Coombs from MX Sports, who run the AMA motocross championship and they are obviously busy in talks with Feld the organisers of the AMA supercross championship to work out a plan that suits both series. Expect the AMA Nationals to go into the later part of the year, and we will try and speak to DC again next week to get the insight into their plans. He, like Giuseppe and David Luongo and the guys from all the major championships around the World are very busy men at the moment. Doing their best to keep their business running, but also making sure that the motocross world and everyone in it remains in a job, and our sport not perishing for the remaining of 2020.

With both the AMA Nationals and the MXGP championships possibly going into October, and as we already know MXGP will run in November, I wonder how the 2020 Monster Energy Motocross of Nations will look in September.

No doubt countries will want to be involved, but the rider line-ups for this year might be very different to previous years. Sure, it is just another race and you can pick up an injury anywhere, but would the best Dutch, French and American riders, battling for championships want to be selected, or will we see a few B teams involved?

We already see Australia is considering not coming, and as I mentioned in my story on that this morning, if the federation backs out, does that mean the riders can’t race, because I can’t imagine the top Australian riders would NOT want to race the MXoN.

You have to give Infront and Feld a massive compliment, both fighting to keep both those championships alive, making changes that have never been seen in the sports history and obviously many more changes will come as this horrible virus continued to wreak havoc on the World’s population.