The seemingly and in many peoples minds, illogically impossible has happened, we had a motocross series kickoff. At Loretta Lynn’s no less, a place which has never seen a professional gate drop and prior to Covid-19 had never even been considered. There were many could-be points of contention with this decision, ranging from “it’s a tight amateur track”, to “it’s gonna be too easy”, “it’s a joke”… but there were also plenty of optimists interested to see if MX Sports could pull it off in a legit fashion, with little gripes.
Maybe the weather played a big part but all that matters is the result and across the board from fans to racers alike, the Loretta Lynn’s Pro National was a unanimous success. Did the shaky ground the sports-world has been floating around on for the better part of 5 months play a part? Sure. In the grand scheme of things, it honestly would take something pretty big to make us fans really want to piss and moan about any type of live competition but, we’re human after all and we clearly show no signs of wanting to relent on the pissing and moaning. (SMH).
I’m not touching on what went on at the Ranch this weekend, I’m more interested in what the cancellation of round two in Washougal, which forced us back to Loretta Lynn’s for the new Round Two, could teach us as a sport. We already saw something fresh and cool in the 7 round SLC Supercross wrap-up. Each round, on a shortened schedule brought with it different climate, track conditions and action. Might we see the same type of variance and learn just as much in the motocross series?
We’re days away from this forced-experiment being put in motion and reading into the results. How different will the weather be? Track conditions will certainly be different, some racers will really be striving for redemption and I am super intrigued by the situation of essentially seeing what these guys can do 7 days later on what should be the “same track” but expecting really varied results. It really does make you realize that these races are just a moment in time and it’s not so much dependent upon location and terrain (though of course sometimes it certainly is), but mostly the headspace and physical preparedness of the racer on that day. We saw it play out in SLC and I’m amped to see how it now plays out at Loretta Lynn’s for the new Round Two.
