The Dirt | Dawn McClintock

The future is unwritten

The year 2020 will go down in history for a lot of reasons, probably more negative than we care to count, but through it all we still have the great outdoors… or so we thought. As I sit and ponder this last year, I remain in my home in Ontario under Stay-at-Home order. Golf courses and motocross tracks are all to remain shuttered for six weeks as the pandemic reaches record breaking numbers in our area.

With this new situation we have also seen the demand and supply choke for our industry. For the first time in over 30 years I have finally broken down and ordered myself a brand new dirt bike (due to arrive in April… still not here), but like everything else, delivery dates are just like Santa Claus, they aren’t real. It can’t be helped, it’s just the way of the world right now. As someone who works in the MX apparel industry, I too have experienced this phenomenon that has left most of our riders in a holding pattern for their gear, or without gear. Of anything we have learned, more than ever it requires patience and a stiff upper lip to get through all of this.

Navigating our way through the Canadian motocross national season last summer we saw a much-condensed schedule with any western rounds clipped from the calendar. With every municipality answering to its own health unit regulations, it became a juggling act to find locations that would work to wedge a series in to a community that was willing to let it happen. The Rockstar Energy Triple Crown Series became reduced to just the MX Tour and the SX Tour with the AX Tour getting removed from the roster.

The Triple Crown MX Tour has always been the big ticket here in Canada, drawing fast Canadian pros, a real variety of good US pros who brought more notoriety to some of our factory teams, fast pro women riders, as well as some quality US privateer riders who would show up in their pickup truck and be that wildcard that came out of nowhere. We didn’t see any of that last year. We had a handful of team-worthy guys up from the US who were willing to quarantine for 14 days and commit to spending the entire summer in Canada once here like Phil Nicoletti, Matt Goerke and Marshal Weltin to name a few. We sadly missed seeing those privateers who filled the gate, the US pro women that always brought great competition to the women’s national class and of course our west coast riders who just couldn’t afford competing all the way out here in the east.

Walking through the pits was also a rather strange experience. After a full year not seeing your moto peeps it was always the reuniting of good friends that made the nationals all part of the package. No spectators, no guys set up under the factory rig signing posters or handing out stickers for kids, no throngs of people at the podium to cheer on their favourite rider or swag to get thrown out into the crowd by the riders. We saw Matt Goerke hang it up and retire after the last round of the SX Tour with little celebration outside of his own team’s encampment.

While it was called the SX Tour, it was really only two doubleheader weekends at Gopher Dunes where they were able to secure these outdoor venues and dub them as SX. It fit the bill because we were all just wanting something to work out. The show did go on, however, and I tip my hat to all those involved in the background who made it happen for Canadian moto last summer. I am always the optimist who has to somehow find a little ray of sunshine to throw at a less-than-ideal situation. How grateful we should be that there even was a moto season last year.

As we look back on last year’s moto season, we wonder where things will be headed for this summer. The Canadian Triple Crown series, now with the title sponsor Rockstar Energy removed, soldiered on and announced a new schedule a while back that included a western leg of the series starting in Calgary, AB. There has been no further information released with regards to the series, but I am not feeling hopeful that the series will be any more than what we had last year. With COVID cases still way higher than we saw last year at this time. I just hope we can pull together any sort of moto season at all. As we head into the summer months with our borders still closed and tracks currently closed, we are uncertain the direction of the moto season, so we do like we have done for over a year now: We sit and wait and just hope for the best. Maybe, with any luck, I will see you at the track sometime soon! Fingers crossed. IM