A (4:25)

Work. There's no laboring or travel or any of the. It's just pure entertainment. I get that. For everybody else, for the riders, for the teams, for everybody that's a part of this on the inside. There's a lot of fatigue. There's just. Everybody needs a break. And it's, it's universal. It doesn't matter what your job entails. It doesn't matter what role you may play in this, in this, this whole circus. Everybody needs a break. And if you were at motocross, the nations, you could just kind of see it. You know, after Vegas, you could see it. Everybody was just like, man, I, I love what we do here, but I need a minute off here. Fast forward. It's been two months to the day since motocross the nations people are ready to go. You know, maybe that's not true for the racers. Like, they, they're still in the middle of boot camp and there's a lot of prep that still needs to be done. But I think a lot of people are like, I'm ready. Like, I've gotten my, you know, kind of life back together. I've gotten to take time off. I've kind of Recharged the batteries and it's time to go. And we still have another month, you know, and it's cool. Like I'm good with it. It's fine. Holidays will be here, you know, Christmas, New Year's, all that's great. But let it be known that if we were going racing this weekend, like if you were at Anaheim right now, I would welcome it wholeheartedly. So anyway, thank you to the sponsors of this podcast. Of course. Guts Racing Works Connection. They have some brand new gray coated pieces that they just launched about two weeks ago. It's pretty awesome. They just had their Black Friday sale as well. Check out Works Connection.com, check out Gutsracing.com TL Speed Shop and Race- rentals.com is their new ish website where you can go and jump in side by side, jump on a trophy truck and you can rip across the desert. Like there are not many places, I don't know of any that you can do something like that. Half a million dollar trophy truck, you can just fly down and hop in and rip across the Arizona desert. You can go to Baja. They do custom stuff. They race the Baja 400, 500, 1000 every year. So you could be a part of that. They do that with clients. A lot of opportunities there at Race Dash Rentals.

A (6:42)

Unmatched supplements. They have a brand new product called Intra. I'm going to speak specifically on that a little bit later in the show. But brand new and it, what I like about it is it has a very specific use for motocrossers, which is really cool. Grandstone boots. Wearing them. Actually I just took them off to do this podcast, but wearing them to I'm going to go to dinner here in a little bit and best footwear in the game, period. Their products are honestly probably too good for me. They are so high end, you're talking, you know, and they're not cheap, let's be real, they're anywhere from 200 to $600 for shoes. And I'm very blessed that they have taken very, very good care of me over the years. So I have far too many options to choose from. But Grant Stone Boots, grandstoneshoes.com Check those guys out. Firepower parts. Firepower is a in the same family as Fire Racing. So I work directly and specifically for Firepower. I want to be transparent on that. But there's a lot of new products coming out in 2026 on firepower, so just keep your eye on it. I'm going to be telling you about it. I also get to have a very.

A (7:53)

Heavy hand, I would say extremely heavy hand as far as where we put our marketing dollars for firepower. So you're going to see a lot of firepower in 2026. I'm going to make very sure of that. So thank you to Firepower, FirepowerParts.com and Fire Racing. Fly racing is, you know, has been my home for 20 years now. Outside of a couple years I wore answer. But yeah, it's, I mean, I feel like I am, you know, flyers race. Fly racing is me and I am fly racing at this point and I wouldn't have it any other way. So let's get into this thing. What I want to do, I want to talk a little bit about Australia. I'm not going to do. It's not going to be a super long show today, but I want to talk a little bit about Australia and I want to talk a little bit about Sweden because it literally just happened. I just finished watching all of the 450 races. I'm not going to touch on the 250 because I don't know how to say this. I don't care. I really don't care about 250. I don't care that much about WSX anyway. But it's what we have, so I'm going to talk about it. But I just don't care about the 250 class and WSX. I'm sorry, I know Max Anstey and Mac O Rath and Enzo and these guys are great racers. That's not, that's not what I'm saying. Just my interest level kind of isn't there and WSX isn't really the series that I want to focus on anyway. But it's what we have to talk about and I know all of you have probably watched it anyway, so we're going to cover it. So we're going to talk about Australia, going to talk about Sweden and I'm going to briefly touch on what media days should be like this coming week. Okay, without further ado, Australia, it was a week ago, so it's, it's dated now. I get it. But it was a pretty awesome race. You know, I think it was a huge floor and the track was pretty impressive. Big jumps, huge jumps. Honestly now, the dirt was a little underwhelming, let's be fair. Wasn't great. Really hard pack. And I struggle with this because if you go online and you look, you know, a lot of places, a lot of Internet websites, message board forums that sort of thing. You'll see a lot of people talking about how great the racing was because of the dirt. I don't. I don't want to argue with that because great racing is in the eye of the beholder. What I struggle with is that the ranting about how this is what our racing should be and how much better everything would be if we had dirt like this. As a racer, I. I'm not a racer anymore, but as a former racer and your mind's always a racer, you know, like you're never. Your mind's never going to change in some aspects. Some aspects does. Some aspects doesn't. When I look at a racetrack, I think of it through the mind of a racer because that's what I spent the majority of my life doing. And I always think about how would I have to attack this when I have to go race this later today or tomorrow? What am I going to do? What's my plan of attack? What do I need to be careful for? Where am I going to be good? What's going to be a struggle? Those are all inherent things that every racer is always going to think about when they look at a racetrack. This is no different. Even if it's on YouTube. Watching from 8,000 miles away, that racetrack was not something that the racers were stoked about, I promise you. Maybe Chris Christian Craig, maybe because he's so good at it, but like super sketchy. Whoops. Really low traction and a track that was really prone to mistakes because of the lack of moisture is not something that riders are going to be really thrilled about. And I get it. I see the fans, oh, my gosh, this is so good. We should have different types of challenges. Fine. Okay, cool. I'm just. I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that the racers are going to disagree with that because they're not going to be stoked on that. You think Eli Tomac and Cooper Webb were really pumped on how slippery it was and how there was no water in it. I promise you that they were not. So I struggled with that a little bit and it's, you know, it's probably on me. I should just stay away from reading any of that nonsense and just stick to my own thought processes and opinions. But I like to get. I like to get other voices. I like to kind of see what the take the temperature of what's out there. And a lot of times you probably can relate to this listener. You're like, let me see what's going on out there. And then you're like, oh, My God. I don't want to know what's out there. Like, you, like, go on Twitter, like, anytime anything happens big in the world, say there's some sort of big.

A (12:24)

Social event or what's the term I'm looking for.

A (12:30)

Something happens in the world, and I don't know why I can't think of the term. It'll come to me. You want to see what's happening? What are opinions? How do people feel about what happened in particular, if it's politics or if it's a geopolitical thing or a social dynamic or some sort of violent event or whatever. Twitter, or X now, as it's called, is a great place to kind of see what the world thinks and, you know, say what you want about Elon Musk. A lot of different opinions. I happen to think he's one of the foremost geniuses of our time. Doesn't mean you have to like him. Like, Steve Mathis hates him. It's fine, whatever. Hate hates a strong word. He doesn't like him. It doesn't matter. But when he bought Twitter and turned it into X, one of the things he said was he wanted it to be a place where. Where it could be a town hall for every opinion, every voice. Everybody would have a chance to share their opinion. I think it works for that. I think it is a place where you can go and kind of see what people think and feel. And there's a lot of it where you, like, you see those, you know, GIFs or GIFs or however you say it, or memes, where you're like, people are, like, shaking their head really fast, like, no, no, no, no. I don't want to. I don't want. I don't want anymore. Like, that's enough Internet for me today. That happens. That happens a lot. But I think it is important to not live in an echo chamber. You don't want to constantly be surrounded by people who think and feel exactly the same way you do. You end up doing that because I think people attract similar opinions. That's, you know, like, people with things in common end up together. That's a natural part of life. But I do think it is important to understand how other people view things. I do this regularly. Say it's an election cycle. Okay, now, I'm a Republican. I lean pretty conservatively. Not, like, extremely, but I kind of lean towards conservative values. It's just what I believe is the right way to live life. Doesn't mean it's right or wrong. It's just what I believe. But during an election cycle, I will force myself to go watch other things, like cnn. I can't watch msnbc. I can't do it. There are lines I can't cross. MSNBC is one of them. But I force myself to listen to other people's opinion so I can then compare that to how I feel and whether it changes my mind or reinforces what I believed first. At least I am getting another opinion forced into the room that I can assess. Okay. I think that's really important. You don't have to agree with me. That's fine. It's just what I want to do and what I believe is important to make sure that my beliefs and thoughts are well grounded and based in whether it's facts or the opinions that I believe I have a reason to. And it's not just rhetoric, because, trust me, it's really easy to just fall into whatever narrative is going on out there and say, yeah, man, I'm going with that. Right? That sounds pretty good. But you don't research it. You don't have any sort of evidence to support it. You don't. You can't really explain why that you think that. I don't want to be that person. I want to understand both sides and then make a decision. Okay, so coming back full circle to Moto, I go like something with this track. I didn't think it was very. Like, I didn't think the dirt was good at all. Like, I wouldn't want to race on dirt. Like that. I listened and I read opinions that I didn't agree with because I wanted to see what their thought process was. And it basically came down to look how much passing there was, look at the mistakes that were being made. Okay, it's fine. I get it. As a fan only thinking purely about entertainment, that makes sense. It does. I just, I. My. My bias as a racer and having to navigate that racetrack is simply too strong for me to lean into that side and say, yeah, that's good, we should do that. It's just. It's just what's going to. I can. I can appreciate it and I understand it. I just don't agree with it. So that's kind of where I'm going. Like, as long as I give the other side a chance to sway me, I may still come right back to where I was, which is in what's happening in this case. But as a racer, man, it's. It's just too difficult. And I think what you saw from the race very much was why certain things happened on the Racetrack, like, why? The dirt. The dirt caused certain results to happen is what I'm trying to say. And let's start with Ken Rockson. Okay. He's the winner of the race. And what does Kenny do? Well, really good with throttle control. Really good at blitzing loops. Like, think about, like, Argentina, how good he was under slippery conditions. Like, he can find traction where other guys can't. Like, he's just very good in that type of condition.

A (17:34)

He won the race, basically. I think. Not that he can't win anywhere, but this was. These were great conditions for him to exert his skill set. Like, he has always been good in that type of condition, and this was no different. So for Kenny, strong outing, right? Like, he can blitz. Whoops. When most guys are, like, on the borderline of not wanting to, he's going to continue blitzing. And, like, all these guys can blitz. Whoops. That's a. It's kind of a misnomer, I would say. The guy that's really on the cusp of, like, I don't know is Justin Cooper. Everybody else, even Webb, they can blitz fine. It's when they get really dicey, who can blitz them really good? Then Kenny's one of the guys that can. Sexton's one of the guys that can. Tomak's usually one of the guys that can. Webb would typically go, nope, we've crossed the Mendoza Line now, and I'm going to jump because they've gotten to a point where could I blitz them? Sure. But it is now to a place where I am not as good as at blitzing as these guys. So I need to find another way to do it. That's a very distinct difference. So when they're really tough like this and jumping is not great and Kenny can still blitz. Like, this race in Australia, like, New Jersey Supercross 2024. Sorry, 2025, where Sexton beat everybody by 16 seconds. That's. That's when these guys shine. That's when a guy like Kenny is going to shine. Is that very, very specific dynamic where blitzing's really fast jumping is, even if you're great at. It's just not quite good enough. And you don't get that. You only get that maybe two or three races a year in the US but this Australia one was. It was that situation. It simply was. And we saw why Kenny kind of exerted his dominance there. Eli Tomac, probably the biggest talking point outside of Deegan, who always a big talking point, but Tomac really struggled. Like, that was, you know, we've talked about this a lot. Whether it's, you listen to me here or on live motocross pod or Mathis stuff on Pulp or wherever, I've been pretty consistent with this take. And it's about Eli and his move to the ktm. I think you're going to see flashes of brilliance. He's going to be great like he was in Vancouver. But I think there will be times, and we saw it in the very second outing where he's going to struggle. And it's not a lack of ability. It's not that the motorcycle is not capable. It's not any of those things. It's a combination of all of them. It is. Eli wants a very specific setup. He's going to use the scoop tire. He's going to run a really high rear end. He's going to do a lot of things that he doesn't want to veer away from. Like they're kind of set in stone for him. When the track does. Doesn't work for that and he tries to force it anyway. I think is when he's going to have his most difficult time.

A (20:35)

The question will be how punitive is that in 2026 and is he willing to.

A (20:43)

Kind of compromise on any of those things or is he just going to say, no, this is how I do it. This is how it has to be done. I'm going to go for it anyway. I don't know the answer. I'm just posing the setup. But I think there will be times where he struggles to find comfort and find his best form because of mixed conditions or something they're not necessarily prepared for. And we saw it. I could go back and find clips of it, but I was kind of like, I felt satisfied because I thought this would be a thing in 26. And we've already seen it. We've already seen it once. And it's not going to be an every week thing. You're going to see weekends where he is just on it. And the narrative is going to be, ew, I can win. Eli's back. He's in the title fight, but there will be a weekend or two. And I'm. I'm. We've already seen it once, so I'm doubling down. He's going to have a tough time and everybody's going to be scratching their head, including him, including the team, because they don't have enough data, they don't have enough experience working together. The bike's different. He wants to use that. Like all the variables we talked about, all the Time. And that's going to result in a less than stellar performance. And again.

A (21:52)

How less than stellar is it is going to be the question. It might be not a big deal. He might be able to gut out a third or a fourth and carry on. But if those two, three, whatever races it is, it could be more. I don't think it'll be less than one or two.

A (22:10)

If it's like a seventh or an eighth, that might be enough to take him out of a title contention. I don't know. Right. I'm just, I'm posing what the challenge is going to be. You can't change everything, everything around you, everyone around you, staff, technicians, bikes, metal, makeup of the frame, suspension, company, everything, mechanic, all of it, and not have some sort of inconsistency on a week to week basis with different types of dirt, different types of track, different types of climate change, different. It's just impossible. Like that is just, I don't want to say common sense, but logically logic would tell you that's going to be a difficulty at some point in 2026. So we already, we've already seen it once now, can they learn from it? Can they take what struggles they were and sort those out in the month between or six weeks, five weeks between then and a one? I'm sure they're going to work on it. Like that's what they do. Listen to Ian Harrison. After the race, we have our work cut out for us now they're going to get to work to try to fix that. But it's going to be a unique problem. It's not like that Australia track is going to be identical to what we see in 26. It's going to be unique sets of circumstances. That's why problems come up is because of the uniqueness. If they were predictable, they wouldn't have a problem. That's the, the uniqueness and the variance and the unexpected challenge is what causes the variance in the result. So they're not going to know what the challenge is until it's upon them. And you're going to see them chasing it all day and all night on those particular events. And maybe they get it figured out by the main event, but maybe they don't. And I'll give you another example, I probably mentioned this somewhere else, but Motocross the Nations on Saturday. Go back and watch. If you don't remember and you're bored, go watch how badly Eli Tomac struggled on Saturday at the qualifying race. And Motocross the Nations he got like 10th, 9th. He was 11th for most of it. He wasn't very good is the point. Look at Sunday. He was up front, he was the anchor of Team usa. What was the difference? I talked to the team. They made small changes to the bike that were the difference. Eli is that sensitive to the bike. That Yamaha, they told me, has a very small window of Eli's performance. If he's in the window, he's his best self. He can win any race in the world. If it's not, he's not his best self, he has a difficult time being his best self and that means he's off the back of the best in the world. Like, that's also difficult when you're 33 years old. You can't just. It's harder to just turn your brain off and say, I'm doing it anyway. Like that is a very difficult thing for an older, more mature racer to do. Ask anybody, ask Justin Brayton, ask anybody who's been down that road, myself included. It's a hard thing to do. If things are perfect, great. If they're not. It's a difficult, difficult day because you, you think too much. Like your brain for, you know, in life is a big asset to you. Now you're smarter in racing, sometimes it's not. Sometimes you wish you're just like, man, I wish I could just say, eff it and go for it. Right? Like you're you. But your brain knows too much. You're like, I don't want, I don't want to go to the hospital if I do that. And you don't really want to do that. So that will be the challenge for Eli Tomac. Can they mitigate the off days enough to where they're not championship defining moments? That's it in a nutshell. Hayden Deegan, he looked better and I wondered how much better because I watched his Instagram leading up to it and I probably talked about it here. I know I talked about it other places. He looked a lot better on that video. Like, smoother, flowing with the bike, riding the 450 the way it's supposed to be. But in the race, I didn't necessarily think it was the same like he was. He was forcing it a bit over, revving it still. He's still riding it like a 250, which is normal. He's only been. Right. He'd only been riding it for a few weeks. That's not anything out of the usual. So, you know, there were flashes of great. And there were some moments where I was just kind of like Shaking my head. Like the stuff with Joey Savage, like, what are you doing? You know, like the game stuff. And then like kind of getting into it with him off the track and, and he told him, like, I'm not scared of you. Like, yeah. And like nobody thinks you're scared of Joey. Like I don't even know what you're talking about. You know, those are the things that he still has maturing to do. He needs to kind of figure that part of his game out. And he will, no question he will. But you like, you see steps forward and then I see step back like that. Like I still see, ah, he's got a lot of growing up to do still. He's only 19, no doubt about that. But some of the things I, and again, I don't want to be hypercritical because I can only imagine the things that were going through my head at 19. I was not a mature, well adjusted adult yet and nor should he be at 19. Right. So we need to kind of always keep that in mind with him. But yeah, he still made the prototypical Deegan Supercross mistakes. You saw them, you saw really loose in the, in the loops and some, some big mistakes here and there. It sounds like he's going to race to 250 now, I don't think that's set in stone. Like I think it took the pressure off of him to make a decision. Nobody's going to be asking about it every seven seconds anymore, so I think that was pretty smart. But he is back practicing on the 250. It sounds like he's going to race a one on the 250, but I would, let me just say this, I would not rule out.

A (28:01)

An odd 450 appearance on the East Coast. I just, I'm just throwing it out there. I know they're saying he's not going to happen. I'm just telling you, don't rule it out and we shall see what happens from there. But I'm not claiming to know anything. I'm not like playing coy and trying to, you know, send smoke signals. I'm just saying it's the way racing goes. If he's got a big lead in the west, which I don't know if he will or not, he may not even win the west, like who knows? But if things are going really well, he may be like, you know what, I'm going to get in the mix. I'm going to race daytona on a 450. Who knows? But just keep in the back of your mind, it's not an impossibility because he's done the testing. They know where they want to be on the bike. So that takes a big step out of the equation. And he could transition really, really quickly. He's already done it once, so he knows the process. And it would be a no pressure way to kind of throw his hat pat into the ring. And I would even go a step further if things go a certain way where like the championship's kind of wide open, nobody's dominating, Some of the protagonists are struggling a little bit. There's like, everybody looks a little bit vulnerable. I think that's when he would want to say, yeah, I'm. I want to get in there because there's, there's opportunity there. If Jet or Sexton or somebody, like the guys he's thinking about having to race are crushing it. Like they just are just on it. Like Jet, any of the top guys are executing at a high level. I don't think he would do it because I don't think he wants to go up against that. He would be more likely to do it if the door was open a bit, let's say. That's, that's just kind of my feelings on. So anyway, he's better. He was better than he was in Argentina. It was a step forward. So, yeah, it's fine. Like, he'll be, he'll be good to go when it comes. May. I don't know what good to go means. I don't know if that means first, I don't know if that means fifth, but he'll be good to go. Who else? Christian Craig. He raced in Sweden just a couple hours ago, but he was fan tastic in Australia. Fantastic. Like, that's, that's the best I've seen him ride and four years period, that's the best I've seen him ride in four years. And he was really fast, really confident, great starts, great in the Whoops. But if you were going to custom build a race for Christian Craig, it would look a lot like Australia. Big jumps, big loops and lack of traction. That is what Christian Craig does really well. And if you give him that, it doesn't matter how many years removed he is from his best results, he's going to show up like he's very motivated right now because he feels slighted from monster Yamaha star racing, which. Listen, I'm not here to debate how that went. I wasn't in the room. I don't know what was agreed to or not. But he feels slighted. That is a fact. So he's motivated. He wants to show everybody that they made a mistake of not giving him more opportunity, letting him go race when there was opportunity to. And I think he showed that he still has something to give. This was the best in Australia that I've seen him race. So congrats to Christian Craig.

A (31:19)

The only thing I would say is that those conditions are not going to be there all the time. So could he do that at Anaheim or San Diego? He absolutely could, and we'll cover that in Sweden. And I'll. Why I'm saying that, I guess when we get into the Sweden talk a bit here. The last guy I want to talk about for Australia was Webb. I thought it was totally fine. He wasn't the fastest guy on the weekend, but he's very rarely the fastest guy. Like Indy25, he was the fastest guy there. There are not a ton of races where he just goes out and just shows everybody what's up and nobody can really touch his pace. Like, that is just not a common thing for Web. That's not how he wins. It's never really been his thing. He is the ultimate kind of racecraft guy, devising a plan, executing the plan, capitalizing on other people's mistakes, finding ways to win in the face of what looks like it's not going to work. That is what he does. That's what he's always done. This shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. It's certainly not to me. So I thought this was right up Webb's alley, kind of the next step from Paris. He was in the fight. He won one of the races. The only thing I would say is the starts weren't very good. I don't know what was going on with the starts, but the starts were really inconsistent. So maybe it was the dirt who. Maybe it was the fuel. I know they were having some fuel issues in Australia, so that may have lowered performance as well. But I thought if you're like, are we on track? I thought he was fine like that. It's all good. Because if you were expecting him to go out and dominate and run away from everybody on that track with no traction and really big whoops, you, I don't know what you've been watching. I don't know why you would ever think that that's not what Webb's strengths are. So given the conditions, given the situation, I think this was a very passable grade for Web. So kudos to Cooper Web. And now. Now he'll walk in. It's. It's go time for him until a 1. As far as preparation, remember he had a big injury last year around this time. He didn't even ride until right before the race last year. So nobody really knew. I didn't even, I barely knew. So hopefully he can come in fully prepared for 2026 because I'm telling you at A1 last year he was like, I just hope I can get out of here with like a top 2012, you know. And I think he ended up getting fourth. Maybe I'm going off of memory, but he was nowhere near where he wanted to be going into January last year. And I think considering then versus now, he's in a much better place. So we shall see. Let's jump directly into Sweden because it just happened a couple hours ago and.

A (34:11)

From the outside it's a pretty big letdown on rider lineup. And you all know I'm not a big WSX guy. I don't work for them. I work for, you know, the competitor series which is smx. I'm not a hater. I, I want to watch racing as much as all of you do too. But this was, if you compare it to Tomac, Rockson, Webb, Deegan, I mean.

A (34:34)

I think you can take that leap with me that Savage and Andersen, not really the same period, full stop. Like I'm not going to back away from that. But it is what it is. Like, it just, it felt like more of a lesser tier off season European race and I've done a million of those, like a hundred of those. That's what this felt like. This felt like.

A (34:57)

A Genoa or a Madrid or a Gothenburg, which is also in Sweden. This, this is what exactly what that was. Now you can slap FIM WSX World Championship on it. You can have Ralph Shaheen and you know everybody there comment saying cool, all good, no, no worries. But this is what that felt like because you didn't have the heat in the lineup like I mentioned. That's whatever. I'm not here to cast blame. I'm just telling you what the race felt like. It was a letdown on star power. As for the race itself, it's pretty good. Like Anderson and Savage went back and forth. I think Christian Craig kind of missed an opportunity but these conditions were not the same for Craig. I think that's if you're looking at, I'll show you like he is back and I'm like, yeah, he was really good. But look at the conditions. They were conducive to what Christian Craig does. Well, look at Sweden. They're not conducive to what he does. Well, he was fine. He's a podium guy, but. But he was not the same guy he was in Australia, that's for damn sure. And that, to me, is kind of the difference. So, you know, Anderson wins. Good job to him. They're now tied for the championship. Don't even get me started on the chaos that is Ken Rockson and not going to these races. I don't even know where to go with that. Like, it's definitely not. I definitely don't put this on Kenny, but it's not a good look, no matter what. Like, it's not a good look for. For the series, for sure. You have your guy, who's the reigning champ, who is not going to do the last two rounds. Like, oof. I don't know the number. I don't know the money. I don't know the numbers. I can promise you, though, that it was a lack of funding and resources is why he's not there. Like, I don't. I have no idea how the economics of this series work. To me, it doesn't work at all. But I can promise you that's why Roxann wasn't there is because they didn't. I don't want. Somewhere along the way, somebody didn't have the money to pay him what it cost to get him to the last two rounds. That's it. Like, you can. They can paint whatever picture they want, team, series, promoter, whatever. In the end, that's why he's not there. That's why Tomac's not there. That's why Deegan. They don't have, like, they just didn't have the money. And that's not anybody's fault. I just want to make that very, very clear. In the end, the reason that Rockstone is not doing the last two rounds is that there wasn't enough money to get him to the last two rounds. Because you're talking about. It's like 150 grand minimum to pay him. Forget about expenses. 150 grand minimum per round to get them there. It's probably more than that. I'm being a little bit light on numbers from what I typically hear, which are like 200. So I get it. Like, I don't. I'm not paying anybody that much money. But I don't know. I don't. I don't really have a strong opinion. I just want to make sure that there wasn't any confusion on why he wasn't there. But I thought the race was, like, it was entertaining. For what it's supposed to be like. Savage and Anderson put on a great show. They battled every single race all the way down to the last lap. So that was cool. Like, if you're a. If you're a fan in Sweden, you don't get much of this. You get the GP every year, but you don't get Jason Anderson, Savage, you're. You don't get Christian Craig, you don't get Anstey, you don't get Mcelrath, you don't get any of those guys. So that was cool. I'm sure, for them to see, even if I'm sure they were a little bit let down of not getting the superstars that Australia got, you know, like, hey, life's hard sometimes. It's how it goes. But, like, not a ton to cover on the race itself. Like, conditions were brutal, like, really difficult. And if you're ever wondering, like, okay, okay. My heyday, I raced a lot of races. Just, like, when I was watching, I was like, yeah, and I've been there, done that. We didn't have YouTube. We didn't have live streaming, as easy as it is. We did have it towards the end, but it wasn't easy to find. It wasn't high quality. It was kind of like CCTV versus, like, this really great broadcast.

A (38:59)

So not a lot of people got to watch the races that I was at, but this is pretty normal for me. Like, was it softer in some areas? Sure. But I've raced in Finland multiple times with conditions exactly like that. Exactly like that. Like, I've won Finland Supercross Championship, conditions exactly like that. I know what that's like. I could put myself right back into there. 2013, February of 2013, I went 111111 in Finland on a track smaller than that, but identical to that. And so when I'm watching, I'm just kind of nodding my head going, man, that looks. I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore because it's really tough. It's really hard. Like, the ruts present so many challenges and you have to push and you have to take chances and you're a little bit out of control most of the time because you can't ride perfect is what I'm trying to get to you. You simply can't hit the same line, do the same thing over and over and over. Like, every lap is going to be a little different. The track's constantly changing. It's. It's like fluid in the line choice. The ruts are moving around, getting you have to kind of really be aware of changing track conditions. You saw both Colton Nichols and Luke Clout go over the bars in that one on one double. Like you have to be so aware of how quickly those things can bite you. So to me, that race was as much about racing the conditions as it was racing each other. And that's a distinct difference. When you are talking about supercross racing, you take a track like some of the Anaheims we've had over the years where the track's really easy. Those type of tracks, you race each other like it is such a. You're racing against a rider. You have to know their tendencies, you have to know where they're good, you have to know how to attack them. Where are they going to be weaker so I can make a pass? Where are they going to be really strong? So you need to ride defensively like those things are. You need to. That's Racecraft 101. Other races. This particular race in Sweden, some of the other racetracks, we don't get as many ruts as we used to. But on those type of tracks you race the track like it is. If you can execute lap after lap after lap within the same like narrow lap time, you're going to pass. People like you don't. It doesn't even matter what everybody else is doing. You almost just have to disassociate yourself from the other racers and 100% focus in on executing each and every lap like it is. It's a very different way of racing and you need to understand which type of race you're in. So in the last race, if you watch Sweden, the last race, the track was the best. It was all night. They were pushing hard. They were like attacking the race. The other two, the sprint races, you could see them just like they didn't even care about where the other guys were. They were just trying to get around the racetrack. Now Anderson and Savage came together. Savage got a little bit antsy. He should have waited longer. That was definitely more on Savage than Anderson. But they were trying to execute laps versus they were being aggressive with each other. So it's just a different type of racing. And you wonder why, like riders will say, well, these off season races are just so different than what we do in America. That's the reason why we don't get conditions like that in America really anymore. It's a different style of racing. Guys like Larry Ward, guys like Justin Brayton were experts at this. And I don't want to insert myself because I wasn't on their level. But my level went up. I was much more capable of racing against that type of racer there than I was here. Because of the style of dirt, because of the style of the race. I excelled at that stuff. So watching it I just, it took me back to those thought, you know, those thoughts in my mind so quickly. But overall good race, good time. I'm sure the Sweden fans enjoyed it. Just to me was just kind of like a 6 out of 10 comparing it to Australia because of the lack of racers. Okay, I want to talk about this unmatched supplement. Also check out the other sponsors. Guts Racing go to guts racing go to works connection.com go to race-rentals.com but I wanted to touch on this unmatched supplement that just came out because it's brand new and I think it's important for racers. It's called Entra. Now this was developed for like muscle building athletes. A lot of the things they do are around that like motocross is not their first and foremost thought. But Chris who's co founder, co owner wanted to make sure that I cover this because it's very important for motocrossers which these are the people listening. When you're done with your day or like the end of the day you want to be drinking Entra, you want to kind of be drinking it throughout like after a moto. Anyway, what Entra does so well is the recovery side of racing, right? So say you're racing like a multi day event or Mineos or you are just practicing day after day, you're training for an event. What intra is going to be really important with is your recovery for the next day. Yes, it will help you recover in between races but from what I understand, I'm not an expert on this but there are certain ingredients in this one's called Vitargo that is very rare. Like they won't sell to any other brands to allow to happen. But this, it is metabolized very very well and it gets recovery ingredients back into our body. So you're going to recover very very quickly and you're going to be able to train again much sooner. So I was kind of asking multiple questions like what does this mean for motocrossers? He's like it's going to get them back. So like let's give an example. Guys are in boot camp right now. It's going to allow them to train more quickly and, and be less sore and more capable the following day for like performance athletes. You're trying to train like for me I'M trying to build a better physique, look better in the mirror, be stronger, do all these things. Not for racing, just because I want to. It's a hobby. When I train, like back on Wednesday and then I have a biceps and triceps on Thursday. Well, guess what, a lot of those same muscle groups are being used when, like when I'm doing a back workout. Your buys and tries are getting worked out. Also, even though you're not focusing on them, you're not like really leaning into them specifically, by default, they are getting exercised. So what you want them to be is fully recovered for that really intense focus day on Thursday. This is going to help in that process. And the quicker you get back to like a zero, you know, like stat the status quo, the more you can do the next day. Well, the same thing goes for motocrossers and boot camp. If you're just smoked and you got to go out and do it again the next day, guess what? You're going to suck. It's going to be really hard. Your trainer's going to be like, dude, you're, what are we doing here? Like, you're so far off lap time, you have no energy. Like, that is going to be. This is going to be a game changer on that front. So check it out. There's a ton of information. I'm not an expert on this, right. I'm still learning all the properties and the why behind this. But go to unmatched supsupps.com and you can learn more about this great new product. And it's one of, I think it's one of the most critical for motocross applications of anything they have. So I probably did a very poor job of explaining that. And again, I'm not a scientist. I'm not, you know, super well versed on this stuff. I'm learning every day. But I think this is one that could be directly transferable and it'd be a big help for any sort of endurance athlete, motocross specifically. So check it out. Of course, want to thank their other sponsors, too. Who'd I leave out? Grandstone Boots, Firepower parts, Fire racing. Thank you to all of them. So, media Days. Let's talk about that really quickly. And I'm gone way longer than I expected to on this podcast, but that's okay. Media Days. It's going to be fun. Like, we get to talk to every rider, right? Jet Hunter, Sexton, Tomac, Everybody's going to be there. Deegan, Webb. And I don't. I'm not like a big question asker in this because when I'm in this room, it's going to be myself, R.C. lee, Diffie, Weege, Brayton Haley, everybody, everybody on the broadcast team. Will Christian, Katie Osborne, everybody, right? I don't need to be leading the front. I'm not like the face of the broadcast team. Like I'm a very, very thankful team member. But I'm not like, I'm not the leader here. So I don't like lead the charge with questions. If I have specific questions I want to ask that I don't hear getting asked, I'll ask them. But I like to listen. I like to hear what they have to say. I like to not only hear what they have to say and you've heard, you've heard me say this before. I like to see how they say it. I like to watch their body language when they are asked a difficult question. Okay, like Chase Sexton, let's. Somebody's going to ask him like, hey, what's going to be different about the cowie? Like, you weren't happy at Honda, you weren't happy at ktm and now we are led to believe that cowie is going to be the answer. We. Why are, why should we believe that? Like, what makes this so different? Why is this going to be the place that you find happiness? Because he won at those places. He won on Honda, he won a supercross championship, almost won a motocross championship. Won a motocross championship at Red Bull ktm. So it hasn't been disaster. He's been winning, but he's still been unhappy. So what is going to be different about this scenario? That is a hard question, but it's a necessary one. Somebody's going to ask him. If they don't, then I will. I want to see how he answers it. Like, what is he fidgeting? Is he kind of looking up at the sky, like trying to figure it? Like to me that would indicate, like he's really not sure. Like he's unsure of if this is going to be the answer. Why? You know, like if he just looks the question in the eye and says, because the bike does this and the staff does what I need and they have answers. When I can't find any sort of comfort, they give me. Cool, man. That's exactly what I want to see. But so for me, point being, it's not always in what they say, it's how they say it. It's their body language when they answer. Do they have an answer or are they searching and kind of giving you cliches and nothingness and like, coach sports speak. Like, if you ever listen to an NFL press conference, it's just a bunch of nothingness. Do they give you a lot of that, or is it targeted answers that they've already had to work through and they know right off the top of their head? To me, those are the things that I care about. That's where I really think I can gain insight, and that will lead me to giving a better performance on air when we crank this thing up in January. So I'll have more insight on that week from now. But that's, that's what I'm looking forward to this coming week. So thanks, everybody. Thanks for listening. And I'm going to try to get one of these done next weekend. See you.