Big news: Tomorrow night (Tuesday) I'm leaving to go to Japan (yes, JAPAN!) to cover this weekend's final round of the JNCC Series (that's Japan National Cross Country). Charlie Mullins, Rodney Smith and Jason Raines have been invited to race, and yours truly will be there with a lap top and a camera to cover it all. It's kind of old-school to me, not having to do any announcing and instead just being a reporter, but lucky for me I don't speak the language. So I get to enjoy this.
So I'm rushing around getting ready today, and I get an IM that I didn't have time to answer regarding David Knight. The big man is now the GNCC Champion. What we have learned here in the never-ending Knight versus Juha battle is that they're both able to win the GNCC title, so there's just more of a dead heat there. But this year has really shown everyone the difference between the two men, and I'm sure the fans, KTM and the competition sees that.
Who is better. I have no idea. I've said again that Knight is more of the Stewart and Juha more the Carmichael, with Knight perhaps possessing more total jaw-dropping skills and Juha having a more robotic absolutely no nonsense unstoppable sense like Carmichael. On his best day, Stewart may beat RC and Knight might beat Juha, but for a whole season it seems like the consistency of the other would win out (it has for RC. For Juha, we'll never know).
Anyway, another key difference came out in the IM session. Knight has had troubles this year with his mechanic that led to some issues with his bike. He's not kept that secret and has no worries, mate, about telling people about it. He hasn't trashed the old mechanic or the team, but he hasn't kept the dirty laundry behind closed doors (I just paired up two awesome cliches there).
So does that make Knight cool or is he a jerk? Should he reward KTM by saying "everything is awesome I love these guys?" or should he have spoken his mind, and instead said "listen if you don't give me a mechanic up to my standards I'm going to let the public know, so give me what I want!"
Which is the better way to do it? Like Knight versus Juha, we'll never know.
Monday, October 29
What a Champion
Posted by Jason Weigandt at 8:36 PM
Labels: David Knight, GNCC
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5 Comments:
I'm all for racers speaking their mind. Thats why I like "evil" Chad Reed lately.
But when they speak their mind and they say dumb things like (and I'm paraphasing here) "My mechanic made a stupid mistake" and "My team keeps screwing up the pit board" or "I'm winning in spite of all this" then I think that the fan can make and form a bit of an opinion about a guy. And my opinion is Knight sounds like a jerk to his team. Yes he had problems, everybody does ('specially in a 3 hour mud race across the country") but lets keep the stuff inside the team, remember the whole team that works endless hours on your bike reads the internet also.
I know this because when I worked at Yamaha, we had some things go wrong that never made the press and for that I'm glad. If one of the riders had "outed" us as screwing up the attitude among all of us dudes working 70 hours a week for said rider would go WAY down.
So, to recap-riders saying bad things about other riders-good!
riders saying bad things about the team-good for guys like Weege but bad for team.
Hey J.
Good rippin on the Ralph Shaheen blather.....
Congratulations on getting nominatd for the AMA Print Journalist of the Year award too, we both know it belongs to me, but I'll let you have it for the second time.....Bytch
Are you going to be at Endurocross? E mail me if you are, trailridercharlie@yahoo.com if you are going to attend.
Thankee
Charlie
I think that some things should be kept behind closed doors. Everyone who has raced has things go wrong. We just don't always speak of them.
If the only reason Knight had problems was his mechanic's fault, then he did the right thing. No one likes to be lied to, and Knight wasn't a jerk about it, anyway. He didn't make the team look bad, he made that stupid mechanic look bad. Which is better for everyone to watch out for that guy!
If the only reason Knight had problems was his mechanic's fault, then he did the right thing. No one likes to be lied to, and Knight wasn't a jerk about it, anyway. He didn't make the team look bad, he made that stupid mechanic look bad. Which is better for everyone to watch out for that guy!
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