The Rising

Phoenix is over--special thanks to everyone who helped host the HSCGIEGET (Hottest Smartest Coolest Girl I Ever Got Engaged To) ((Who could also go by OGIEGET since she's the only one)). Also special thanks to all the racers who put on an awesome show. I think supercross has been more exciting this year than people expected a few months ago. Reed's challenge to Stewart looked pretty darned real for the first 10 laps last night, there are about 8 guys behind that who are seemingly a complete equal match for each other, and the Lites class is outrageous.

I noted that the track at Phoenix was nearly perfect for good racing--fast and relatively simple, yet with enough different combinations and a split lane that allowed for passing. And man, that Lites main had more passing than I've seen in entire seasons of supercross combined.

Now we should have an even simpler track next weekend for retro night. Imagine if it gets better than this.

Determined to make a determination

So here's the good thing about Anaheim 1 this year--it was just muddy enough to make the race work a little differently than it would have on under perfect conditions, and everyone made it out healthy. That means we can hit the reset button here for Phoenix and expect it to basically be another round one. It's like 2005 again.

And this isn't simple early-season hype. Check out all the comments posted from the previous post, "Who's Bad." About 12 loyal blogandters (that's 100 percent of the people that read this, I believe) posted their thoughts on who should do better and who should do worse this weekend at Phoenix, and what's cool is the opinions differed yet they all made sense.

I'll do my best to keep on top of the happenings here this afternoon in Phoenix, and of course RacerXill.com will have tons of updates. Then we have this internet show tonight, too. Okay, meeting time...I'll be back.

Who's Bad? (Now including new comments!)

Okay, now it's time to put this blog on auto pilot. This year's Anaheim 1 had an exceptionally deep field of talent. There may not have been 12 guys who were considered Stewart or Reed speed, but there were A LOT of good names and good rides battling in that 450 group. Best of all, we didn't have any major injury stories this off-season, and everyone escaped A1 healthy. )I will knock on wood and type with one hand here right now)

Anyway, who do you think has the most to gain based on their A1 performance. Who will get much better? Who has shown us what they really have?

Here are the candidates, all of whom did not make the podium:

Vuillemin
Alessi
Short
Millsaps
Tedesco
Ramsey
Hill
Langston
L'il Hanny
Summey
Wey

Who has the most upside from this group? Josh "faster than Langston at the test track" Hill finished 16th. Tedesco crashed a ton and finished 15th. Can Langston get much better than battling Ferry and finishing 4th?

Get back to me on this.

- blogandt

Reed's what we need

I'll repeat these two oft-used quotes again:

"The sport needs good racing and close competition to keep growing."

"The sport grew thanks to the dominance of Jeremy McGrath, and then Ricky Carmichael."

So then, is it competition or superstar dominance that makes the supercross dial turn? Right now the sport is positioned for either. Thankfully for everyone involved, Chad Reed brought it at Anaheim, silencing the doubters for probably the 732nd time in his career. Just when you count Reed out, he usually goes out and delivers with a solid ride.

Here's a partial list:

Stewart pulls over and lets Reed pass him at Unadilla in 2002, then passes him back and wins. David Bailey says on TV, "after a move like that, Reed may never beat him again for the rest of his life." Reed wins the very next moto in the series straight-up against Stewart at Millville.

In 2002 Reed talks some trash about not wanting to race the 125 class, he wants to race 250s and go after Ricky Carmichael. No one believes he can do it,when he gets his shot in 2003, but he wins a World SX round in Europe, then wins A1. Carmichael gets a bad start there, though, but Reed is steadfast saying he is working on beating Carmichael heads-up. No one believes he can do that, but he indeed does to the tune of six-straight wins to end the season.

In '05 Carmichael hangs a bunch of wins on Reed early in the season and has all the momentum, Reed fights back to pass RC on the last lap and win San Diego. Then James Stewart re-enters the series, and in the first-ever Stewart/Carmichael showdown on a dry track, in Orlando, Reed wins. He also wins Daytona, the race Carmichael is supposed to own. After RC wraps the championship, the three superstars head to the "gloves are off" shootout in Vegas. Carmichael is expected to uncork it now that he doesn't need to worry about points. Reed wins.

In '06 Reed is struggling bad and losing ground to Carmichael and Stewart. Just when it looks like it's over, he wins big in St. Louis, and when he needs it again he wins in Dallas. He wins just twice all year, but each win comes at the most opportune moment. Last year in Toronto Reed is thought to be struggling since he has just had shoulder surgery in the off-season and has a new team to work with, and he ends up winning the race.

At Budds Creek, twice, Reed comes in with doubt everywhere and expectations on "getting smoked." He promptly takes third overall in the National in June and second in the first moto at the des Nations in September. Then he's supposed to be all fat and out of shape and over it, but he is the fastest rider at the US Open and Bercy, and now he has won A1.

What am I saying here? If the game of racing is mental, Chad has something in his arsenal no one else has, an unwavering belief in his abilities. Maybe it rubs people the wrong way at times, but the guy has won plenty of races that other riders of equal ability wouldn't, simply because he believes he can win every time he rolls to the line.

And if Reed doesn't win some more this year, well, James Stewart's dominance may just take the sport to another level, just like McGrath and Carmichael did before.

Still no rain

And we wait and wait, but still no rain today. It rained hard last night but the track was covered, and Live Nation spent the morning pumping water off of the tarps. During a meeting this morning there was a hope of a weather window between 3 pm and 2 am with no rain, so they're going to pull the tarps up at 3:30, have a track walk and then some practice. If that weather window doesn't close, we'll have another notch on the "races that should have been mudders that weren't." Perhaps I'm jinxing Southern California now, and if so, hey, you had no idea this blog was powerful enough to change the weather, did you?

You know what I like about this year's racing? We all know James Stewart and Chad Reed should be the fastest guys, but I'm looking forward to the bug mash up of guys behind that. I'd maybe, maybe put Langston as a third favorite, but can you really guess who will be better this year between him, Ferry, Tedesco, the forgotten talent Davi Millsaps, Andrew Short, Nick Wey, Vuillemin...then you technically have two rookies this year in Josh Hill and Mike Alessi. Where will all these guys all fit in? We may need to remove all fixation on focusing on who wins only, and instead look a little further back. Of course, this summer we learned that guys battle a lot harder when they're racing for first instead of third....

And then we have Lites, starring Ryan Dungey, Jason Lawrence, Broc Hepler, Brett Metcalfe, Jake Weimer, Austin Stroupe.... this title is up for the taking now that Villo2 is out, which should make it really fun to watch. Careers can change depending on how tonight shapes up--for real a bad race in a short series can cost someone like say, Hepler, his best every chance at landing a professional title.

But bad races should be easy to avoid tonight, because the tarp is coming up and it's still not raining!

Tarps coming off

It's Here

I don't even have time to run through all the stuff we've done since getting out here to California. After a great Red Bull Honda intro party on Wednesday night, we held the SX press conference on Thursday. Then yesterday we headed to Pro Circuit to shoot our SX preview show on Racer X Films, and stopped by Troy Lee Designs for a tour. I then whipped up Racerhead real quick before heading to Tom White's house (the founder of White Bros.) for a tour of his amazing motorcycle collection. It's right up there with Primm. Through it all though, there has been scant amounts of bench racing going on. I think everyone is scared to think too hard about all of this, because anyone rational will realize Stewart has a huge edge until someone proves otherwise.

Unless it rains, and then anything can happen. It finally opened up last night, but it's not raining right now. Moreover, the track is covered in plastic so at the moment it's all good. If it's not raining tonight, I will begin a running tab of "races we thought would be muddy that weren't," because this has happened plenty of times before.

What? Supercross begins in 48 hours????

I spent a solid two weeks vacationing, proposing and basically forgetting about the whole darned sport. But now that I've been in California for two days, I realized what the problem was: no one is talking about the sport right now. This has to be the least hyped, least buzzed A1 ever--this is ridiculous, but I suppose the idea of someone challenging James Stewart for the title this year is ridiculous, too. So now we have what we have.

But I'm starting to feel some pumpitude coming on. We had some real fun last night at the Honda Red Bull intro and today's PC was pretty good. I'll report on it all soon, but for now we're off to the annual Racer X go-kart night at Pole Position.

But the blog is once again the place to be!