You Think We Will Ever See Another Rider “Run The Table”?

mxtech1 wrote:

No, I think it's highly unlikely we will ever see another perfect season. RC4 swept in a period where he simply out-trained everyone. He was fast...

No, I think it's highly unlikely we will ever see another perfect season.

RC4 swept in a period where he simply out-trained everyone. He was fast, gritty, and determined, but by large RC laid the "recipe" for the amount of training and work that has to be put in to be a race winner. There were not a lot of guys in that time period that even knew how to train like RC, let alone have speed + training.

JS7 was just a plain freak on a bike. He dominated because in his time his technique was so far ahead of the competition, that they stood no chance (assuming he didn't crash his brains out.) What you saw at the end of Stewart's career was not him falling off in speed, rather the competition adopted his skills and techniques. The competition rose to his skill level when they figured out how to ride like he did and he was then racing a handful of guys that could go as fast as he could.

In the current era, you have ~20 to 30 guys in each class that are training full time on programs similar to RC. There's a big group of guys that, fitness wise, can do what RC did in his prime. However, this is the new normal, not the exception like RC was during his career.

That same group of guys also have very very similar levels of skill and technique. What I mean by that is none of them have such a distinct skill/technique advantage over the others that it automatically favors them to win. We've seen it before where each class has 4 to 6 guys that could win on any given weekend. That just wasn't the case with RC & JS as they were so far ahead of the rest of the class that it was usually their race to lose. Stewart did things on a bike that his classmates didn't know how to do. That doesn't exist today in the top 20 or so of each class. They study data, film, everyone has a great riding coach, etc. The skill & technique gap doesn't exist anymore.

And then you have the evolution of bikes, which are all really good now. The current crop of riders has to have their settings nailed every single weekend or they aren't going to win. I think you saw that with Kenny this weekend as his Honda setup is suited for a rough, rutted track like Unadilla, but maybe not some of the other "new era" tracks where its fast, flat, and loamy.

Sometimes i've even tempted to think that what Villopoto was able to achieve will never be matched. It's just so difficult to "dominate" these days. What Ferrandis has been able to do in the first 8 rounds of MX this year, and assuming he finishes out strong and wins the championship by 30-40+ points, could end up being what the new definition of "domination" looks like.