Motocross star's garages at home

^ I'm sure many of them cannot turn a wrench to save their lives. It makes sense, really; they have spent their whole lives dieting, training, riding and aiming for that elusive goal. many of them had dads do their repair work until they joined factory teams. Now they don't know how to clean an air filter.

The same thing can probably be said for NASCAR, F1, MXGP or any other Motorsport pros worldwide, for basically the reasons you listed. They have always had someone else wrench on their bikes, or cars…and their jobs have always been to ride/drive.

Airliner pilots don’t know how to fix jet engines or the correct torques for landing gear lug nuts, but nobody really complains about that when they get on a plane. Factory guys with that kind of money are in a group made up of maybe a few dozen kids, only a few of which are over 30. It’s specialized work and I can’t blame them for making the rest of their lives as safe and uninteresting as possible. 

In the same way that baseball pitchers can't hit to save their lives, (some) pro riders probably can't wrench to save their lives.

I will say that the more established, older riders do appear to have plenty of toys. Tomac, Roczen, Reed, Stewart easily come to mind. The newer generation of Sexton and the Lawrence brothers are who I think you are referring to. Maybe they have sport bikes? Or road/mtb?

Tomac may or may not have a Porsche but it's none of your business 

One nice truck, one road bike, one mountain/E-bike, and maybe a practice bike. 

it’s like asking an NFL player to do the job of an equipment manager washing uniforms and making sure they have the right cleats. 

It just takes time away from the athlete to be able to practice or train, and if you are riding 3-4 days a week I don't see anytime that you would want to ride for fun. Fun to these guys is golf or whatever that's not moto, at least while they are at the pointy end of things after retirement things might change. 

I like working on bikes for fun but if I was a factory mechanic I wouldn't be going home to work on bikes for fun. 

Haha i remember that episode on Pulp. His poor superfan 

Yes, and then he talked about it and added video on the Dirt Shark video lol

Top Pro racers garage always has MTB'S, Jet Skis and sports cars. There is no room left for bikes. Unless you live on a compound, no need for a bike.

Sort of the same train of thought, seems back in the 70s and 80s riders seemed to dig their factory bikes, talked about the trick stuff how cool the bits were. Today im not sure if the riders get into the cool stsuff their bikes have, comments about being a factory rider seem to just be a quick statment on the team sets the bike up to make them feel comfortable. Lets face it, most of us would sleep in The garage with our factory bike, lol. Im 60 and have a stock 450sxf and yz250 and a couple pit bikes, i still go into the garage and just look at them, marvel at how fun they are and so cool to look at and own.

Guess someone said earlier, really the bikes are just tools of their trade.

Cole Seely is pretty big into cars and literally does bike builds so….

More likely to see a championship bike in the living room than a bike in the garage. Probably have a nice set of golf clubs in the garage though. 

Shohei Ohtani just took his shirt off.  Haha, he's a rare baseball player.

I am very familiar with changing tires and do all of mine myself because the shops around me charge $20 a piece. Having said that, it’s a huge pain in the ass and I cannot fault anyone who won’t be bothered to do it. 

If you got off work at the widget factory, would you want to go home and work on/play with widgets?

You're looking at this from the standpoint of a hobbyist who rides/works on their bikes for fun in their spare time. To pros, this is their job, they spend their entire day working on making themselves better at it, I'm sure the last thing they want to do when they get home at night is change a tire or do a top end job on a motor. 

There's not much point in them having their own bikes or living somewhere you could ride them when they're in the middle of their pro career. They travel constantly and ride more than they probably want to for their paycheck. And just because they don't do any of their own maintenance doesn't mean they couldn't. I'm friends with a couple commercial pilots who have all been flying since they were kids, none of them have their own planes anymore and they all used to. Making it to the top of anything seems glamorous from the outside but once you're there a lot of the shine has worn off for you. 

Tough to compare what Shohei does to a motorcycle equivalent. Maybe a rider that goes and wins a SX 450 championship, then also goes and wins a Moto GP championship. 

I couldn't agree more, my daddy made work on my own dirt bikes, the nerve of that man. And that's why I'm not a motocross satr, to much time turning wrenches.

I'm gonna have to disagree with not knowing how to turn a wrench.  A bunch of kids that make it to the top level have done a ton of wrenching on the bikes.  Mechanics and Dads come and go when your living at a training facility.

Also the fact they move around a lot. I’d say when they retire, actually settle where they want to live, bikes will be in the garage. But as a factory rider, living in Florida/cali because that’s where the team wants you, you don’t want to accumulate that stuff. You are going to the track where your bikes are every day anyway.
 

When all that stops, those that love dirtbikes will always have dirtbikes. 

But the point is that they stop once they get to the top. I bet Barcia was a better mechanic at 15 than he is now, but why should he be? 

I hear you man. Not the same but similar process as some of these guys may experience. I was all about racecars since I was a kid.

Worked with cars since school, then racecars only for the past 12 years... I have WAY less interest in cars of any kind from a personal / hobby standpoint now. Lucky I rediscovered moto.

Point being even without being an elite talent and professional athlete with all the added stress and strain that adds, when something is your whole life it can burn you out and it is a job at the end of the day. Not surprising a lot of these guys want to limit mx/sx stuff at their house or in their very limited personal time.

Yup and he has a sweet FXR. Guess he's ok.

Does he do another sport  other than Baseball, for his living?

Look, I'm only aware of the bloke through the announcement of his Megabuck signing deal recently.

And, from what I gather, he is both a high /highest level pitcher and  hitter. And that, it appears, is pretty rare.

But comparing that to the difference between SX and MotoGP, well, those two sides of our sport are somewhat further apart than 60 ft and 6 inches.

Pitching a baseball and hitting a baseball are about az different as you can get, regardless if happens on the same field, there really is no carry over fron one to the other. Even though SX and GP are different sports i think there is a lot more in common then throwing and hitting.

from somebody who played baseball at a high level. this is spot on. there is no comparison for what Ohtani is doing right now, in Moto at least. I'd say the best comparison would be a rider who is one of the fastest in the world, but also one of the top mechanics in the world. 

If you ride primarily at one training facility, which most of these guys do, then there is no need to have a bike at home. They can leave their bikes at the Sandbox or Start/Goat farm, etc as all these facilities have a shop with bays/lockers and stuff for the bigger name riders. Why spend an extra half hour per day loading/unloading your stuff when you could just leave it at the track??