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I was thinking the same thing, his bike did not look to be absorbing the sharp edge stuff like Jet's bike hit and his fender did not move but Eli's bounced.
As Jody would say… the fire is out……
I think RC was the only champion to go out on top. At some point Eli will go from Championship contender to race win threat only to retirement. Reed was the only past champ to rebound and be a championship contender on his 22 team after being dismissed by the factories. I hope Eli rebounds too and has a second act.
Seeing Jett catch and blow past him then fade back was like watching someone beat up your dad.
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As the elite fast guys get older, they still have the ability to win/podium when everything is right, but they lose the ability to win and/or podium regularly. Weege has talked about this before.
He is 32 years old and has been racing professionally since 2010.
As Jeremy Martin proved, you can be fast for a race or two. But just like Martin, Eli is past his prime. It's called age, and it happens to the best of them.
Notice that when his bike is shit he rides with his shoulders boxed up near his neck which in turn makes his upper body too rigid. When he rides with relaxed shoulders is when he is fastest.
Another nit picky thread . It’s Mx racing top 3,s all the time is tough. The pro pace is crazy fast now . Even am racing everyone jumps everything & can ride a bike . You need to start in the front & hv some luck .
Tomac has 15 yrs. Between his first national moto win and his most recent. I think that is a record.
having a bike blow up on you and the poor setup he looks like he has takes a toll. Probably a mental thing "why risk it". His bike is beating him up physically and mentally.
He’s hiding an injury. The way he rode Southwick sitting down and letting Hunter by it was obvious. He is letting dudes not even close to his speed by now. He injured himself trying to catch a bull on his property.
How do you know he hurt himself doing that? If he is hurt, I think he did it in one of the motos at southwick by dragging his leg in one of the ruts.
I think Jett is making that Honda look really good!!! (But, that’s what Honda pays him to do…).
Eli lost too much speed in the past few weeks for it to be “Father Time”…something is off…injury? Illness? Out of the championship, on his way out with the team, not having fun, no reason to take risks, so just riding out the season? Id say one of those three is far more likely than he suddenly lost 3-5 seconds a lap because of age (no matter what the Tomac haters or GP fanboys-who love seeing anyone but an American winning in America-hope/think/wish)…
The first paragraph is exactly what’s happening. Communication and years to come of developing the Honda for the Lawrence boys. Hunter looks amazing as of late as well on the bike. Hunter is currently the next best to Jett
I'll tell you what's going on. In the first two rounds Jett was returning from a major injury and still figuring out the bike. Jett is faster than he was in the first two rounds. And everyone, except Hunta to a degree, has not kept up. That's what's going on.
I think it will be mutual. I think Eli's come back to racing buoyed by his win over Jett in SX and has thought he's the guy to take him down indoors and out going forward. He's now experienced what he's up again and knows he's not going to beat him. Further to that, he also knows he's not willing to risk going those speeds. I think he'll do 26 SX and then call it.
The larger point is this. I don't think he'd be beating Jett, or for that matter Hunta, even if he wasn't supposedly injured from 'wrestling a bull on his property' (WTF). He wouldn't be pissing about in the tail end of the top 10 but that doesn't mean he'd be at the front.
Getting beat by guys like Jett, Hunter and Sexton is one thing, but yesterday he got beat by Malcom, Barcia and Guillod. No offence to those guys but you’re not going to convince me that they’ve stepped it up to where Tomac just can’t run with them anymore. I don’t know if it’s an injury, the bike, him being mentally checked out or maybe a combination of everything but it’s obvious we’re not seeing the same Tomac that we were when the season started.
Pit Row
From my viewpoint over the years if a racer (often from GP heritage) wasn’t in the points chase after the first 3 or 4 rounds they would back it down just a notch so they were still scoring a decent amount of points for the entire series moving them up the board past any injured racers by playing it safe and not risking injury so they are in it healthy for the next series start.
Playoffs might relight the fire on ET because in a few weeks the playoffs with BIG $ kick in.
Risk versus reward?
David Villiamin was the first that I had noticed doing it and its actually pretty smart if your not going to be in the top 3 bonus $$$ range.
Thinking it may be Bam Bam contract time the way he seems to have kicked it up a notch?
It looked like something went wrong as he came up and passed Stewart and then Stewart passed him back and then his charge ended
Why would they sign Tomac for two years, but only offered Sexton one year? That is inexplicable. Sexton is the only guy out there that has shown he can run his pace when not getting in his own way. I think if Tomac does ride the next two years, his results will be worse than Chase’s, though I think Chase would do better staying on the KTM. I don’t blame Sexton for leaving with them only offering one year to a guy in his prime that is very fast and is not in trouble off the track ever.
Probably 1 year to get used to the bike, the next is back to racing normally and not so worried about the bike. Just my thoughts, and maybe it won’t take that long for him to get used to the bike, but i don’t know. He’s the exact opposite of prado’s situation, been on aluminum japanese bikes for a while, never been on a steel framed bike. Feel free to correct me if any of this info is wrong.
Bro no one’s comparing him to Jett, he finished 7 qualified well down the order.
He’s getting beat by riders he could normally beat one footed.
You’re a nuffy
Sweet, and very ironic response, mate.
I agree with that. But the original poster was comparing his races where he was somewhat competing with Jett to now. That's what I was responding to. As for the the present drop off in form, I put it down to a combination of beating mentally dazed by the ass whooping he's been getting combined with something else - perhaps a small injury.
To me, he's out of the championship and he knows it so he's racing for moto wins. Each time he gets a shit start and see's Jett out front he just checks out, probably due to a mix of frustration with his start and knowing he can't beast mode his way up to and around Jett. The winds are definitely out of his sails at this point though and that's a bummer.
put a fork in him, and i'm a giant ET fan. His spirit is busted and it's painfully obvious. He knows he can't match Jett and he knows everyone in the sport groans when JL passes him and gaps him in 2 corners. It's kinda like Chase when he would tuck the front over and over...it was in his head and he knew everyone was waiting for "When will he crash?" and ET is hearing "How bad will Jett beat him?"
I think he mails it in this year and will get 5th place and then he'll make a strong push for SX26 but if Jett drops the hammer again...he'll ride out '26 and put it to bed.
cooksey reporting (I know, I know) that ET3 took Star's offer, shopped it, didn't get quite what he wanted and went back to sign with Star...but they pulled the offer. Who knows if true or not, but sure could explain a bit of this. Being on a team/bike that are going through a divorce while getting slapped around by alien boy would sure take the wind out of my sails, too.
I noticed this too. I thought "man Eli is rolling" to a few seconds later thinking "WTH just happened!"
He looked totally different.
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