450 class is old and tired

Yeah, because there’s a long list of 250 riders that are super solid and dependable. 

Because 250 is broken. It doesn't develop the next generation. It encourages guys like Hampshire, Craig, Macadoo, and Kitchen who will never be top 450 guys to sit on spots that are needed to develop the next crop.

SMX Next is what 250 was supposed to be.

Guys are just having longer careers all around that's a good thing. 

I'm seriously starting to worry what the 450 class is going to look like in few years. Father Time remains undefeated, and eventually it will force these guys into retirement. Aside from Davies and Shimoda, I don't know who in 250 class is ready to replace them.

Seems like Shimoda will stay in the 250 class for the foreseeable future. I enjoy watching him race whatever class he is in..

With the age of the majority 450 class... I always said once 1 of the main guys retire they'll all retire with him. Tomac is going first. Ferrandis is likely to follow. After 27 SX; Roczen,  Webb, Craig, McElrath, Savatgy, Barcia, Plessinger, Stewart, Anderson, Nichols...

Tired?  With the exception of Jett, most of the 450 titles have been won by “older” guys recently.

I seriously doubt teams are just letting guys sit on spots blocking better guys to develop.

Tomac just retired and Roczen is all but retired and Webb only racing SX. 

If they were tired they wouldn’t have the best rides in the world. If there is a better 250 guy they should show up and take the ride. 

I don’t get why the downvotes: guys, he is stating the fact, is he wrong? 🤷‍♂️

Back in the day when I was a kid, around 2003-2004, I remember Mike Larocco being the oldest or one of the oldest guys out there. He was like super old, from my point of view (again, I was a kid). Well, it turns out that he was younger than most of the guys racing today, crazy 🥶

It is cool to see, don’t get me wrong. But I agree with others on the fact that the 250 class is clearly a bit weak compared to how it was 10-15 years ago. For instance, this was supposed to be the time for Cianciarullo, Forkner and others to dominate in the 450, but that generation never came to replace the previous generation.

What’s the solution? I don’t know, perhaps put the SMX Next guys on the 250 class directly, as some of you are proposing, and maybe in a few years there will be a huge group of riders eager to jump into the 450 class.

Just providing my opinion, no disagreements with others or hate or anything, hehe 😅

Kitchen will be better on a 450 most likely. 

It will be like the Reed, Stewart, RC days. 3-4 elite guys  and others being happy with top 5’s and an occasional podium when the elite guys have a bad night. Davies is the only guy I see being an elite 450 guy currently in the 250 class*. We have been blessed with guys like Roczen, Tomac, Anderson, Webb, etc. racing at an elite level this late into their careers. 

Look at the old guy who just won a 450 World Title. Fact is, riders are spreading their careers out further these days, and staying competitive. I’m happy about that. I don’t miss the days when riders were retiring at 27. 

It definitely is a problem that for whatever reason this one generation of guys filled out the 450 class for a long time, not sure exactly why that happened but after rv and dungey guys started staying much later in age and the natural churn of guys was pushed back 5 years until now. It may just be that the sport is adapting to this new normal and after these guys go the turnover rate returns back to normal just at a higher age. 

Another problem though is a lot of the next age bracket of guys didnt pan out who would have pushed these guys out. Sexton is a basket case, forkner broke his entire body 100 times in a row, cianciarulo has an unfortunate wrist injury that couldnt be repaired which forced him out, kitchen is 25 and hasnt figured it out yet plus had a huge back injury, jalek swoll is 26 and cant stay healthy, even hunter lawrence is already 27 and he had a lot of down years before he made it back to the top. 

Hunters 450 career is going pretty well though hes getting close to 30 already, but the rest of those guys would have been the next group to push these current guys out. Sexton, forkner, and AC should have been at the top of the 450 class a few years ago but it ended up only being sexton for like 1 season before it fell apart. They would have been the guys who bridged the gap to the next group coming up of deegan, davies, and whoever else moves up soon with the exodus. 

We’re going to have Jett, Hunter, Prado the Coenen brothers, Deegan and Davies in the 450 class for the foreseeable future. We are in good hands, those guys are all pretty young (minus Hunter I suppose) and they’re all phenomenal talents. It’s extremely rare that we have more than 2-3 guys in any given season who have a legitimate chance at winning the titles. Outside of those guys, everyone else will be fighting for an occasional top 5 spot. 

It's been said 100's of times on Vital.  The U.S. amateur system is broken.  We turn out guys that know how to ride, but don't know how to race. When the feeder system is broken you develop major gaps in talent...and that's what's happened over the past 15 years.  The 250 class is full of arrested development.  There's a couple of reasons the rest of the world is coming here to race our series.  First, Infront is starving them and second, our money is fairly easy pickings...especially in our outdoors series.  No offense to them, it would be hard to watch our races without incoming foreign talent these days.

I think Hymas will be too.  Plus the Davies trajectory.  Add in the Coenen’s, Lawrence’s, Prado, Sexton and Deegan, the class will have a pretty competitive top 10 for years to come.

Now they can’t turn pro until they are 18 and that’s only going to make things worse, they will be stuck in SMX Next for like 3 years now which is crazy! 

That reminds me...I need a nap.

Money is the answer. Riders stay around for the monetary aspect of the sport. Very doubtful that any of the riders have a way to make the $ paid to them for racing at the top level. 

I'm the opposite. I've enjoyed this consistency so much with the same guys winning at the top level for so many years. This +30 generation has been incredible and they have raced each other since they were young. I'll be sad when it's gone.

In a few years we are going to see a lot of 20 somethings in the SMX next class. The 450 class is old tired and fast, I don't care what age their driver's license says they are.

Kitchen will be turning 27 during his rookie 450 career. He did make his debut later than most, and I understand that for some it makes more sense to stay in the 250 class. But Levi is one who has always been in the title talk, yet can never put it together because he rides as if he’s expected to be the guy and crashes out. If he moved up two years ago before signing a PC extension, he probably could have became polished enough by this season to be a consistent top 5 450 guy. 

The 250 class is make or break for a racers trajectory IMO. Not many, if any guys that have stayed in it longer than 4 years has lit up the 450 class. 

jett has said multiple times hes going to retire when hunter does so even though jett is only 23 he may not have as long left as you would think which sucks.

That should actually help a lot. Instead of a 16 or 17 year old coming straight from lorettas with 0 sx experience getting murdered, now by the time they move to the 250 class they will have had to prove themselves in smx next against real talent on real sx tracks. Instead of a kid like AC looking like a 12 year old riding a 250f predictably getting injured or jett reynolds constantly getting injured over and over, they will be much more prepared and it will lead to more well rounded racers. We already see it with davies and basically everyone else on star, they all came up through futures and are doing well. Another year of futures will make them even more prepared. 

What employment opportunities are there for retired mx/sx pros? The booth is not for everyone, and I cant picture any of them bagging groceries.It's a pretty grim picture.

I’ve never agreed with the notion in this sport that 30 is old. I think it just became that way because a lot of the greats made enough money to dip out and retire early before they had an injury. 

Peak male physical age is supposed to be 25-35. In ufc 32-33 is considered the best years, and those guys are always having to heal from injury. I think the only downside to being 30 in moto is that you typically have a family at that age and that changes your willingness to take some risk you never even thought of before.