The Thor Winter Olympics pumps out some really cool awards, and Jalek Swoll is now setting up a few in his trophy room. He collected the Fox Bronze Boot Award as the best overall mini-cycle rider during the week down in Gainesville, Florida, and Pro Circuit Platinum Pipe Award for collecting the best overall scores of anyone in any set of classes.
Quite an impressive haul, and certainly enough to put him at the top of the “one to watch” list for 2015. We caught up to the Florida native to ask about him week.
Racer X: You just got the Pro Circuit Platinum Pipe. Talk about your week a little bit.
Jalek Swoll: Supercross started off definitely not what I wanted for sure, but I knew if I got through that pretty clean I’d be fine for outdoors. I just stayed healthy in supercross, and it really paid off here in outdoors.
We saw you almost go perfect in the motocross portion, but you mentioned you didn’t put yourself in the right position for one of the overalls.
It was a dumb move from me, but I thought that he [Chase Fasnacht] got third. So I just rode behind him. I really didn’t try at all. I just rode behind him thinking that I had the win. Pulled off, come to find out I didn’t have it. I felt fine to get that one though. I did win four and that’s as good as it gets for me, for sure.
You seemed like you were really bummed, but at the end of the day still you were one of the most impressive guys out there. You had tons of wins. I don’t know if anybody else had as many wins as you in the motocross.
I wasn’t going really for all the wins. I was just going to have fun and show everybody that I was the fast one to pick for in the upcoming [amateur] nationals. I did it and hopefully I’ll get back in training and be healthy for spring nationals.
Talk about the amateur circuit. What’s up next for you? What do you do in the winter? Where will you head the beginning of next year?
I’ll probably be heading back to my house for now and just relax and play video games, catch up on schoolwork. After a few weeks I’ll get back into training. Starting into the nationals I’ll be going to Freestone and just a lot of the other races like that. Hopefully I can do as good as I did here there.
Do you get home-schooled or do you just miss a lot of school?
I get home-schooled, but my school is really strict, so I’m going to have a lot of schoolwork to get through with after this week.
Talk about riding the Husqvarna. That’s a new thing. What do you think of the bike, and how cool is it? It’s different and people talk about it a lot. It probably gives you a little bit more exposure and attention.
It’s really good. The team has been helping me out a lot, Dave over there. Everybody’s been helping me out a lot. I couldn't be happier with the team. They’ve helped me out through thick and thin. It’s been working out really good lately.
