Remember Adam Cianciarulo? The Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki can’t miss kid? Yeah, him. You might know he hurt his wrist before the season, which caused him to miss Monster Energy Supercross this year, which came after shoulder surgeries that caused him to miss the last half of Lucas Oil Pro Motocross last year and all of supercross in 2015.
Another washed up kid, right?
Another child prodigy that didn’t make it, you say?
Well, you might end up being right when it’s all said and done. You know what? You might end up being dead wrong, too.
Cianciarulo is fighting back from his latest injury and looking to come back for the opening round of Lucas Oil Pro Motocross. The Floridian hasn’t talked much after his last setback, preferring to heal up and rehab quietly. That’s not a bad idea. After all—what’s he really going to say differently from the last time he went through this process?
“Basically I was just getting ready for supercross and I crashed at Milestone. I broke the navicular in my wrist, which is a scary bone to talk about,” said Adam, breaking his media embargo on the Pulpmx Show this past Monday night. “But I guess the main complication with that normally is the ligaments and all that stuff. I never really got too much into it. All I know is mine is pretty relatively straightforward. It was just an eight-week recovery time. I’m riding with a wrist brace on it right now. I’ve only been back on the bike three days but it feels really good.”
Remember when two-time MX2 World Champion Marvin Musquin looked injury prone? The KTM rider missed all of supercross his first year in America with a torn ACL, came back for the nationals and then promptly broke his thumb. Later, he’d miss a second full supercross season with a torn ACL. Musquin’s series of stops and starts aren’t even talked about now, and considering Cianciarulo is still just a 19-year-old kid, it seems foolish to make judgments about his career, long term, when there’s so much time in front of him.
Besides, the shoulder injuries, according to Adam, were caused by a hereditary issue that is fixed and won’t ever be a problem again. He originally dislocated one shoulder in Toronto in 2014, then got hurt again racing in Europe during the off season. He later did the same thing to his other shoulder last summer. The biggest injuries were caused by the ball at the top of his shoulder not fitting properly with his shoulder socket, but in both shoulders, surgery has fixed that problem forever.
“The shoulders are solid. They’re really good,” he said. “Basically what I’ve kind of been told by my guy is I was growing so much. I think when I went pro I was 5’5” and now I’m 6 and a half, 6’1. And just over that time I guess your sockets, where the shoulder sits, your sockets are the last thing to grow. So it’s basically like the golf ball’s getting bigger but the tee’s not getting bigger.”
You doubt yourself so much when you first get hurt, but if you don’t have that true belief, that deep down knowing that you can do it… You can’t just think; you have to be able to know.
Besides the surgery and rehab—which he’s been getting far to used to lately—AC also made a big change off the track by parting ways with trainer Aldon Baker. That was due to Adam and his father Alan believing that Adam was getting pushed too hard in Baker’s program. Cianciarulo talked about his aborted nationals last year that saw him set the fastest qualifying time in Hangtown and lead a bunch of laps in the first moto before a crash.
“I really wasn’t fit the whole summer. I was trying to get fit, trying to get fit, and it just kind of wasn’t happening for me. But to be honest with you, my confidence level is right now—and whether it’s true or not—if I show up to the race and I’m fit, which I believe I can be, I have no doubt in my mind I will be top five, no matter what.”
Adam knows that many in the pits think his leaving Baker’s Factory could be a career deathblow, but he certainly doesn't share that opinion. There have been Instagram posts with Adam doing some work with Ryan Hughes, but from what I understand he’s still deciding on what program and who he wants to work with long term.
“Aldon and I, we parted on good terms,” said Cianciarulo. “We were together for a long time. I think I started with him when I was 14. I think I might have started with him a little bit too young. You go onto the program and it works for people and the program doesn’t work for other people. You’ve seen it in the past. The thing about it is, it is kind of one program. There’s little adjustments made for different people and maybe if you’re not feeling so good this day maybe you take the 45 minute loop on the road bike road and not the hour. But other than that, it’s not rocket science. It’s one program.
“People associate Aldon’s program with hard work. It’s gnarly. RC [Ricky Carmichael], and all that stuff. It really wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about work ethic or laziness on my part. It wasn’t about that. It was just doing what I thought was best for me. I think it worked out good for everybody.”
Some dark times and big decisions for such a young kid, but in the end, Cianciarulo knows that what he’s always done at every level is win. There’s no substitute for that and looking at his peers like Cooper Webb (someone he battled with and beat as an amateur) there’s no reason that Adam can’t get “it” back at some point. Remember, in his one and only supercross season in 2014, he won the first race he ever entered, and he was leading the points before he hurt the shoulder.
“I just believe in my speed, the bike and the talent I have,” he says. “I believe in all that stuff so much. If I didn’t I think that, I would be done by now. You doubt yourself so much when you first get hurt, but if you don’t have that true belief, that deep down knowing that you can do it… You can’t just think; you have to be able to know. If I didn’t have that, I think I’d be done by now.”
He’s a far ways from being done, no matter what his doubters say. Cianciarulo’s three wins in six career supercross races are a testament to his talent, and although it’s taken a while, he can still go a long way.
Talent never goes away. That’s a fact.
