Saturday Night Live: High Point

For a brief moment in the first moto, it looked like we would see an Eli Tomac/Ken Roczen showdown, as Tomac quickly moved into second. But shortly after pulling to within striking distance of Roczen, Tomac made a mistake and lost the front end in a deep rut and fell back to sixth. This allowed Roczen to march to a more than fourteen second lead. The start wasn’t there for Tomac in moto two. By the time he moved past Jason Anderson into second on lap 3, Roczen was already out to a 5.4 second lead. Roczen would stretch it to just over 7 seconds on lap 9, before Tomac cut it back down to 4. Again, Roczen quickly put distance between himself and Tomac and won the moto by just under 12 seconds.

“I saw that he was going good,” said Roczen. “That’s what I mean when I say I should have done a few things different. I was going to go for that triple out of turn two, but the tough part was the ruts were so close to the landing and they were so big that if you over-jumped it a bit you could of possibly crashed.”

Two weeks after dealing with altitude sickness—a problem he’s experienced before in his career—and scoring zero points, Jason Anderson was back on the podium in both motos this afternoon and finished second overall. “It’s kind of a bummer. I was fourteen back of Kenny… but anything could happen,” said Anderson post-race about scoring zero points at Round 3. “To have two non point scoring motos, that’s not cool. We can’t have that in the future.”

There is something about High Point and Marvin Musquin that just seem to mix. He went 1-1 in the 250 class here in 2015, also won the 250 overall in 2013, and claimed his first career 450 podium today with 2-4 finishes for third overall. Even though many say High Point is more of a European-style track, Musquin doesn’t seem to think it’s his prior GP experience that helps, though. “It’s been six years now [since I raced in GPs], I’ve been racing in America for a long time,” he said. “It’s difficult now to compare both because I’ve been racing here a long time.”

Today was different for Marvin. Not only was he under the tent by himself, with both Dean Wilson and Ryan Dungey out with injury, but he was also without his mechanic Frankie Latham, who missed the race to attend a wedding. Ryan’s brother, Jade, filled-in for Latham this weekend, with Ryan's mechanic Carlos Rivera helping out also. Jade Dungey and Marvin had previously worked together at the Motocross of Nations.

“It was different, but in my mind I was relaxed,” said Musquin post-race. “Like I said, I know I have the best team so I know everything is going to be smooth.”

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency was on-hand this weekend for testing. The podium finishers in both classes had to give a urine sample to USADA. There were also riders that had to give a blood sample on Friday, including Ken Roczen. “We did blood last night [Friday] and a pee test today,” said Roczen. “It’s funny, obviously they don’t know, but they say, “Is this your first test?” And I’ve probably done 38 of those.”

A tight 250 points chase has now grown to twenty-point lead for Joey Savatgy after a bizarre day at High Point. Savatgy, who entered the day with a three points lead, gained big points as bot Alex and Jeremy Martin suffered mechanical problems in the first and second moto, respectively.

First, the winner. After crashing in the first moto and working back to fourth, Savatgy was brilliant in moto two, working his way into first and then withstanding late charges from Alex Martin and Aaron Plessinger. A 4-1 on the day would give Savatgy the overall, his third in four races. “It was gnarly out there today,” said Savatgy. “A lot of ruts, a lot of holes. The track was constantly changing.”

Savatgy ended up tied on overall points with Zach Osborne, who rode the best race of his career to win moto one, his first-ever moto victory in the U.S. Osborne was also the fastest qualifier. He couldn't quite back it up in the second moto, though, finishing fourth, leaving him with a 1-4 to Savatgy's 4-1. Osborne admitted he was a little nervous for the second moto and that might have held him back. Late in the race, he tried to make a charge to get Aaron Plessinger for third, which would have swung the overall back in his direction, but he came up a few seconds short. Still, Osborne considered it a breakthrough day and was still happy with his performance despite just missing out on his first-ever overall win. 

In the first 250 moto, Alex Martin held the lead for the opening seven laps before making a mistake and running off the track, which allowed Osborne to take control. It’s safe to assume to Alex would have at least gotten second—or a podium—before his bike started smoking late in the race. It finally gave up with two laps to go, ending his race and any hopes of a podium finish. His brother Jeremy, who only rode four times during the break due to an illness he’s been dealing with this season, experienced the same problem early in the second moto and DNF’d. After the race, the team said they will have to tear the bikes down to figure out what caused the problems.

Cooper Webb said he is back to training full time during the week despite a broken navicular sustained earlier this year. He finished third on the day, but wanted more. He said today’s performance was all on himself and that he didn’t ride the way he wanted. “I rode like shit all day,” said Webb after the race. “It’s nice to be up here [the podium], but we have work to do.”