450 Words: As Good as It Gets

The clash of generations. In stick and ball sports, epic playoff series are often unearthed when the young, athletic up-and-coming team tries to take down the experienced champions. They have desire and young legs, but they don’t have the been-there-done-it experience like the established team. This leaves the two teams in a near dead-heat, strength against strength in a battle of wills, the young team trying to get over that hump, while the establishment tries to keep the young fellas down one more year.

We have those moments in this sport, perhaps most famously when Ricky Carmichael overcame Jeremy McGrath in supercross. Later, RC would be in the reversed roll, trying to hold back James Stewart. Those races are still talked about today, more lustily than ever.

Tomac himself was once the young and fearless one, trying to unseat Ryan Dungey. He had him (and everyone!) covered to start the 2015 Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross Championship campaign, with epic speed and ridiculous leads. He was untouchable, but then he crashed, and Dungey emerged with his final motocross title. Two years later Tomac found his stride again in Monster Energy AMA Supercross, attempting an epic comeback after a slow start to the year. Dungey was attempting a third-straight supercross title, but started running out of steam just as Tomac got red hot. Dunge could at least rely on his consistency, though, so the points and tension got ultra-tight at the end of the campaign. Tomac came from nearly last-to-first in an unbelievable ride in Salt Lake City. It looked like the torch had been passed, but then he faltered in New Jersey just as Marvin Musquin pulled over for his teammate Dungey to aid in the standings. Tomac took the gloves off, so then came the Las Vegas “bunching” as he tried to get the points back. Those three races live forever in supercross lore, the emotion at an all-time high. It seriously impacted the way fans thought of Musquin, Dungey, and Tomac. Dungey won the title and retired almost all at once. It was generations, colliding, and that’s big stuff.

Credit to Tomac for hanging in there through 2022. He could have called that 2020 Monster Energy Supercross Championship his crowning achievement and wound it all down. He was about the same age as Dungey was when he retired, about the same age Ryan Villopoto was when he retired, burned out from the pressure of trying to keep those kids down. Tomac went through a lull and lost his titles, but he did not retire. He instead he found a change of scenery, and now a back end to his career that will change his legacy forever. Cold hard numbers show 2022 ratcheted him up the charts with more wins (inching up on Dungey, fittingly, for second all-time in 450MX wins) and another supercross title (and perhaps another 450 MX title when it’s over). This is even bigger than that, though. Eli Tomac has been embraced and respected by the fans and industry at a higher level than ever. There’s a new appreciation of them to him, and him to them. Had he left at the end of 2020, we wouldn’t have witnessed any of it. Instead, he stayed in it and kept trying. It got us where we want to go—into that clash of generations.