Austin Forkner has competed in only three AMA Supercross and Motocross events in 2023. First off, the Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki rider was taken out of the 2023 250SX West Supercross Championship when he crashed right off the start in Angel Stadium the first week of January. Badly tearing his right ACL, as well as fracturing his tibia and fibula, Forkner was put on the injured reserve list by team owner Mitch Payton. Ultimately fighting his way back to competition, Forkner found himself behind the starting gate at both Millville and Washougal. The Missouri-born competitor motored to ninth and 15th overall finishes, respectively, at the two AMA Pro Motocross circuits.
So, yet another injury-ravaged season for Forkner. He also missed virtually the entire 2022 AMA Pro Racing season due to a broken collarbone suffered at Arlington, Texas when him and Jett Lawrence collided over the finish line jump while battling for the lead. He clawed his way back to the track to net a big win in Foxboro, Massachusetts, only to go out again with more shoulder problems briefly into the Pro Motocross campaign. Talented, yet ultra-unlucky, the injury-riddled athlete who first turned professional back in 2016 hoped that 2023 would be a turnaround year. That didn’t happen.
Austin Forkner needs a few things to go his way if he wants to get back to being the world class charger that he is. Now based in Southern California (more on that in a bit) and looking to excel in the final three AMA Pro Motocross races set for Unadilla, Budds Creek, and the Ironman, Forkner spoke at length about what it’s like to be a professional racer.
“I was just at the gym, and I’m headed back home now,” began Forkner the week leading into the Unadilla National. “I kind of had a heavier week this week with this week being off or whatever. It’s a week off and it’s kind of like, ‘Okay, this is a week off from racing for me. This is a week to kind of go hard.’ So, I did quite a few motos this week and did a lot of gym work. I’m pretty much done for the week now and I’m pretty beat. I’ve learned some things and worked on some things that I think that I needed to work on from the couple of races that I just did. That’s what I tried to implement and throw into the program this week and hopefully we’ll see some better results when we get back to racing at Unadilla.”
Now with his first two races in the 2023 racing season complete, Forkner, who was looking to blow out the cobwebs from such a lengthy injury run, talked about how he felt about competing at both Millville and Washougal.
“I felt good,” he said. “I mean it is so hard to come back for the outdoors. Supercross is kind of one thing because it is a little bit less fitness focused. Natural talent comes into play a lot in supercross versus motocross. Yeah, obviously that’s still important in motocross, but in supercross, you don’t have to be the absolute fittest person. It’s more about bike skill in supercross. You can sprint for 15 minutes plus a lap; You can go really hard for about ten minutes and then you can ride out the last five minutes, you know? Outdoors, 30 minutes plus two laps is pretty serious and that’s twice and in the heat. It’s a lot harder to come back in the middle of an outdoor season versus supercross. That’s what I think. Maybe that’s because I’ve raced a lot more supercross in the past few years, so it is coming more naturally to me, maybe because I’m a better supercross rider than a motocross rider now. I don’t know. I knew it was going to be that way. It wasn’t a surprise. I knew it was going to be tough. Right now, I’m right around a tenth-place guy. That is not far off from where I figured where I would fit in. You know I really had no expectations coming into it. It was like, ‘I have no idea where I’m going to fit in.’ I hadn’t raced the outdoors since the first round at Pala last year, so that was over a year since I last raced if you don’t include the A1 race, I crashed in.
“The last couple of races I knew that I was a little bit slow in the first ten minutes and that I needed to work on my sprint speed a little bit, so we’ve been working on that. With working on certain things like that, you’ve got to just kind of throw yourself in the deep end now and then to learn those things. You can practice all you want at the practice track, and you can be the fastest guy, but race day is so much different. I know that. That’s why I didn’t get my expectations up super-high or super-low. I just kind of went in to just go in and to see where I fit in. From there, I could work on those things that I needed to work on. That’s pretty much where I’m at right now.”
During the lengthy conversation, Forkner addressed some of the major and comprehensive changes he has made to his racing program to get things back in order.
“I changed off-the-bike trainers to Charles Dao. I changed on-the-bike trainers to Ryno [Ryan Hughes]. Now I’ve moved to California and I’m there full-time. I’ve changed a lot of stuff and missed a lot of racing. With a combination of those two things, I really did not know where I was going to fit in at all. I didn’t know if I was going to be fast, I didn’t know anything. I just knew that I needed to go race and that I needed to be on the track and racing.
“Some people, they kind of criticize me for making a recent change to Ryan Hughes,” continued Forkner, speaking of the former works racer who competed and excelled in both America as well as the FIM Motocross World Championship circuit. “And then there was the whole moving to California thing. That really wasn’t my decision, that was kind of forced on to me by Mitch [Payton] and the team. They wanted me out here. I’m also still good with Robbie Reynard. I love Robbie. Robbie is like family to me. I’ve known him forever. He’s partially like a father figure to me in a way. But I need somebody I can work more hands-on with while out here in California, so I made the switch to Ryan Hughes. I got some criticism for that. I’m not opposed to trying things. I’m not saying that everything that I’ve been doing has not been working, but certain things haven’t been working. Obviously, the whole getting hurt thing for me. That’s my Achilles’ heel, you know? That’s the whole thing that has held me back in my career, basically. The injuries have really set me back. My speed has never really been a huge issue. It’s usually just getting hurt and missing so much racing. However, now at this point, my speed has become an issue because I’ve missed so much racing, so certain things are kind of starting to present themselves with the amount of races that I have missed.
“I tried Ryno out for a couple of days and I liked some of the things that he had to say to me," Forkner continued. "He was a good guy, too. He was easy to have a conversation with. I feel like he knows what he’s taking about on the bike. I felt certain changes that we made on the bike helped my riding. That is a key thing. People can tell you things all you want, but unless you feel the noticeable change and you can feel it, that stuff really doesn’t matter. It’s all about feel and Ryno said some things and showed me some things that I liked, and I felt good around him.
“I really do want to win," he added. "I mean I’m doing everything that I can. You can’t say that I’m not trying because I’m definitely trying. This sport is brutal. I’ve kind of had a little bit of a rough go at it. It’s all kind of taken a toll on my body. Certain body parts don’t work the way that they maybe used to when I was younger, and I had a bit more of the send-it mentality. I see a lot of people who say to me, ‘Man, you need send-it more! You need to go for it more like you used to!’ I’m not the person I used to be, you know? I’ve had 15 surgeries in, like, the past five years. I mean I wish I could send-it a little bit more too, like I used to. That’s just not me anymore. All of these things have taken a toll on my body and mental state. My mental state now maybe makes me think twice a little bit more than maybe I used to. I’m doing everything that I can. Like you said, I’m checking under every rock and trying to work on things like the littlest and smallest technique things. I have also wanted to look at things that maybe might have been overlooked every now and then and that maybe do need to be worked on. I mean I’m trying everything.”
A charger known for his never-say-die approach to racing who simply left it all out in the track every time the gate dropped, Forkner believes he has quite a bit in common with Hughes.
“Yeah, yeah, I like Ryno," Forkner stated. "Ryno told me that he used to be like this. He used to be like, ‘MORE! MORE! MORE! HARDER! HARDER! FASTER! FASTER! MORE! MORE! MORE!’ That didn’t work out for him the way he wanted it to. That’s kind of why he’s going about training the way he is now. That surprised me because that’s kind of the mentality I had about Ryno. The things that I had heard were things like Ryno saying, ‘We need to do more and more, and we need to push harder and harder and harder.’ Everything was more and more. That’s what I expected, but whenever I showed up at the track with him it was not that way.
“I showed Ryno some of the injuries that I’m dealing with and showed him some of my body parts. My left arm is so damaged. I broke my wrist a few years ago and I have a long list a of muscle and nerve problems in it ever since. My left arm is really not very strong anymore and my grip strength is off. We’ve talked about certain injuries and things that hold me back and cause limitations and Ryno said, ‘Hey, that’s great. We’ll work around things. We’ll work with what we can, and we’ll work around the injuries, and we’ll work with those things instead of just trying to push through them. It was like, ‘Instead of trying to push your head through the wall, we’re going to figure out how to climb over the wall.’ That is what surprised me about Ryno. I thought it was going to be, ‘Oh, we’ve got to do more motos! We have to do five 30-minute motos a day!’ It’s not that way. It’s more Ryno saying, ‘Hey, we need to slow down and work on technique and work on these little things and then we’ll start to go faster. Then we’ll start to work on some longer stuff and then we’ll start to go forward with a more normal program.’ That’s what surprised me about Ryno, I mean Ryno said to me, ‘I think our careers are pretty similar. We’ve definitely been through our share of injuries and hardships and it’s not from lack of effort.’ Even after the first day with me, Ryno said, ‘Thank you for your effort. Thanks for giving me your effort.’ Ryno said, ‘Look, I always gave it everything I had, and I can tell you give me your effort every day. You listen to what I’m saying. You try it because you want to be better.’ That’s where Ryno and I see eye-to-eye on things like that. He said to me, ‘I see a lot of you in myself.’ We’re not quitters. We’ll fight. We’ll fight through injuries and hardships. That’s all part of it, I guess. We won’t just roll over.”
Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki mastermind and team owner Mitch Payton has gone on record in the global motocross media proclaiming that his rider has the skill, speed, and mindset to compete at the highest level the world over. He just needs the racing gods to smile down on him and his plight a bit more often.
“Yes, I do need some good luck," Forkner said. "I hate just talking about luck, luck, luck. I like to be able to take responsibility where I can. Like even just last weekend at Washougal or whenever I got caught in that dude’s rear wheel. That’s what happens when you get a bad start. I like to take responsibility where I can. Every now and then it is a little bit of luck and, yeah, I think I do just need a little bit of luck every now and then. I take responsibility for the things that I can and what I can, but every now and then it is like, ‘Man, I just a little bit of luck would be nice.’ I will take a little luck at this point.”
What will Austin Forkner be looking for come the impending three week run set for Unadilla, Budds Creek, and Ironman and all points beyond?
“I would like to do the SuperMotocross World Championship races," he said. "That would be nice because it’s just more racing and that’s just what I need to do. I get paid to race my dirt bike, not just to ride my dirt bike. I need to be out in the track. And if Mitch would let me go do those World Supercross races or any of the international races like that, I would be all aboard that stuff. I think that stuff is awesome. From the outside looking in, and I don’t know everything about it, but those overseas supercross races look so fun. You get to go over there and treat like a small vacation, but you also get paid to race your dirt bike. That sounds pretty damn good to me.”
“As far as the remaining outdoor races, I just want to improve myself and hopefully if I improve myself, I expect my results will improve, as well," he continued. "I want to try and throw it up in there and maybe get a top five. I mean I’m still just learning. A year off of racing has been a lot for me. I’m still just learning and still just trying to take it one race at a time and trying to implement what I learn from each race to the next race. As of right now, next year is my last year with Kawasaki. That’s the last year under my contract. I don’t know what the plan is for 450 and if that is still a plan or not. I really am not 100-percent sure. I think as if right now I am staying on 250s, at least for supercross next year. As of right now, I’m just kind of going along with whatever they want and then anything past next year’s contract is undecided."