After winning seven rounds in 2022, Jason Anderson was a favorite to win heading into the 2023 season of Monster Energy AMA Supercross. Unfortunately, last year did not go as well for Anderson, where he didn’t score a single win all season. That’s why it was so refreshing to see him at the front battling at Anaheim 1, eventually finishing second behind Jett Lawrence. He's feeling much more comfortable on the bike and with his home life, as him and his wife settle into parenthood. Anderson spoke about this and more at the post race press conference.
That looked as 2022 as it gets. Can you talk about any of the struggles [of 2023] a little bit more openly? Now, you've got the podium in this first race. That looks good. You had a kid, you got married. You guys are human, too. Can you speak on some of the struggles now, a little bit more openly?
Jason Anderson: Yeah, first and foremost, we tried to improve our bike last year and we ended up going a little bit in the wrong direction and that just sent the momentum downhill, you know. And then luckily enough, the team and I, they really helped me and work together to obviously improve as much as we can. But it was an uphill battle, and personally, too, whenever the momentum starts going downhill and then my wife is pregnant with my first daughter. It's tough, you go to the practice track, and I don't wanna get hurt or anything like that because I don't wanna stress her out or anything. So, I guess for me, family was in my head, more [family] coming first than anything else. But, at the end of the day, Kawi is behind me, they pay me to do a job and I'm happy that I'm able to rebound and be in the form that I am right now. So, I'm hoping to keep it going, like I said, this is one of 17, but let's go.
New trainer this year, Alex Martin of Troll Training and John Wessling. Fitness looks great. Can you talk a little bit about the new program?
It was kind of a last-minute deal and luckily John lives right down the road. So, between me, John and Broc [Tickle] we work together, every single day, we're together every day. And then obviously you got Alex, he's in Minnesota. So, they've got knowledge, you know, for me, I think I needed a little bit of change in the way I formatted my program, and between my riding with Broc and my training with John, I think change is good, just honestly different, different pace of life for me. And I think it's worked out, but so got more to go. So, I'm thankful for them and I was pumped to be able to give Troll Training their first podium.
All right. Now, this is just a rumor I heard, so I don't know if it's true, but I heard that there's potential that you have like some like designer fashion kind of brand interested in working with you this year. Whether that's true or not, it really does seem like supercross is kind of like Jett Lawrence with the Antisocial stuff last year. Like there's different collabs that are going on as a rider right now, you've been at this a long time, does this feel like the sports kind of really getting to open up?
Yeah, I think that our stuff is getting more mainstream. I think we're getting opportunities that are bigger and for me, I got homies that do some cool stuff, you know. So, yeah, I'm trying to hop on that wave and its stuff that I'm interested in generally just for me and stuff like that. So, hopefully we'll have something coming soon but it'll be quite different and it's tough because, you know, our Motocross demographic is very much about race results, win, that type of monetization for all the brands. So, when you bring in something like this, sometimes it's, not taken, I guess as what people think, they'll think that you're not paying attention or something like that. If you're somewhere else that's not the test track. It's a little off so it's kind of tough to sell it for our sport right now. But I think, you look at all the other sports that are really big like F1, I mean, anything that's on Netflix, is popping off right now. Even the other day I was watching cycling, and I didn't even know that Palace had like a whole team and their kits are so sick. So, for me, I think that's something that would help grow our sport and we can monetize for teams even without results, you know, just look cool. So hopefully I could pull some stuff off like that. But at the end of the day, I still gotta stay on the podium to keep me happy and keep everyone happy.
