Adam Cianciarulo will spotlight the bright side of his retirement decision, because he’s a smart guy who has always understands the greater good as a racer, athlete, and public figure. He understands being inspirational to the fans, and not dragging the world into the dark places that lurk right around all corners of media these days. Kudos to him keeping a can-do spirt, for never turning sour on dirt bikes through this whole frustrating process.
Further, you’ll also see an outpouring of positive support from his peers and those he’s met along the way. This is great, because it reflects on how this industry helps its own. Yes, this is competition, but the community is so tight knit that no one ever actively roots against a competitor’s career or health. Fans are part of this ride, too. Deep down, everyone rows in the same direction, even if the goal is to beat each other on the weekends.
Kudos to Adam for taking the classy route. It has not been an easy process to get there, both when he had to hide his frustration and anger behind the scenes, or when he eventually had reached some level of acceptance, internally. Hard to know which process was tougher, masking it or accepting it. At least he could hang on knowing he left nothing on the table.
“I’ve had like ten surgeries on this thing, I’ve flown all over the world to try to figure this out,” he said on his Plugged In podcast, explaining the nerve issue that cost him the prime of his career. “It’s basically something that happened, I woke up one morning in September when I first got on a 450. I almost didn’t race Monster Energy Cup because of it. It’s nerves, it’s lack of grip strength. If I text too much with my right hand on a Tuesday, I’ll feel it at the track the next day. But I don’t want to blame it all on the hand thing. By no means am I sitting here saying I’d be a four-time supercross champion if everything was perfect. I’m not taking anything away from these guys.”
“As a racer, I was in a position that I always wanted to be in, on a 450 with Kawi,” he says. “You’re at this amazing point in life where everything you’ve ever worked for is right in front of you. This is what’s always been, in a sad way, it’s [the injury] kept me, from the results side of things, from making it happen. But in a good way it’s helped me grow. I could never imagine that I could sit here and be at peace, be excited for the future.”
Here’s what’s even worse: Not only did the nerve issue rob Cianciarulo of his obvious potential for results—we’ll get back to that in a moment—but it led to many more injuries. Adam says he crashed in Orlando in 2021 because he had issues with throttle control, similar to arm pump. That led to a broken collarbone. Then his hand slipped off the bars in the 2022 preseason, which led to an AC separation in his shoulder. He tried to tough it out and made it to the start of that year but riding with such a weak shoulder led to trouble in the whoops at the third race, a torn ACL, and basically an entire missed season.
“I’ve just beat my body up so much because of it,” he says.
So, this means there’s a double reason to be mad at the world and this fate. The injury led to more injuries and pain. But let’s focus on what hurts the most. Athletes will deal with pain and injuries if that’s part of the process of winning. No doubt that’s a fate Adam would have accepted. More injuries and surgeries that would result in more wins later? No problem.
So now we get to the sad part, although Adam is not going there himself. The wins that should have come did not come. In case you need a reminder, let’s just twist the knife.
We could start this with Adam’s amateur record, but that’s played out and Adam himself would bristle at times when this would get mentioned. The amateur speed was a blessing and a curse. It gave him such a high bar to cross as a professional, lest he be labeled as a bust, or overrated or overhyped, which are horrible narratives for someone to carry through life. Any other rider could win races and titles and be considered a hero. For Cianciarulo, the standard automatically became, “Can he be the next Carmichael, Stewart, or Villopoto?” which is an awfully high standard to meet, in case you haven’t noticed.
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Okay, he didn’t get to their record. But he did more than enough to avoid the bust tag. Bust insinuates someone actually just didn’t have it. They were overrated and drafted too high. For Adam, that tag was gone as soon as he won the first AMA Supercross he ever entered, in Arlington in 2014. He proved, forever, right there, that his talent was reality. He followed up with a few more wins that season and looked in line to win the 2014 250SX East Region Championship, as a rookie. That can only happen if you’re good. He stamped it, right there.
Then came a shoulder injury, and thus began the roller coaster ride. After that, this becomes a story of potential robbed by injury.
Adam scratched and clawed his way back up, winning the 2019 250 AMA Pro Motocross Championship. No rider wins a 24-moto Pro Motocross title without the full package—speed, talent, fitness, work ethic, grit, mental toughness. He stamped it right there. Then came much more. Adam was electric, immediately, on a 450. That’s where this begins to sting. The 250 days proved his amateur talents were real and will allow him to forever say he’s a champion. But it’s this 450 part...ouch, the potential was so high there, it stings. It has to. Especially for someone as well-versed in this sport as Adam, for someone as smart as Adam.
He won the Monster Energy Cup right off the bat in a close duel with Eli Tomac. Then came Anaheim 1, where he led most of the way before bobbling and handing the win to Justin Barcia. He was the fastest qualifier in the first seven 450SX races he lined up for. He never got a supercross win, though, but we didn’t know at the time that he was already battling this nerve issue.
He was even better in Pro Motocross, launching a mid-season rookie rally to fight Zach Osborne for the championship. Again, no one outside of AC’s circle even knew he was fighting this nerve issue. It got worse, the injuries piled up, but his speed remained off the charts for a while, such was his potential. But Adam felt the issue was only getting worse, plus, today’s tracks are only getting rougher. There wasn’t much of a pathway forward.
“After Anaheim 1, I basically rolled around and got 12th,” he said on his 2024 season. “I have no desire to just sit here on this bike, collect a check and take a spot from someone who else that can go out here and give it everything. That’s just not the way that I work. If I feel like I’m not adding value in my current position, I’d rather just go and do something else.”
Everyone rows in the same direction in this sport.
Adam was truly coming to peace with his decision. That’s the greatest news of all, because there are racers that never recover mentally from what they were robbed of, physically.
“You want to be able to remove as much emotion as possible,” he said. “That’s why I’m so stoked that I’ve stuck with it as long as I have, because if I had quit two years ago, I’d always look back and say, ‘What if you had just stuck with it? What if you could have figured it out?’ I have truly gotten everything I can out of it, and as soon as I saw I was capped, I feel like I’m not going to get any better than I am right now, I’m out. It’s time to do something else, and I feel really positive about that.”
No one leaving Anaheim 1 that night in 2020 would have believed that Adam Cianciarulo would never win a 450SX race. The sky was the limit. It was plain to see. Not being able to turn that potential into race wins, due to something largely out of his own control, had to have been the most frustrating thing on earth at the time, multiplied to greater levels for someone as intelligent, knowledgeable and introspective as Adam. He knows all of this, and that makes it hurt more. It’s the worst side of sports: you can do all the right things, but sometimes an injury or injuries just take it all away. In the moment, everyone can analyze it to death and try to find answers, but so often, they don’t exist. It’s not fair, it’s not solvable, it’s just the reality of physical competition.
No doubt this was quite the narrative for Adam Cianciarulo to wrestle with. He didn’t want that to be his story, of course. Moreover, while his obvious yet unfulfilled potential as a 450 race winner can hurt, it helped erase a feeling that would have been worse. Imagine if Adam just simply wasn’t good? Imagine if his career ended because he wasn’t fast, wasn’t talented, didn’t try and simply didn’t have it? Most athletes aren’t good enough to get to make decision like this. They're not good enough to still be on a team when they decide the time has come. He was good enough to get here, and only fate prevented it from going any further. No one will ever say Adam Cianciarulo wasn’t good at riding a motorcycle. No one will ever say Adam Cianciarulo didn’t try. No one will ever say he wasn’t good.
Thus, his legacy is unfortunate, perhaps unfulfilled, but untarnished. He had the ability, and he gave it everything he had. Everything else is just numbers on a piece of paper, and those are not the true measure of a person.
Watch episode 64 of the SMX Insider show with Cianciarulo:
