Haiden Deegan, in only his second year as a pro, wrapped up his second SuperMotocross World Championship (SMX) 250SMX title over the weekend in Las Vegas. After narrowly missing out on the Monster Energy AMA Supercross 250SX East Region title, Deegan was dominant when they moved outdoors to the AMA Pro Motocross Championship. He then carried that dominance over into SMX when he won five out of the six motos.
Haiden spoke at the post-race press conference on what this second SMX title means to him.
“It's definitely super cool too because I'm only 18, you know, three-time champ at 18 is definitely a gnarly goal knocked off the list," Deegan said. "I definitely didn’t think I'd be in this position as fast as I am right now, but I have a good team around me, my family, you know, so a lot of hard work and we're moving.”
Deegan won the first five motos of SMX and then in the final moto had a surprise challenge from Pierce Brown. Deegan who is known for his speed and aggressive riding style showed wisdom by assessing the situation and going into management mode, instead of pushing himself into a mistake.
“Yeah, on the start, I actually had a good start, and I let off too early and got pinched off," he said on moto two. "So, it was kind of my fault. But then I just had to, like, kind of locked in and got my lines dialed and started making the passes, made my way up to, I think it was third or something and then Tom [Vialle] went down so I was in second and then I tried to put a charge on to catch Pierce, but he was riding so good. Like, it just wasn't worth the risk. I was like, I seen four laps to go, and I was like, ‘A championship sounds really nice right now. I don't wanna do something stupid.’ So, I just had to ride it in.”
With the addition of SMX it means one more championship per year for riders to add to the record books (Deegan has won the 250SMX title in both 2023 and 2024). This might get confusing in the future when comparing Deegan to past greats who raced before the start of SMX, say Ricky Carmichaels era. However, there is one comparison we can make to Ricky, who was known for his work ethic. In fact, Ricky liked to work harder than all his competitors during the week so that when it came to race day, that was that easy part. This is eerily similar to how Deegan described his second year as a pro.
"I mean, it definitely doesn't come easy, but it's to the point now where the hard part is training during the week and then you want it to be easy on the weekend," Deegan said. "So, that's kind of been my main focus is just work as hard as I can so that these weekends are a whole lot easier than they should be. And that's kind of how I felt like this season. Like outdoors, I feel like I'd show up to a race and like I when I got in the lead, I feel like those 35’s were easy for me. Like I wasn't getting out of breath or anything. And same thing with SMX, I feel like I just got into it and just instantly when there's a championship ahead and I wanna go get it, I feel like I can just kind of pull out the dominant card and just go after that. So, all the hard work is during the week and then the funs on the weekend.”
Hard work may beat talent when talent doesn’t work hard, but Deegan has both talent and puts in the work. This is evident in both the way he rides and the titles he is racking up at such a young age. The question is, who else is working hard in the 250 class, and will anyone be able to challenge Deegan in 2025?
