Haiden Deegan was the HEAVY pre-season Monster Energy AMA Supercross 250SX title favorite for whichever coast he was on, against whoever he was up against. Although, he may still be the favorite in this 250SX West Region, there is no doubt the season has not gone to plan, and his odds are beginning to drop.
Deegan’s performance in San Diego was subpar to say the least. He qualified first and had the fastest lap of his heat by over a second but crashed in the whoops while running third. In the main event, he came around lap one in eighth and slowly worked his way up to third. Again, Deegan had the fastest lap of the race but was never able to cut his gap behind the leader enough to pose as a threat to win the race.
In his podium TV podium interview with Jason Thomas, Haiden didn’t hide his disappointment in the way the race played out saying, “First off congrats to JuJu, that was a great race on him. I just… embarrassing man, sorry you guys had to watch that. Just got a little pumped up in the beginning and it went on from there. All I can do is work harder this week and come out swinging.”
In the post-race press conference, Deegan touched on his poor start saying, “I actually had a pretty good jump on the start then I ended up wheelieing a little bit, I just got my shift a little too quick. I was kind of behind Ty [Masterpool], and he went to the inside, so I followed him and he second guessed the triple so I was like it's not worth landing on him if he cases it, so I made sure to get out of the way.”
For maybe the first time in his career we heard Haiden talk about struggling with arm pump. At the press conference he stated, “The boys rode good today, I was a little restricted, I got to work on this arm pump, its something I really struggled with. We’ll figure it out it’s no hurdle we’ve not had to figure out before.”
When asked if he was concerned at all about his rough start to the season Haiden emphasized: “I just want to win. It’s miserable not winning. It’s like I go through these weeks and it’s just like it sucks man, but we’ll figure it out. It will come around here soon. A positive at least we got through this round safe and it was still a podium. We just got to figure out how to get to that top step.”
He was asked about the pressure of being the championship favorite, but believes, “I got to get my stride back, but I feel most of the pressure is handed over to JuJu now to go perform, so yeah, I obviously have to go perform as well, so it’s time to lock back in and figure out what we need to fix.”
It has been a humbling start to the championship for the young phenom. Even after setting the fastest lap in qualifying, the tone in in his interview was not confidence inspiring. It will be intriguing to see how Deegan responds next weekend in Anaheim. Can he finally get on the top step of the podium and slow the momentum of Julien Beaumer?
| Position | Rider | Hometown | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Haiden Deegan | Temecula, CA  | 129 |
| 2 |  Julien Beaumer | Lake Havasu City, AZ | 117 |
| 3 |  Cole Davies | Waitoki, New Zealand  | 104 |
| 4 |  Jo Shimoda | Suzuka, Japan  | 102 |
| 5 |  Jordon Smith | Belmont, NC | 85 |
