Kitchen on Roczen's Title: “I Was Tearing Up Man, It's Emotional”

Coming into 2026 Monster Energy Supercross, Levi Kitchen was slated as one of the title favorites to be able to bring down defending champion Haiden Deegan. But first turn crashes in the first few rounds, and back issues in the later rounds ended his hopes. Still Kitchen logged five second place finishes on the season and was second in the championship. Our Aaron Hansel was able to catch up with Levi after an exciting East/West Showdown in Salt Lake City where he was able to come back from a mid-pack start to finish second.

Racer X: Wow what a crazy main event, those crashes happened right in front of you.
Levi Kitchen: It was chaos. I got an okay start, around tenth or so, and made some quick moves. Unfortunately my teammates went down in the whoops, so that kind of slowed things down for a little bit. I tried my best not to hit Cameron [McAdoo].

Did you hit him? It looked like you might have barely touched him.
I probably touched his helmet just a little bit. I did my best, I didn’t want to hurt him. Once I got back by him I had to really lock in because Max [Anstie] and Cole [Davies] were pretty far out. By then Haiden [Deegan] might have still been up there too. I just dug in and closed a pretty large gap. I feel like I was going pretty fast, I could gauge them and I knew I was ripping. I was just glad to close the gap, get Max, and get on the podium.

Yeah, it seemed like you picked up some steam in the second half of the race. Why do you think that was?
I don’t know, I have that habit. I feel like I start out a little slow at times until I get my feet. My fitness is really good and I just kind of get into the groove.

How important was second in the points for you?
Yeah, I mean, it’s good, let’s say maybe from a sponsor standpoint. It’s decent to be the second-best guy I suppose, but it doesn’t pay and it doesn’t really do much for you. I guess if people look at results I was second, so that’s all right.