“There are two avenues you can take,” said Aaron Murdoch, whose son, Kyle, was battling for top-tens in the 250 A and 450 A classes. “You can take the Loretta’s route—and don’t get me wrong, that’s great—or you can stay here until it’s time to turn pro. We race every weekend. Our goal is to turn pro and see where we end up.”

 Welcome to the Racer X Maine Event at MX207, a beautiful, tree-lined track on a patch of real estate in Lyman, Maine. We were there to drop all pretenses, to provide full disclosure, and to make our biases clear. As journalists, we try to check all agendas at the door (and that includes trying to separate church from state when it comes to the Rocky Mountain ATV/MC AMA Amateur National Motocross Championship at Loretta Lynn’s or the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship, which are run by our sister companies next door, MX Sports and MX Sports Pro Racing). It’s normally a tricky tightrope. When it came to the Racer X Maine Event, though, we weren’t hiding anything—we were straight-up going to promote, produce, and cover the crap out of this race.