Slaw
I don’t know about you, but I’m still tearing up watching Malcolm Stewart celebrate his first career 450SX win on Saturday night in Tampa.
After moving to the 450 Class full-time in 2017, Malcolm has had to wait. He’s been through the hard times–trying to find a ride, building his own program, injuries and more–in this long-awaited journey. But on Saturday, in front of his home crowd, Malcolm finally got it done at 32 years of age.
And what a moment it was, with his brother James on the call. Watching James watch Malcolm win was a moment I will never forget. I still have goose bumps. Add in the fact that with his win, James and Malcolm became the first set of brothers to win in the premier class of Monster Energy AMA Supercross. And James was there to call it all. Amazing.
On a night where so much bad happened, this was it. This was the moment. And I am still watching it 48 hours later.
After the race, Malcolm talk about his win…
“You know, it’s kind of like an emotional roller coaster. Once I did my knee [injury] in 2023, you’re trying to rebuild yourself like this. I was so like upset with myself and people don’t understand it’s like when you have an injury like that, and you just think, who you should be, and you just can’t figure it out. For a split second I was really upset with my myself: the team, everybody else was fighting. Everything was a big snowball effect and then I’m like my dad came to me and he sat me down and he was like, “Listen, either you either quit racing or go out there and just ride and have fun. Don’t forget like why you did this and it’s not because it’s a paycheck it’s because we had fun doing this, right?” Like I’ve done this my whole life. I live for this dream, this moment and fast forwarding to this now you know here we are, 2025. I’m like I had a really good offseason and I’m like the time is there if I’m gonna do it if I’m gonna ever be able to win a race, it’s gonna happen [now] and I’m just so thankful for this opportunity to get this done, and in the home race! Like when fortunately when Chase went down, I come around in that same that sand turn and I couldn’t hear my motorcycle anymore! The crowd was so loud! I know there’s one person that that I wanna give this win to is my brother. He’s been definitely been pushing me and pushing me and pushing me and I know he’s probably just as proud of me as I’m proud of myself, so, I love you brother.”
Images: @octopi.media
