Troy Dog
Benny Bloss is quite possibly the most underrated rider in the sport, especially after a successful “comeback” season of sorts in the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship, where he was consistently top privateer and finished 12th overall in the championship. The 12th overall wasn’t exactly the wow factor for Benny, as he’s finished inside of the top five a couple times overall and he’s had countless top ten finishes on a 450 outdoors. Being up in the mix is where he feels he belongs and this past summer was redemption for the Missouri native. Bloss has been feeling excited for 2023 and shared with me what he had been feeling mentally earlier this year.
“You kind of get in a routine where everything is repetitive,” Bloss said. “Everything is the same to the point where you’re kind of over it.”
After a strong summer of outdoors in 2019 with the Rocky Mountain/ATV KTM team, Bloss bounced around from Rock River, back to RMATV, then on his own privateer Husqvarna program, to MCR Honda, and back to BBMX all within the past two years. This past Supercross season, Bloss was injured and while sitting out he had a change in mentality, where all he wanted to do was ride his dirt bike. When the time came to ride again he felt rejuvenated.
“I was just having fun on my dirt bike,” Bloss said. “Then I would go to the races and have fun there too. In the past, it would be just motos after motos and it burnt me out. Everyone just thinks that it’s (being a pro MX athlete) so awesome, which it is, but it gets to a point where you’re really not having fun anymore. It’s kind of hard to find the fun again, but when you do you fall in love again with racing,” Bloss said.
A big part of Bloss’ resurgence has been because of his riding coach Davi Millsaps. Millsaps is still a huge part of Bloss’ program and the two began working together last season. Bloss feels like the progress that he has made in such a short period of time under Davi has helped him tremendously.
For 2023, Bloss is returning to a very familiar program with the Rock River Yamaha team. The program will have a couple 250 riders as well as possibly another 450 rider along with Bloss.
“It’s pretty cool because I’ve ridden for Rock River for every size of bike in my amateur career and then I started out my pro career there too,” Bloss said.
Bloss has ridden a 450 for Rock River team before and he added that the familiarity is nice and it’s exciting for him.
“It’s been a rough couple of years and I feel like with this new program I have, as well as coming down to Florida, I feel like I’ll be able to reach a new level that I’ve never been too,” Bloss said.
It’s a great setup for Bloss in his opinion because he gets to pit out of a semi and instead of doing his own program, which was originally the plan before reaching out to Rock River, it’s a lot less stressful for him.
Bloss made the move to Florida for preseason training, which is something he’s never done before and he only plans on staying there until the end of the SX season. When we spoke he was staying in a hotel by himself and he was looking for a place to rent out so that his family could join him.
“Going into this Supercross season my main focus is to just put in the work, do the riding, and not worry about all of the negative things,” Bloss said. “These past couple of weeks have probably been the most fun that I’ve had on a dirt bike and I feel like that is the ultimate path to success. If you can keep at that, it’ll one day, hopefully soon transfer to the races.”
Really, the only thing going against Bloss for 2023 is the fact that he’s a huge fan of the Kansas City Chiefs and during this interview he had NO worries that they were going to route my Cincinnati Bengals this past weekend. Bloss brought this topic up himself and guaranteed victory. Now, if and when the Bengals meet the Chiefs in the playoffs the outcome might be different, but for now Joe Burrow is 3-0 against Patrick Mahomes. Sorry Benny, I had to do it to ya, Who Dey.
