Troy Dog
I need to get this off my chest. With the stupid, crazy, past two years of this pandemic I have seen one good thing come from this in the motocross/supercross world. Are you ready for this? Riders get to be themselves and they know they have more freedom to speak about what’s on their mind.
If you look at the sport ten years ago or even five years ago everything was such a big secret and if you found out that secret you’d get in so much trouble. It created this boring sport to cover. Trust me, I’ve been on calls with 250 riders who were scared shitless to tell me they changed some suspension settings and that’s why they are riding better. Oh, congratulations bro I’m happy that you moved this crap 2 mm and now you’re really wicking it up out there. That was so exciting to report and hard-hitting journalism there.
The riders that I have conversed with this year have all mentioned that it’s nice to have some freedom to be honest with the media. The media is not here to throw you under the bus, at least the legit ones aren’t, we just need to report the important facts of the sport. If you had a bad day that’s okay you’re a human being.
I think that YouTube and podcasts have a very big part in the change of the landscape of this sport. Print is basically dead (save for Racer X Illustrated because those are elite) this sport is totally digitized and everyone and their mom has a podcast. This means we are getting the riders more interviews and more coverage.
The questions are getting shittier and shittier as well because these “reporters” will stop at nothing to ask the same question about the race 17 different ways. Now, the good ones like the Racer X, Swap Moto, and PulpMx crews will always bring the heat and I’m not talking about them in this article. Those companies have done a great job of breaking down the rider’s, dare I say it, walls and have built relationships with the main cast of media in this game. The good ones get in and get out. The rest of you need to find other things to ask.
My point for my column isn’t to just blow the riders. I am giving them props for being themselves now. It’s more fun this way. With other media companies coming in and taking all the boring questions this allows me to swoop in and find out the answers to questions that I’ve always been curious about. Like, my questions are really important, ya know? I’m gathering information right now to figure out if anyone on the circuit actually sits down to pee like Chili and Bird.
Most of these guys grew up with vurbmoto and the response from us being back has been overwhelming. Which is good for me, because I usually can dig up some dirt from the past that they might have forgotten about. I promise to bring you the hard hitting questions that you didn’t know you wanted if you continue to read Troy Dog’s Shack and consume everything we post on this here dirtbike site. Buy all of our merch and follow me on Twitter and Instagram @troydogvurb and email me [email protected] to chat.
Main image: Octopi Media
Bravo!