It’s time to step out of our usual V-Twin cruiser niche and take a look at another aspect of the motorcycling universe. Last weekend I went to the AMA Monster Energy Supercross in Atlanta, Georgia. This is a traveling circus that crisscrosses the country for 16 weeks culminating in the season finale in Las Vegas.
Supercross, for those not familiar, is basically a condensed version of motocross that is held in everything from football stadiums to the tri-oval at Daytona International Speedway. It features close racing, lots of bar banging and high flying jumps. This is a young man’s sport in which some of the best athletes in the world compete. The main events are 20 laps long for the premier class and take an incredible amount of stamina to be going strong from beginning to end.
Having raced some amateur Supercross races in the past, I can confidently say that the speed these guys are going today is so much faster. One of the more recent advancements is the “scrub,” where riders will actually flick the bike sideways before leaving the face of a jump. Instead of the trajectory of the jump being straight up and down like physics should dictate, they will actually be 90 degrees to the ground in the air that keeps the flight lower and gets the bike back on the ground and moving forward more quickly.
