USA Today Coming At You With A Backhanded Article To The Face

From USA Today - "If anyone goes to a track and runs as hard as they can for 20 minutes, that's what it's like," says Aldon Baker, a certified trainer who specializes in working with motorcycle athletes.

That leads to another misnomer: Motocross riders simply put down their beer and cigarettes, jump on the bike and ride.

These guys aren't running out to McDonald's or In-N-Out Burger. They're constantly watching what they eat, swapping out fried and fast food — the type of stuff many people think they'd eat — for grilled fish and chicken, vegetables, salad with olive oil.

Motocross riders burn tons of calories during races and training, so they're constantly trying to keep up. It's a constant cycle of trying to build up enough calories to be able to get through their rigorous days and replacing everything they've burned off. Full Article Here

As the title of the post says, this article looks like one huge backhanded compliment to the face of MX. Sentences and segments that really have no relevance or flow with the article, that kind of bash the supposed mass perception of what motocross is. Seems good to get this type of press out there, but the tone is giving me the impression that it was begrudgingly written by some guy whose wife just ran out on him for Dungey or someone. His boss came over to his cube and told him to write this article and he had to dig deep to not bust out the sawed-off shotty in his bag. What did you do, Ryan, you home wrecker?

I don't know about you guys, but this was my favorite passage: "Motocross riders simply put down their beer and cigarettes, jump on the bike and ride." God, if only in a perfect world. It's one of those things you can say that makes me want to travel back to 1978 when that really was what motocross riders did. They say that Joel Robert (world champ in the 60s and 70s) used to smoke butts on his way to the line. Awesome dude, fucking awesome. Actually, I have it on good authority that there are still a few top GP riders that hit the cigs on the regular. Goddamn Euros, always doing shit all backwards; ripping ruts and smoking butts.

Back to the article, I'm going to put about ten or twenty million on saying that this had to be proofread very diligently because there's no way this was written without ever using the term "motorcross". A guy who writes like this definitely was under the impression that the little "r", one that has haunted our sport's credibility and reputation amongst the scrutiny of the mainstream, was dead on balls accurate. Motorcross. That, my friends, is the magical sport where you just hop on your bike and ride, have a beer and cigs before and after every race, and head on over to the fast food joint to supersize the shit out of their everything. I say it and I dream it: Motorcross.