108 http://www.racerxonline.com
in going if you know you’re
going to get beat.” He reeled
off 10 podium fi nishes in the
next 12 motos.
Blake’s candor is refresh-
ing. He also doesn’t mind
admitting he eats pizza and
ice cream—the day before a
race—and that his bicycle is
sitting in a loft covered in dust
with two fl at tires. Trainers are
a slightly contentious subject,
but he’s quick to offer his
opinion: “I don’t need a baby-
sitter.” To infer that he is being
irresponsible or reckless with
his routines is misguided.
He doesn’t make a habit of
talking about it, but he puts
in his laps, keeps a log book,
and follows a program. He’s
not, however, going to be
forced into doing something
he doesn’t want to do.
Also, Michael Byrne’s
role as assistant team
manager and de facto riding
coach has been hinted at
being the best kept secret in
motocross. Only four years
removed from retirement, he
was always a smart rider with
good technique and testing
skills. And he can still burn
fast laps. “I can relate better
to someone that has done it
more recently,” Blake says.
Byrne didn’t know
Baggett when he returned
to Team Rocky Mountain
in October 2016 (he was a
team rider from 2011 to ’13),
and on his fi rst day, he just
observed Blake. Right away,
he saw a fast and fearless—
but technically fl awed—rider,
especially in the whoops.
“The fi rst week was
spent watching with myhand over my face,” Byrne
says. “You couldn’t just sit
there and enjoy watching
him ride. He would go half
a lap and it’d be, ‘Oooh!’”
Byrne does a full-body
fl inch. “It just looked like he
was going to eat shit at any
minute.” Byrne, who grew
up on a 6,000-acre farm
in Clermont, Queensland,
Australia, knows what hard
work is, and he and Baggett
connected quickly. He was
able to recognize when to
push and went to pull back
and pick it up another day.
They tackled techniques
from body position to starts
and even weened him off a
gallon-a-day sweet tea habit.
“He literally went through
withdrawals,” Butler says.
Before the 2017 sea-
son, Byrne felt Baggett was
riding so well that the team
expected a supercross win.
Instead, he got a heat-race
victory and third in Atlanta,
where he admitted in the
press conference that he’s
fi nally enjoying stadium rac-
ing. “He’s actually a good
supercross rider, and I think
he was sick of people telling
him he was just a motocross
guy,” Byrne says.
As effective as the
Byrne-Baggett combo has
been—especially during the
2017 Lucas Oil Pro Moto-
cross Championship—Byrne
knows there’s one habit he’ll
never be able to break his
rider of: the insatiable desire
to grind and build. When
Byrne realized signifi cant
construction gains were hap-
pening at the Baggett ranchfollowing recovery days, he
put it together. “He told me,
‘I may have been roofi ng or
something,’” Byrne remem-
bers Baggett saying the fi rst
time he asked what he did
on rest day. “We joke about
it now, but it’s kind of like a
getaway for him.”
And that’s the Baggett
way. While some profes-
sional athletes cruise around
in six-fi gure sports cars or
reside in ostentatiously large
houses, Baggett’s most
expensive possession has
a top speed of 7.3 mph and
isn’t habitable. One day, he’ll
use it to help build a pond
on the property big enough
to handle personal water-
craft. And an island, which is
where I’ll be living. If he ever
gets around to reassembling
those Jet Skis, I’ll have an
escape method. XBlake Baggett has
invested every-
thing he has so far
earned to carve
out a riding facility
in tiny Leesburg,
Florida, which he
now calls home.