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T
he two greatest Canadian motocrossers ever are Ross “Rollerball”
Pederson and Jean-Sebastien Roy. Some people might debate the
order, but Pederson and Roy accomplished the most in repping
the maple leaf in either their native country, the USA, or in Europe.
Roy (or JSR, as he’s called by everyone) won fi ve MX1 titles, and
that number surely would have been higher had he not chased the AMA
Supercross and Motocross series in the nineties and the early 2000s
with teams like Planet Honda, Blackfoot Honda, and Jolly Rancher
Suzuki. Roy has more top-ten fi nishes in SX and MX than Pederson,
who raced here through much of the eighties, but Pederson stood on
the podium at AMA Nationals on three occasions. Either way, they’re the
best Canada’s produced.
After his retirement, Roy took up managing properties he purchased
with his race winnings and took a job with Oakley Canada as an athlete
manager. The last couple of years, though, he’s been back in the mix,
having been hired by Thor KTM Canada to run the factory team. Roy’s
proven almost as successful as a manager as a rider, with Kaven Benoit
and Cole Thompson both getting MX2 titles under his watch.
“I’ve been enjoying this new role,” JSR says. “It just sucks when a
rider gets hurt, because there is nothing directly I can do about that,
whereas when I was a racer, I could control everything about the process.
Now I just have to wait!”
Benoit has since moved up to the MX1 class and is considered the
next great Canadian MXer—and the fi rst French-Canadian since Roy
himself. This year has been a write-off for Benoit due to injuries sustained
in Europe in the off-season, but he’s shown great speed in the motos
he’s shown up for. If Kaven can shake off the injury, 2018 should be Roy’s
chance to continue giving Canadian moto fans a reason to smile.a treat for the Canadian fans.
But what Millsaps learned—and
what Canadian racing veter-
ans like Goerke and Chisholm
know—is that heading north is
not easy. There are some deep
sand tracks, and the Canadians
who know the tracks well test
the American talent.
“I work a lot harder now
than I used to back then when
I won Southwick,” admits
Goerke, referencing his surprise
450 National win in ’09. “I got
smarter. After a few bad injuriesin a row, back around 2012 was
when I started really getting
more serious. Every year, I just
get smarter and more serious.”
“You look at like [Kaven]
Benoit—look how good he did
at Motocross des Nations [sixth
overall in the MXGP class],”
says Chisholm, who’s in his
fourth year in Canada and who
won the MX2 Eastern title a few
years back when the class was
split into two coasts. “He was
pretty good at that Ironman Na-
tional that he did too. The guysup here, they’re good on these
tracks. I think it’s not as diffi cult
and technical to get around the
tracks super fast as it is in the
U.S., so that makes those guys
kind of elevate their game.”
The MX2 class—partly due
to lower purse money and less
support—is more Canadian up
front than MX1, but Americans
like Surratt, Josh Osby, and
Jacob Hayes are all in the mix
against defending champion
(and Canadian) Cole Thompson
of Thor KTM.GIVI NG BACK
Jean-Sebastien Roy