By Billy Rainford

This is my first Monday at home at my office desk in a few weeks. As much fun as it is traveling to races and seeing great action, it always feels good to be home for a while. Of course, it never takes long to get the travel bug again. Fortunately, I won’t have to wait very long until I’m back on the move.

We’re heading in to the final couple weekends of the 2021 Future West Moto Canadian Arenacross Championships out at Chilliwack Heritage Park in Chilliwack, BC.

I’m not 100% sure who will still be in Canada and not already headed south to start preparing for the 2022 Monster Energy AMA Supercross series, but I’m sure there will be enough of our top, fast riders to make the racing good. We’ll be sure to post the entry list as soon as it becomes available in the couple days before the next round, Friday, November 27th.

We’ll also be broadcasting all the action LIVE on the Future West Moto Facebook page, so you won’t miss anything.

That same weekend, Dylan Wright will be back in Europe to race the Paris Supercross in, you guessed it, Paris, France.

After turning heads at the final 5 rounds of the MXGP series, it will be interesting to see if he can do the same on the indoor track, historically, not his strong suit.

Dylan is a “hang it out” kind of rider. That can work in Motocross but sometimes it can cause problems on the finesse-needing tracks of Supercross. Like the old saying goes, “sometimes you need to slow down to go faster.”

Not that I’m a fast Supercross rider or ever was, but I’ve seen enough to know what most of these top riders do that makes them successful. The first thing I tell a rider who is heading into their first SX race is, “Do not make any last-second decisions.”

If you aren’t set up mentally and physically to hit a rhythm section or whoops section, don’t just grab a handful throttle and hope things will work out. There’s a reason riders always say they “hit their marks” and won the race. “When in doubt, throttle it out” is not a cliché I would suggest for racing indoors. Leave that to the wide-open spaces of MX.

With that said, we’ve got a nice list of riders who are either already committed to racing Supercross in 2022 or are seriously considering it. Let’s have a look:

#134 Jess Pettis is already down south in Florida getting ready. You’ll remember, he was all set to make a real run at some good results last year before he tweaked his already-injured knee and had to head home to rehab after reconstruction surgery. Jess is our top prospect in Supercross right now.

I say Jess is our best chance at top results but there’s also the chance we see Cole Thompson back on a Supercross track this winter. Rumours have been swirling around about how this may look so we’ll have to wait and see what happens next month in December. From this Instagram post, it looks to me like he plans on going racing by himself! lol

Julien Benek is on the PRMX Partzilla Kawasaki team for the 2022 season. That means he’ll get the chance to train at South of the Border with the team and get ready for his first run at AMA SX. With his speed and skill in the whoops, he’s already ahead of 80% of the new riders racing.

Tyler Gibbs is potentially getting the chance to ride alongside the PRMX Partzilla guys for Supercross this winter. We’ll know more about his plans soon.

What about Jake Piccolo? Jake is headed to the Red Bull Thor KTM Canada squad for the new year, so, hopefully, we see him ripping up the same training program we see Pettis on.

We’ve also heard that Marco Cannella is interested in taking a run at some Supercross this season, so we’ll keep an eye on that, too.

His lifelong rival, Tanner Ward, is another rider who we could see going for it down south this season.

Guillaume St Cyr loves Supercross and he plans on heading south on his own to take another run.

This list is just me spit-balling here. We’ll be sure to start getting a more definite list of who we need to keep an eye on and cheer for as we get a little closer to the “heading south to train” time for these riders and figure out which coast they plan on racing.

Whether or not everyone ends up actually racing Supercross this season, that’s the longest list of potential Canadian racers I think I’ve ever seen, so that’s a great sign.

Paris Supercross November 27

CATEGORY SX1

# 3 Romain FEBVRE (F-Kawasaki KRT Monster Energy)

# 6 Thomas RAMETTE (F-Yamaha GSM)

# 9 Dylan WRIGHT (CDN-Honda GDR Canada)

# 10 Justin BRAYTON (USA-Honda Smartop)

# 14 Cole SEELY (USA-GasGas)

# 19 JUSTIN BOGLE (USA-Suzuki)

# 20 Gregory ARANDA (F-KTM Tech 32)

# 22 Chad REED (AUS-KTM Mountain Motorsports)

# 25 Marvin MUSQUIN (F-KTM Red Bull)

# 26 Alex MARTIN (USA-Yamaha GSM)

# 75 Josh HILL (USA-Yamaha Monster)

# 77 Alessandro LUPINO (I-KTM)

# 85 Cedric SOUBEYRAS (F-Husqvarna 2B)

# 131 Nicolas AUBIN (F-Gas-Gas Milwaukee Bihr LS)

# 137 Adrien ESCOFFIER (F-Honda SR Motoblouz)

# 141 Maxime DESPREY (F-Yamaha GSM)

# 222 Antonio CAIROLI (I-KTM Red Bull)

# 264 Ryan SIPES (USA-GasGas Red Bull)

# 945 Anthony BOURDON (F-Gas-Gas 737 Performance)

CATEGORY SX2

# 11 Calvin FONVIEILLE (F-KTM)

# 14 Arnaud AUBIN (F-GasGas Milwaukee Bihr LS)

# 19 Sacha COENEN (F-Kawasaki BUD 9mm)

# 21 Julien ROUSSALY (F-Yamaha)

# 22 Mickaël LAMARQUE (F-GasGas)

# 31 Adrien MALAVAL (F-Yamaha)

# 42 Ty MASTERPOOL (USA-KTM)

# 52 Kyle PETERS (USA-Honda)

# 62 Vince FRIESE (USA-Honda)

# 81 Brian HSU (D-KTM)

# 92 Valentin LASHERAS (SP-GasGas)

# 93 Lucas COENEN (F-Kawasaki BUD 9mm)

# 96 Carl OSTERMANN (F-Husqvarna)

# 259 Julien LEBEAU (F-Kawasaki)

# 319 Quentin PRUGNIERES (F-Kawasaki BUD 9mm)

# 335 Enzo POLIAS (F-GasGas)

# 384 Lorenzo CAMPORESE (I-Kawasaki BUD 9mm)

# 516 François DORE (F-KTM)

# 751 Germain JAMET (F-Yamaha)

# 831 Brice MAYLIN (F-Husqvarna)

# 851 Clément BRIATTE (F-Suzuki)

# 959 Maxime RENAUX (F-Yamaha Factory Monster Energy)

FMX CATEGORY

Josh SHEEHAN (Australia-Honda Monster Energy)

Matt REBEAUD (Switzerland – Alta RedBull)

Nicolas TEXIER (France)

Maikel MELERO (Spain)

Julien MANNON (France)

Other names to come

I hope that got you through a cup of coffee on this Monday morning. There’s actually a very light dusting of snow covering the ground here in London, Ontario. No, it’s not going to stay, but it definitely counts as a snowfall! Have a great week, everyone. We’ve got a couple cool things in store for the coming days, so be sure to check them out.

Any nostalgia freaks out there interested in a piece of Canadian MX History? They’ve turned the London Motoplex (old London Gardens) into a cycling velodrome here in London. My friend is heavily involved in the operation of the track. They found this old London Motoplex banner when they were cleaning things out. If you’re interested, fire me an email ( billy@directmotocross.com ) and I can put you in touch to see what the deal is.

I don’t think anyone asked, but the London Gardens was the place of my first-ever concert without my parents. If you guessed the J Geils Band you win…well, you don’t win anything except all of our respect.

Have a great week, everyone.