Everyone complains, including us dirt bike riders. It’s too wet or too dusty, too fast or too tight, it’s too far to travel, my suspensions too soft, this powers too snappy, these grips give my bitch hands blisters, bikes and gear is too expensive, and of course we complain about event organisation. “Who the ---- is running this shit show!”
I’d like to say I don’t complain, but that would be a lie. I’ll never go full “Karen” on an event organiser or the like, that’s not how I roll, it’s just not in my nature, but ill sure tell the wife and the dogs about it when I get home.
One thing that tends to get moto fans all kinds of wound up is the TV coverage. Leigh sucks but Ralph also sucked, Todd sucks, even the great RC cops it! The commentators miss things, the camera crew misses things. Die hard fans get all riled up at any attempt to dumb things down for new viewers like “On the yellow Suzuki”.
But the TV coverage is one thing I’ll never get too upset about. Sure, I’ll throw shade at Todd’s “grip guards” and Rutledge’s pit board, but that’s just for fun.
I’m honestly super grateful to be able to watch the sport I love at all. Growing up as a moto fan in country Australia in the 80’s we had 2 channels, and no chance they were ever showing any moto, plenty of football, cricket and Elvis movies though! By the turn of the century, we had Pay tv, and high rollers would pay for a very pricey sports package to get some moto coverage, the average dude still couldn’t afford it. If you were lucky you had a mate who had it. In fact, people who had it, got lots of new mates! If you know what I mean.
The first time I could watch live supercross was about ten years ago, with supercross live international. US motocross and Aussie motocross only became available to watch live last year (Well, at least legally!) I can remember in the 80’s buying and renting VHS tapes to watch the same races over again and waiting 2 months for “Dirt Bike” or “Dirt Rider” to hit my newsagent’s so I could see the results from the states. And in the early “interweb” days, trying to find janky footage of Travis Pastrana doing some crazy stuff on dial up connection, let me tell you kids, dial up was torture. Think buffering, then times that by infinity!
Don’t get me wrong, all aspects of the sport need to strive to improve, including the broadcast. But having our little niche sport, beamed live, straight to our mobile devices, from the other side of the world is amazing, no matter what the commentary and camera angles are like. If you told ten year old me, sitting on my XR75 that, that was going to happen, I’d have called you things a ten year old shouldn’t say!
Imagine not knowing who won the supercross title until June, and no way to find out. Now we know of a test day injury within minutes of it happening. Yes, the good old days had some good for sure, but it wasn’t all good.
So, moto fans next time you get all upset about Weege throwing to an ad break during a battle for the lead, maybe just sprinkle a little gratitude into your thoughts, and think how damn lucky we are in 2022 with the wonders of technology.
Go Riding
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