SHOWTIME: JEREMY MCGRATH’S SALT LAKE CITY SX

On Saturday night, March 17, 1990 and with 18,197 fans up in the stands looking on (including this one) inside Sam Boyd Silver Bowl on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada, a young Team Green rider from Southern California named Jeremy McGrath rode his Kawasaki KX125 to the first American Motorcyclist Association supercross main event win of his then young career. Three years later, this time on January 23, 1993 and inside Angel Stadium in Orange County, California and before 55,817 fanatics (including this one), McGrath raced his works Honda CR250 to the first premiere class finish of his career. A decade later, by the time McGrath called time on his biblical-like supercross career, he had amassed 72 supercross main events and an astonishing seven AMA Supercross Championships and had firmly established himself as, far, far and away, the greatest supercross racer who has ever kicked a motocross bike to life and ridden around a football or baseball stadium. All this withstanding, who better to seek out and sit down with to get his take on Sunday’s Monster Energy Supercross Series round from Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City, Utah? A 45,807-seat NCAA college football stadium where the University of Utah Utes fight their wars, the venue marked the return of the Formula 1 of motocross and the first supercross main event in 85 days, and it was there that we asked the greatest supercross racer of all-time to keep an eye on things and report back to us with just what he saw play out from the moment he turned on his TV in suburban San Diego. Check it out.

“I woke up and of course I was super-psyched that racing was going to be back,” said McGrath of his date with his TV set and the launch of the restarted Monster Energy Supercross Series. “It was a little strange that it was going to be on Sunday. There were a few little thing were I was like, ‘Oh, okay, we’re racing again, but it’s a Sunday and it’s a day race.’ I was just kind of running through all the scenarios in my head. I was thinking, ‘What’s it going to look like on TV today? What is this going to be like?’ Nevertheless, I was excited from a fan’s perspective to just see these guys race. It was good. I was psyched.

“You know, I had thought about going over to Utah to go mountain biking somewhere and then go to the race and then to make a few days of it, but honestly, then I saw Ellie Reed’s post where she showed all of them getting tested for the COVID thing where they out that swab down your nose and almost into your brain and I wasn’t so sure about that. That looked kind of sketchy to me. I don’t know. I still might go to a race, but that first one kind of took me back a little bit and I was like, ‘Okay, yeah, I think it’s better to get round one here out of the way and just see how it goes.’ I know they’re not taking many people to the races right now. I don’t even know if I would have the option to go to the races, to be honest.