We realize the 21SX Preseason is only a 450 main event game, but the 2017 Vegas 250 Shoot-Out was just way to bad ass not to include with the video & recap for this race.
Courtesy of RacerX
May 7, 2017 8:25am
by Jason Weigandt
It was perhaps the most heart-stopping hour of supercross racing in the history of the sport. Not one, but two championships came down to the final turns of the final lap, with ever-changing storylines throughout the races, each tale wrapped around one simple truth: when everything is on the line, anything goes.
The craziness started immediately in the 250SX main event, which is called the Dave Coombs Sr. East/West Showdown at the finale. Three 250SX East riders, Jordon Smith, Joey Savatgy, and Zach Osborne, were separated by one point going into this final round, but Osborne crashed in the first turn and found his bike locked with Dakota Alix. Osborne actually had to grab Alix’s bike and rip it off of his (Alix’s footpeg was wedged in Zach’s front spokes), so by the time he was going, he was 21st and far, far back. Only two laps in, Savatgy crashed, leaving Smith with an edge, until he cased a jump and bounced off the track, and then later wadded hard on the big ski jump and sand rollers. The crash ended Smith’s night, and served to prove how championship pressure was indeed going to impact the proceedings.
Smith was too banged up to continue, but later revealed he was sore but uninjured. Savatgy, apparently, wasn’t feeling much better. He was struggling and going backwards, and with Osborne only up to 18th and Smith out, the points began to shift in the direction of … Adam Cianciarulo? AC holeshot and led, and although was 14 points down coming in, he had made up 13 on Savatgy and needed just one more pass to tilt things in his favor. GEICO Honda’s Cameron McAdoo closed on Savatgy to make the threat real, but then the rookie went off the track. But then … came … Osborne! He rode like a man possessed on the final laps, just as Savatgy found himself locking up and unable to charge. The potential of Cianciarulo, Savatgy, or Osborne winning the title was very real with two laps to go. Osborne had a brief battle with Mitchell Harrison, then Savatgy passed Hayden Mellross, then Osborne got Mellross on the last lap and got Savatgy within his sights. In the final whoop section and bowl turn of the race, Osborne unleashed everything he had, sending it through the whoops and into Savatgy’s side in the corner, smashing the Kawasaki rider to the ground, taking the seventh spot, and with it the title in a most remarkable ride after being buried and locked up in turn one. It had literally come down to the next-to-last turn on the last lap!
“I had no idea [it was possible] until four laps to go,” said Osborne. “Then with two laps to go I passed Mitchell Harrison and he passed me back, and then I saw Savatgy up ahead but I was still like, 'This is not going to happen.' But then, it happened. It’s already a high-pressure situation, and then you get down to one set of a whoops and a bowl turn to go, and that’s what stands between you and being a champion. I was just like, overwhelmed with nerves and pressure and emotion and everything, and I just broke down. Right there on the starting line.”
“I saw him [Savatgy] the whole time,” said Osborne. “I’d turn left to come into the stadium and he’d be in those doubles in the back, and it just seemed insurmountable. Even with three minutes to go, he was still the whole alley ahead, and it seemed insurmountable at that point. Even on the last lap, going into the first set of whoops, I was still not close enough, and I guess he didn’t get a good run through them or whatever on the last set, and I sent it. Pretty hard, maybe a little too hard, through the whoops. It was definitely intense—you could never replicate that, ever. My heart rate, I don’t know what it was, it was just … gone.”
To continue reading about the Vegas carnage of 2017, click the link...
RacerX 2017 Las Vegas Supercross Saturday Night Live