Monday Morning Coffee Opinion Column

By Billy Rainford

Wow, what a week! As I sit here at my laptop in my office AT HOME, it’s hard for me to even know where to begin! I’m at that point I always talk about where I’m so glad to be sitting here after such a busy time with the knowledge that I know I’m going to be champing at the bit to head to another event in no time at all. It’s hard for me to believe as I look at the mirror across the room and see my sunburnt face surrounding 2 very puffy eyes, but I know it’s just a matter of time…a very short period of time.

The 31st TransCan at Walton Raceway was a good one. To start with, it was great to see all the Pro rigs set up in the pits from Day 1. For the youngsters and families who made the trek to be there I’m sure it made the whole thing feel a lot more like they were at an EVENT. So, thank you to all the teams out there.

Of course, the talk of the town was that they were reversing the track direction for the event. It caught a lot of people off guard, myself included, but I think the change was a great thing for the event.

Barry Hetherington and the crew didn’t rip the track very deep for Day 1 and it made for a pretty fast but safe track. Sure, there were ruts in the corners, but riders didn’t have to navigate 200-foot ruts down straightaways that have come to define the track. That was coming…

Numbers were down in a few key classes. The Intermediate numbers were somewhat confusing to me. We only had 22 riders in one of them. As the TranScan is the culmination of all the year’s hard work, I was a bit surprised by this.

Having said that, our top yellow-plated riders were in attendance, so I guess I’m just concerned about the rest of the field.

Unfortunately, young #56 Blake Davies got hurt just 5 minutes into his riding at Walton this year. Blake had to be the odds-on favourite to dominate but a crash in the first turn left him with a broken collarbone and out for the week.

The other top riders, like Evan Stewart, Crayden Dillon, Noah Parker, and new-comer Ryder Malinoski, more than made up for the loss. These riders went at it tooth and nail all week.

Like may, I was confused when I first saw the fast rider on the yellow Husqvarna ripping up practice with #981 on his back and #91 on his bike. He went out and shadowed last year’s DMX Total Devotion Award winner Stewart in practice and I had to zoom in on one of my photos to see that it was none-other than the son of Snowcross legend Robbie Malinoski out there from Minnesota.

We had full gates in the younger classes which is always a great sign as to the health of our sport. The top young dogs were there and we had some standout rides that left us all impressed.

Since the track was reversed and the finish line location was changed, they moved the amateur stage over to the pits side of the track right next to where Melody and Brett Lee are always kind enough to let me park the DMX Van.

Because everything was so close to my “home base,” I decided I’d see it were going to be possible to interview every moto winner after Ryan Gauld or Brett had done their interviews on stage with them. And yes it was!

Did I live to regret that decision? Sort of 😂

Usually, as they were wrapping up their onstage interviews, the next race was out on their sight lap which meant A) time to get over to the start for a holeshot photo was shrinking and B) things were about to get very noisy for the interviews.

I decided to press on and I think it was a good addition to our coverage of the event. It was a ton of fun chatting with riders and getting to know the ones I didn’t already have a rapport with. Some of the younger riders interviews were instant classics and I look forward to getting them all up on our YouTube channel so they are there in the Canadian Motocross Archives to look back on in the future.

If I’m being honest, most of the things I do are so that they are there to be viewed throughout and after riders’ careers on a permanent platform. It will be my contribution to the sport we all love when I’m long gone.

Now that I’m home for a few days, at least, I’ll have time to get caught up on things like that.

Here’s a look at the specialty awards that were handed out this year:

Team Canada MXON was announced to start the awards. Dylan Wright (MX1), Rider McNabb (MX2), Jess Pettis (Open), Kourtney Lloyd (Team Manager).
Justin Balkos from Yamaha Motor Canada (along with Kevin Tyler from MX101) gave #96 Crayden Dillon the Yamaha Factory Ride award.
#224 Jeremy Bellefroid won the Wiseco Most Improved Rider award.
#15 Talon Medaglia got the Atlas Brace award from Ryan Lockhart with Dylan Wright as the rider with the highest points in 50/65/85 classes combined.
JSR’s moustache accepted the Manufacturer’s Cup on behalf of KTM.
Tanner Ward’s Ride with Me charity raised $14,500 for the Tanner Steffler Foundation.
#600 Noah Porter from Port Alberni, BC won the Rick Joseph award.
My dad showed up from beyond the grave to give #21 Nathan Fraser the DMX Total Devotion Award by Club MX. Wow, what a story.
#7 Bobby Gravel took home the Fox Bronze boot presented by JC Seitz and Jeff Fullerton of Fox Racing Canada.

It was a nice awards presentation that was broken up momentarily by a heavy rain shower that lasted less than 5 minutes. It scattered the crowd but the we all got back together and the show went on. Kudos to Ryan Gauld for playing MC again. His voice was barely cracking by the end of this long week!

2023 TransCan Results

The presentation ended with the traditional Ron Cameron fireworks display. It was kind of funny because we were live for the awards and then as I turned the camera around to show the fireworks, I waited for the big finale before ending the FaceBook live stream. As I pushed the “finish” button, Terri yelled over at me, “WAIT!” Too late. Sorry, everyone, you missed the actual finale…

I see now that my time is up here. I always try to have my MMC up before the strike of noon Eastern time. I’ll be honest, I slept in this morning and then enjoyed a nice breakfast and coffee with Emily on the back patio.

I’ve got so much stuff to go through that, as often happens with my scatter brain, I don’t know where to start!

Before I go, let me just say how impressed I was with Sunday.

I straight up told Mel and Brett that I think it may well have been the best Canadian MX National I have ever been to. To say I’ve been to a lot of them is an understatement, and I don’t say that lightly. If you were there you know what I mean. I never like to compare it to what they do down south with 10 times the population because that’s just usually not fair, but Walton on Sunday was amazing.

With all the pits, stages, and vendors over on the one side, it made for a very bust atmosphere. I’d really like to hear the spectator numbers. I was able to upload all those interviews to IG easily using cell service but I had to cycle over to the Honda shop to use their ultra-fast wifi to do it on Sunday. I was blown away by how many vehicles were parked over there. It was literally full!

They also had all the kids stuff on the other side of the tunnels with a bouncy castle and everything else and it was also packed!

Kudos to the gang for putting on such a professional event. Also, all this praise is by no means a dig at any of the other rounds, it’s just that this one was spectacular! If you were there in person, I’m sure you agree. If you watched it on the RydeTV app, you must know what I mean.

Oh, and we’ve got a few riders heading to Budds Creek and Ironman for the final 2 rounds of AMA Pro Motocross, so be sure to pay attention to those.

We had a few riders hit Unadilla Saturday but we didn’t see any of them in the motos. Actually, #430 William Crete won the 250 LCQ but decided not to line up. We’ll have to get in touch with him to find out why.

#117 Michael DaSilva tried to qualify but didn’t make it on his mostly-stock bike. However, he made the trip from New York to Walton to race the last round of our series, and that’s pretty cool. Here’s his post-race interview:

Have a great week and although I sat there’s just NO WAY I’m driving to Budds Creek this week, it’s still only Monday and a lot can change in a few days…

I’ll leave you with this perfectly-time photo of the fireworks by Zoe Verbauwhede from Leatt: