The five-time champ is still smiling.

Story and photos by Jason T. Griffiths

Five-time Canadian champ Jean-Sébastien Roy had a strong start to the season at Ste-Julie when he swept the MX1 class. Since then, Roy has been trying to fight off the continued challenge of his Blackfoot teammate Dusty Klatt. We caught up with Roy after his 6-2 finish in Calgary to get his thoughts on the season so far. Never afraid to speak his mind, The King weighed in on the Nanaimo whoops, what it’s going to take to beat Klatt and his plans for the rest of the series.

RXC: What happened there in the first moto?
JSR: I got a bad start, a really bad start. I was at the bottom of the hill just coming through the pack during the first lap. There was a huge bowl turn and I was behind Dubé, and Dubé pushed somebody to the top, and I dove inside but the guy at the top hit Dubé and he fell into me so I was just at the bottom of the pile. And then catching up, I made a mistake at the front section and crashed. I think I could have probably gotten fifth or fourth. I just rode my best and there is nothing I can do about that. It wasn’t anybody’s fault; I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Was Dubé trying to hold you up?
Not on purpose, but the track was so narrow it was hard to pass. I think they tried to make too many changes to the track. When you have something good, you don’t change it. With the U.S. tracks, they hardly ever change things. One or two changes, here and there, but if you start changing tracks all the time, it doesn’t always work. Especially if you aren’t a rider to begin with.

JSR went 6-2 in Calgary for third overall.

Last weekend with the whoops in Nanaimo, what was your major concern?
They were too deep and Kyle Keast broke his wrist because of that. That kid was going so good at Gopher Dunes, and it was his first time on the west coast and he was struggling a little bit—which is normal, but he could have been a top five guy at the end of the year, and just because they didn’t want to fix a little thing that we wanted … we just wanted to take the last one out, it was pretty square. We just wanted to put 10 or 12 inches of dirt at the bottom of the last five whoops so if you did get out of control, like he did, when your front end drops in, at least there is dirt at the bottom. It wouldn’t have changed anything about the show; the top guys would have still gone through the whoops like we did, it wouldn’t have changed anything.

Sometimes it pisses me off; there were 10 or 15 guys who wanted to make that change. And it’s sad that it got Keast, because he was the guy. He was pretty pissed too because he crashed there first moto on Saturday. He was worried about the whoops; he’s not a supercross guy. There’s Dusty—with experience—there’s me, Darcy, Facciotti, Lockhart … everybody else, we don’t ride supercross, we have two supercrosses a year here.  I don’t want to sound like a whiner but it’s all about safety. It’s not about me going through the whoops, I was going through the whoops as fast as Dusty and Darcy, so I didn’t want to change the whoops for that reason, and I wanted to change the whoops for safety. This sport is dangerous enough and with all the Americans here, there aren’t that many Canadian riders. So if there are a couple of guys who want to change something, let’s try to listen. We were right about that one. The good thing is that we have a lot of experience now and most of the riders are sticking together and when we want changes made, we get changes, like that start at Gopher Dunes. We stick together. Good thing they changed it, because we were not going off the gate for the first moto. But it took a crash with five guys knocked out on the ground and a second start of the 125 and after that, they were like okay, let’s change it. But if there are 10 pros bitching about something, there’s a reason.  I guess I get a little too involved in all this; I need to focus on going faster. Like I said, I love this sport, and I just want it to be better, I want the kids to do well and be safe, so we can have some good racing.

JSR joins a group of fellow riders and the CMRC head ref
to discuss changing the Nanaimo whoops.

Aside from the tracks, and the politics of it all, where is your head at right now in terms of racing?
Well, it’s a little different for sure, a little tougher than it has been in the past. I am losing a lot of points every weekend to somebody else. But I mean, I have a bad back, I am coming back from my knee, I popped my shoulder out a couple of weeks ago, so I am kind of struggling a little bit with injuries, so I am a little more cautious. In the meantime, I need to go even faster than I usually go. I wouldn’t say I am struggling, I am just working hard and trying to go faster and faster.  And I am still getting used to the 450, I didn’t spend that many hours on it. I started riding just two months before the series, and when I crashed, I cracked some ribs, I stopped for 10 days and two weeks later I crashed and popped my shoulder, and hurt my back, and was out for a week for two. So I had about 40 hours on the bike; that’s it before the first round—and that’s after six months off the bike. And then Dusty got here, full on ready for the first round, how I used to be, he probably learned a lot from me over the last couple of years. I just need to work a bit more on corner speed; I am a little slower in some corners than him. I need to work on corner speed. I am in good shape, I don’t fade, and I have strong lap times all the way to the end.

And people are saying you still look like the fastest guy on the track.
I’m working hard. It’s just like sometimes in the states, Bubba is faster than Ricky, even if Ricky is the top guy. That’s how it is in every sport. Younger guys are pushing the limits a little harder, taking a few more chances, that’s just the way it is. I am not giving up, I am just pushing harder, working harder, but I am not going to pin it and launch 200 feet down the hill … I am not going to do anything stupid. I am going as fast as I can, I try to pick the best lines … but somebody else is beating me—it’s not like I am not trying. But I am not giving up at all, I will go home and try to work even harder and try to go even faster. At least I got a good start in the last moto, that first moto pissed me off. I struggle a little on concrete starts; on dirt I am pretty good.

What do you think you needed to do on the concrete start?
I don’t think I heated up the tire enough first moto. Second moto, I heated it up more. You have to be really patient and you need to practice. I didn’t practice at all, a little bit down in Florida before the first round, because we had a concrete slab there at GPF. You need to practice every week so you don’t lose the feel of it.

At Gopher Dunes, when you had trouble starting the bike, was that just a regular four-stroke problem?
I think that I just got a little nervous off the gate, I wasn’t sure if I was in third or second and then... well something that has never really happened to me, happened. I kind of stalled the bike and, it is a little harder to start, but you know, I knew about it, when I chose the 450. I know that they stall and they don’t start too easily. In the first moto, I stalled at the end, because I broke my clutch plate, and I stalled it and it started first kick. They are better, the Honda’s are not bad at all to start, they have a hot starter. You have to have it in neutral; you have to take the four seconds to do that. The point is that you’re not supposed to stall it.

You’ve got two rounds coming up: Regina—where you’ve always done fairly well –and then you’ve got Morden. What’s your plan?
Go faster, just go faster. That kid is on the gas! I need to make up a second somewhere so I will practice my corners. It’s corner speed mostly; he is coming off of the little bike. It’s the same in the states, I’ve been riding with a kid in the states, who rides a 250F, and he goes through corners at three times my speed. I think with Dusty coming off of the small bike, the last couple of years, you get that corner speed. And I have been riding big bikes, powerful bikes, for the last couple of years. That’s where you slack off, on a big bike, in the corners. So I need to practice that.

Go faster: That's JSR's plan for Regina and Morden.

 

When you are out there, are there times that you think, I wish I had my two-stroke again?
I thought about that when I first started riding in Florida, but I knew it was out of the question. There was no question that I wasn’t going to go back to the 250R, so I put it out of my head. I was missing my two-stroke at Gopher, that’s for sure. But I think the 450 is much faster than my two-stroke. Everywhere else, everywhere that it’s hard-packed, it’s better. It’s a heavier bike and you have to ride it more smoothly. I think that’s my weakness too compared to Dusty. Dusty is just riding it really, really aggressive, like a two-stroke, and I think I need to step it up, I need to ride it a little bit more like a two-stroke. But it’s not my style. That second moto, I pushed it hard and I think I was still pretty smooth. But like I said, it’s all corner speed, I just need to get through the corners faster.

So are you going to head back home now?
No, I am taking three days and I am going to Banff to try and enjoy life a little bit more. I don’t have a chance to come to the west coast too often. My girlfriend, Melanie, and I are big outdoor fans. We love hiking and the mountains, so we will go hang out there. And then back home, I have a CMA national next weekend at St-Apollinaire. It’s an hour and a half from my house and it’s a beautiful track. The promoter has a sprinkler that covers 95 percent of the track. You just turn it on. It’s a perfect track, a little narrow, but tons of jumps, so I am doing that and then it’s back to the same routine, on the bicycle and training.

Thanks for your time JSR and see you in Regina.
Thanks.