By Danny Brault

Photos: Allison Kennedy

The Toronto Arenacross suffered from poor spectator and rider attendance, but it did have a pretty decent track on the tight confines of the Ricoh Centre (home of the Toronto Marlies). In the early morning, the track wasn’t too spectacular and riders complained that the corners weren’t banked enough to jump the doubles. Fortunately, word spread of Justin Thompson’s skill on a dozer and the within an hour, the Ricoh Centre was worthy of a U.S. Arenacross race. I caught up with Thompson following the first round of the Canadian AX series.

RXC: So how did you end helping out with building the Toronto AX track?

Justin Thompson: I guess their normal dozer guy is over in England or something. So I got here and the track was the best he could do, but a couple of sections were a little dangerous. So I asked, actually, Ryan Lockhart if he knew any of the guys and they went down and explained it. And you know how many tracks I do, so he [the promoter] said, 'Yeah, go ahead.' From the sounds of it now, they want me to do the whole series.

What’s the name of your track building company?

Jet Tracks.

Have you been busy working on tracks lately?

Lately I’ve been off. My shoulder acted up at one of the nationals. So I’ve been away—even from dozing—because it aggravates it. I was just trying to get ready for the [Montreal] supercross, then I made it thirty feet out of the gate [in Montreal] and went down. That was it, busted my finger. [Josh] Woods got into Doug DeHaan and Doug got into me and I just hit the dirt.

How did you get into working with heavy machinery?

When we started riding we had property and my dad had a backhoe. We started playing with the backhoe, one thing lead to another and we needed a dozer for bigger jumps. So we started renting dozers and got to know the rental companies in town; they started bringing them out all the time. Then once we built the track so big, people started saying, ‘Hey I want you to build my track.’ So just one thing lead to another. Then I got doing some arenacross tracks down south; so it turned out pretty good.

So what’s coming up here for you? Will you be racing World Supercross?

Yep, I’m going to be riding Toronto and then I’m going down south to do a bunch of tracks here in the next few weeks.

Where down south?

Down by Millsaps’ place.

So has the business kept you busy?

It’s booming, but the problem is, it’s taking away from racing. So I go down south during the winter and do a lot of my training then.

What has the summer been like?

Well I took over the supermoto and NAS SuperMotos. I built a lot of their tracks. I was flying into Wisconsin and all over the place to build tracks.

It sounds like a great job that could easily turn into a great career when you finish racing.

It’s awesome. I just love being involved with the sport, so … you know what I mean.