USA Insider No.168: The Rise Of Eli

Transmoto’s weekly web-exclusive column, the USA Insider, penned by Jason Weigandt, presented by Ipone.

A few weeks ago in Atlanta, Eli Tomac was in the midst of another crashing spell, enough to basically eliminate him from the title chase in Monster Energy AMA Supercross. The crashes were so strange, though. He’d crash a different way each time, making it impossible to pin down the problem. He clipped a hay bale at Anaheim 1, then high sided later on. Ran it in on Chad Reed at San Diego and ended up crashing himself. Clipped a rut wrong in Arlington and crashed. Washed the front end in Atlanta and crashed. On it went, and there was more to come with an early crash in Indianapolis.

With such a wide variety of errors, I felt like the truth was coming clear: Eli missed half of the 450SX races in his rookie campaign last year. He is, basically still a rookie this year, then, and he’s going through all the growing pains he should have gone through last year. The name for all of those crashes this year? Rookie mistakes.

Only, when I ran into Eli in the hotel lobby in Atlanta, he said he didn’t think that was it. He felt like the crashes were just strange and unusual, really just a streak of bad luck. He told me he felt much different than he did in his races last year. In 2014, he was a little nervous and intimidated. In 2015 he said he was much more relaxed. Crashes were still coming, though.

Finally comes a big ride for him in Detroit, where Eli passed Ryan Dungey and took off for his second win of the year. It was a calm, cool, collected kind of ride, a veteran-style ride, one that seemed like it would have been coming much more frequently now. When Eli won his first 450SX race back in Phoenix 10 weeks ago, it seemed to signal more was to come. Clearly he had more learning to do, but now that he’s been through the downs, I think he’ll be better for it.

Plus, with Dungey now resting on a massive points lead, there’s no reason for him to get frisky with Eli. Trey Canard is now out, Ken Roczen is possibly due back a few weeks from now in Houston, but there’s no telling of his condition quite yet. Add it all up and Eli might just be in position to put together a nice run of wins to conclude this season. Once he has all that experience and confidence under the hood, don’t expect all that bad luck and strange stuff to follow him ever again.