Steve Cox | May 1, 2019
Cycle News Empire of Dirt
COLUMN
What Heart Is
We often use the word “heart” when we mean “desire,” but “heart” really means more than just that. When we say someone “has heart,” it’s not just about desire, but will. It’s mostly will. And the thing about will is that it only guarantees effort, not success. For success, you need will, but you need more than that.
Case in point: Austin Forkner has all the will he needs and then some. He had a massive points lead up until the last 250SX East round, having won every race except the Atlanta East/West Shootout, where he finished third behind two 250cc West racers, but he had been playing with “the line” all year long, and it finally bit him in Nashville three weeks before this past weekend’s New Jersey SX round.
Forkner was winning everything in the 250SX East, but it only took a couple races before people were asking about these pretty big crashes he was having in practice. To paraphrase him, Forkner said he didn’t mind crashing in practice because that’s how he was able to figure out how fast he could go on any given track. Basically, you don’t know where the line is until you cross it.
He crossed it one too many times in Nashville, and it left him with a torn ACL and a big, fat zero on the scoreboard. His 26-point lead became a three-point lead in one night. But he showed up in New Jersey and not only made the main event but put a pretty heavy block-pass on his closest title rival, Chase Sexton, before the adrenaline ran out when he jumped just a bit too far and landed with his front wheel into the face of the next obstacle, and that was it. He was out for the night, and his title hopes gone. He showed an incredible display of heart, but all he’s going to have to show for it is an ACL surgery and likely missing the rest of the year.
SX announcer Ricky Carmichael was quick to (correctly) point out on the broadcast that the landing that put Forkner out of the main event in New Jersey forced Forkner’s femur to slide forward across the top of his tibia/fibula. Carmichael didn’t get a degree in anatomy or medicine since he retired from racing over a decade ago; he raced almost his entire career with torn ACLs in his knees, so he knew from experience. The only time RC stopped to get one fixed was in late 2002, forcing him to miss the 2003 AMA Supercross Series altogether. He wore knee braces that were clamped down as tight as possible, limiting his range of motion pretty severely, and the only reason he had to have his knee fixed in late 2002 was that it kept popping out of place. Not too long after he got it fixed, he tore it again, but it stopped popping out of place, so he just kept racing with it like that.
He might be the GOAT, but most other goats can run.
In New Jersey, we also saw a lot of heart on display in the 450SX class. First, there was Eli Tomac who had won the last two Supercross races and pulled to within 18 points of series leader Cooper Webb. Tomac tried early in the 450SX main event to bunch the pack up behind him and put pressure on Webb, who was running in second. It’s the same strategy Tomac used (more successfully) with Ryan Dungey in Las Vegas back in 2017. Every time Webb would pass Tomac, Tomac would pass him back (somewhat aggressively) and then hold Webb behind him some more. Once he figured out that wasn’t going to work, he just took off. Unfortunately, Tomac ended up crashing out of the lead in the whoops, then working his way back up to second, and just as he was pressuring Webb for the lead again, he did the exact same thing and fell again. He ended up third, but it wasn’t his heart that did him in. It was just a couple of identical mistakes.
And finally, there’s Cooper Webb. Webb has heart in ways the other guys don’t, at least right now. First, Webb seems to thrive under pressure. That’s a different kind of heart. Whenever he needs to get a holeshot, he does. Whenever he needs to win a race, he does. He always seems to perform under pressure. Sometimes, he performs better than usual, but he still performs.
In New Jersey, Webb was sick; he threw up at his hotel in the morning, and again before practice. But when it counted, he nailed the start, and he performed. Webb wasn’t faster than Tomac or Zach Osborne (both of whom passed him for the lead during the New Jersey main event), but he beat them both. Webb won because, despite the pressure, he was able to perform; he didn’t make any costly mistakes. Both Osborne and Tomac made costly mistakes, and those mistakes are what defeated them. Webb just didn’t make any.
This ability to deliver in the clutch is what will define Webb’s 2019 AMA Supercross Championship, and maybe define his career, once it’s all done and dusted. CN