Jeremy McGrath on the Salt Lake City Supercross – Supercross

“The 450 race was good. In the beginning, all the guys were up front. Blake Baggett got the holeshot and that was pretty cool. You had Justin Brayton up front. Roczen was there and was right behind Eli. Eli kind of did what he typically does and kind of fumbled around for a few laps and then Cooper Webb came in there and I just thought to myself, ‘Oh man, this could be a problem as Cooper Webb is pretty tough sometimes on passing guys. Okay, Eli just has to stay clear of that.’ And from there, a couple laps into it, Eli just did his thing. Whatever triggered Eli to get going, he just started taking off like he always does and found some different lines and some different speed. I did notice that when he started riding the outside line, it looked like he really loosened up a lot and then that’s when he started going right to the front.

“I thought for sure Ken Roczen had enough speed to get to second,” continued McGrath. “When he was right behind Cooper Webb, I thought, ‘Man, you know you need to get second here.’ I thought I would see a little more push from Ken’s side to at least get to second place. Webb rode really well to get second and Ken wound up third.

“Jason Anderson did well to finish fourth,” furthered McGrath of who came next. “I guess typically Jason doesn’t really ride so good in the altitude, but both him and Zach Osborne were having some good battles. Anderson and Osborne finished fourth and fifth and I thought those guys were riding good.

“You know what, dude? I think most of the guys rode and raced really well. I really think so. I think the guys performed well. Those guys, they know where they belong. The series is more than halfway over and they know their position in the series. Yeah, they had to take a break, but I wouldn’t expect anything less. When they went back to the track, they know where they need to be. I thought for some reason that we might see something a little bit different from a couple other guys just because they’d had a break. Honestly, though, I think that for the first month of the whole COVID thing, I’m not sure how much riding everyone was getting in because they didn’t want to go to the hospital in case they had a problem or whatever. I don’t know who did and didn’t do what. Frankly, Eli has an advantage when it comes to altitude. It’s just where he lives. It makes a big difference. As it turned out, Eli was on his game. He was riding great. He was feeling great. You could tell in just the way he was riding that his confidence was up. It looked like it was his title to win.”