INTERVIEW: 2016 AMA Supercross Champion Ryan Dungey, Part II

| August 14, 2016

Story and Photography by Steve Cox

Last week in the first installment of our two-part interview with Ryan Dungey, the 2016 AMA Supercross Champion talked about racing against Ken Roczen, winning titles, dealing with burnout and his injury that knocked him out of the 2016 AMA Pro Motocross Championship. If you missed it, click HERE. In part two, he talks about helping children with cancer and his involvement with the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, being photographed naked for Sports Illustrated and what he might do when it comes time to hang up his boots.

GIVING

We’ve covered this before, but it should be reiterated: In addition to all of the responsibilities we listed in the lead of this story—things which are contractual obligations for Ryan Dungey—he spends a lot of his limited down time doing charity work for St. Jude Children’s Hospital in his home state of Minnesota. Every year, he holds a charity bike ride and run called the Minnesota Major. And the truth is, he seems to love it.

You can read the original magazine story by clicking HERE.

“This year will be the fourth year that we’ve held the charity bike ride that I started back in 2012 [they missed a year in there],” Dungey said. “I lost my grandmother in 2005 to cancer, so through my life after that point, I’ve always wanted to give back and help. And that just got stronger as I got older, and I gained the position I’ve gained and the influence I’ve gained, and even the affluence to be able to be a blessing in somebody else’s life. I knew I had a great opportunity through St. Jude. I’ve had a long relationship with Target, and I worked close with them and got an opportunity to go down to Memphis and visit the Target House, which is basically for patients like the patients at St. Jude who are in need of longer-term care, from I think three months and longer. So, it’s kids going through a lot of these really heavy treatments like chemo and radiation and they’re there for a long time. I got to visit the Target House, and then I got to visit St. Jude, and I was blown away. The entire place is run off of donations, and 24 hours per day there are people working away to help heal these people. But they’re also finding ways to cure cancer through research as well, around the clock, so it’s not just treatment, but actually trying to find cures and better treatments. So, 100 percent of the proceeds from the Minnesota Major go to St. Jude to help all of that. It’s a great time. We get together and we have a run and a ride.”

In addition to raising money, it also promotes physical fitness.

“It aligns with what I’m doing now quite a lot,” Dungey said. “Nowadays, a lot of people are into bicycling and running and training, and it’s a great way to get out of the house and get some fitness done. Plus, it’s a ride down through the countryside along a river, so it’s a beautiful ride, and it’s really green. So, you get to get out and do something that’s good for yourself, get to see awesome views, and help people who need it, too. We’re just trying to grow it every year in order to give more and more back. I hold it very close to my heart. It’s really important to me.”

He also had two special sets of gear made by Fox Racing with St. Jude butt patches. He gave one set away, and the other was raffled off at the Minnesota Major.

“I had Fox design a set of red-white-and-blue gear with the St. Jude butt patch on the back,” Dungey said. “And then there was actually a young man named Matthew who was fighting a battle with cancer, and he was at this year’s Minneapolis Supercross. So, after practice, I gave him my first of two sets. Then, the second set, we saved to frame it so that we could do a big raffle that revolved around the Minnesota Major, so everyone who pays the $25 to sign up, they got a ticket that goes into the raffle jar to be able to win that gear, and to bring in more money.”

This year’s event raised $142,500 for the hospital.

THE BODY ISSUE

Speaking of promoting physical fitness, Dungey not only was featured on Wheaties cereal boxes earlier this year, and won an ESPY again this year for “Best Male Action Sports Athlete,” but he was also featured in ESPN The Magazine’s “The Body Issue” within the last couple of months as well.

While it might seem like the kind of thing most of us would never think of doing, for Dungey it was a no-brainer.

“My manager, Mark, and I had talked a couple of years ago about there being a chance to be in The Body Issue, but it didn’t work out that year,” Dungey said. “So, this year, he called probably a month before the shoot that took place in mid-April and asked if I wanted to do it, and I immediately said, ‘Absolutely!’ I had already thought about it, so I decided let’s do it. So we scheduled a day and everybody came out, and I knew what I was in for, but the moment they said, ‘Okay, let’s do this. Drop your shorts. It’s time.’ I was like, ‘Oh, man, I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into.’ It was a little intimidating. I’m not a super-insecure guy about my body or anything, but I definitely don’t run around naked all that often. And it was just full exposure. There was nothing covering anything up and there were a lot of people around. My wife, Lindsay, was there, so that made things a little more comfortable, but the first 20 minutes was like, ‘This is really weird. It’s really different.’ But then the first thing we were doing was a start, and I had Supercross suspension on, so I do the start, and then I get to the bumps and things are shaking around—you can imagine what—and Lindsay is crying-laughing, so then I was laughing like crazy. We were just being really immature about it, but everybody else was really professional. We shot for about four hours, but after about 20 minutes, it was like, ‘Look, we’re all grownups here.’ Everybody at ESPN made it really professional.”

His reasoning for doing it is sound. As most people reading this know, mainstream sports fans and press don’t usually seem to understand the kind of fitness motocross takes. Dungey wants the sports world to know what a motocross athlete’s body looks like when properly tuned.

“I know there are probably a lot of people who wonder why I did that, or who maybe even don’t like that I did that, but my motivation wasn’t to be, ‘Look at me, check me out naked!’ That wasn’t it,” Dungey said. “It was an opportunity for our sport, and I think any athlete can appreciate what other athletes have done to build their bodies to work at their specific sport. The years that it takes to build that physique for a runner, a basketball player, or whatever. So, for our sport, I really feel like it’s a sport that gets overlooked when it comes to athleticism, and how much time we put in to build our bodies to be able to be race-ready and fit and strong enough for a season at the professional level. So, those photos are a product of 21 years of riding dirt bikes, since I was five, and I hope it can bring a level of appreciation for what we go through. The skeptics may not see all of that, but that was the goal for me—to show not just how fit we are as racers, but also what our fitness looks like when it’s compared to so many other types of athletes.”

That being said, he had to take precautions “down there.”

“[Teammate] Marvin [Musquin]’s seat is much softer than what I like to run,” Dungey said. “I had a really grippy, hard seat that would tear my butt up, but Marvin’s seat is much softer and less grippy, so I switched to his seat. I never smashed anything, but there was one thing: You know how when you roost a sand berm, the sand can get all down your back and all that? Well, I was roosting this sand berm, and it gets on the seat, plus I’m sweating, so things just started to get raw from rubbing. So, we had a towel on-hand to clean things off, and it was fine. Thankfully, otherwise, everything’s still intact.”

WHAT’S NEXT

During the MX National broadcasts after he was injured, Dungey made a comment that really sounded as if he was planning on retiring after the 2017 season. He said he was going to honor his contracts and race until the end of 2017. He came up short of acknowledging that to be true, but also didn’t say it’s not true.

“Even when I was doing the interview, the kid [who was filming] asked me, ‘Wait a minute, did I just hear some news nobody’s heard before?’” Dungey recalled. “No. Look, this is my 10th year now, and next year will be my 11th year racing at this level. I’m not saying that’s it and I’m done. Not now. But if you look too far ahead down the road… It’s nice to think about a life sometimes where you can think about making plans to do this or that, but this is all a long time away. We still have the rest of this year, then all of next year. I’m just focused on my contract for now, which was this year and next year, so next year at this time there will be decisions to be made, but they aren’t being made today.”

A lot of racers don’t like to even discuss what they’re going to do when they’re done racing, for fear of it robbing them of motivation, or for fear of having “an eye on the future” causing them to fail to pay attention to the present. Dungey isn’t one of those guys. He was open about what he hopes for after he’s done racing.

“You’re not out of line at all asking about it, because I’ve thought about it a lot, but you should have a plan,” Dungey said. “If you have a wife, and maybe even kids, you have to think about them, too, and to not think about that stuff seems like you’re kind of just unprepared. Ricky [Carmichael] was 26, and he did 10 full years before he retired. I’m at 10 now.”

Dungey has a plan.

“Like we were just talking about, I love helping out St. Jude, so I want to get more involved with that through my bike ride and other charity events with St. Jude, but I’d also like to continue the relationships I’ve had within the sport,” Dungey said. “Being a part of KTM has been amazing, and something I could’ve never even wished for, because I was able to really help bring success to a company that they hadn’t really had before. People didn’t believe we could do it, but we had to work together to build it up, and we did. We all worked hard and we brought success to KTM in the 450cc class here in the States, and that’s amazing. So I’d like to continue with them and maybe keep growing and helping with R&D to make them better, and then with Fox and Target and so forth, just with the people I’ve been able to build these great relationships with. And I want to keep growing the sport in any ways that I can. But, then, I want to have some kids and enjoy a family life with Lindsay and be able to settle down in Minnesota and enjoy that part of our lives as well.”

Also, the truth is that, five or six years ago, Roger DeCoster said he was planning to be the team manager at Red Bull KTM for “probably three years or so.” At some point, that RD is going to retire, and is there any reason this RD couldn’t succeed him at KTM, with all of his knowledge accrued through over a decade winning races and championships at the highest level?

“Roger’s just enjoying it so much. It’ll be hard to top RD, I think,” Dungey said. “But for sure, I’ve learned so much over the years. Things like just testing with the bike, and you learn from trial and error so much with that stuff, and then obviously working close at-hand with Roger, and he’s had tons of ideas that have helped, too. I mean, there have been plenty of times where we try something that fails, too, but he wasn’t afraid to try it. So I’ve learned both the good and the bad there, I think. I’ve learned so much working with the best people in our sport, and that’s the thing; we all have these gifts and talents, and knowledge, and it’s like what good is it if you don’t use it when you’re done to help other people? That’s what it’s about, I think. If you have these gifts and talents and you don’t share them, then I think you didn’t really use your gifts and talents to the fullest, then, did you?”

You can read the original magazine story by clicking HERE.