INTERVIEW: 2016 Supercross Champion Ryan Dungey

Cycle News Staff | August 5, 2016

Dungey talks about his recent success, his season-ending injury, beating Ken Roczen (and vice versa), burnout, riding naked and the “R” word—retirement!

Story and Photography By Steve Cox

It’s a sad reality in the sport of motocross, especially in the USA, that often the only time a racer can really get “time off” is if they’re spending said time healing up from an injury. The schedule for a healthy AMA 450cc factory racer looks approximately like this:

October 1 marks the beginning of their factory contract (usually).

Sometimes they begin riding their new factory machine as early as a month before their contract starts, and in these cases, on occasion, they will race the Red Bull Straight Rhythm and the Monster Energy Cup in October.

October through the end of December is set aside for Supercross testing with their team, and for building their fitness base for the upcoming season. Countless laps at test tracks, preceded or concluded with fitness training, it’s not uncommon for them to work hours long enough that they’d be given overtime in the “real world.”

You can read the original magazine story by clicking HERE.

During this same period of time, and throughout the year, they have obligations to their sponsors to appear at dealer meetings, be photographed for advertising and for their autograph posters for the year, do interviews with media, shoot videos with film crews, and even do promotion for the promoters of the AMA Supercross and Motocross Championships.

In early January, the Supercross series begins, and there isn’t a single weekend off until Easter. That’s 14 consecutive race weekends in the upcoming 2017 series. Any injuries incurred either put them on the sidelines, or they just effect their training and practicing during the week between races—which invariably has some effect on the races themselves, and often leads to more injuries. The series ends in May.

During the one weekend off in Supercross, most racers will begin their testing for the Motocross Championship, which begins in May.

In late August/early September, the Motocross series concludes. Many racers will take a week or so off to gather themselves, while others this year will end up racing in the two U.S. GPs (at Charlotte Motor Speedway and Glen Helen) in early September.

Three American racers, and many AMA racers from other parts of the globe, will head to the Motocross of Nations for nothing but national pride in late September.

Then, in early October, the Red Bull Straight Rhythm and the Monster Energy Cup come back along and the process begins again.

In total, for the racers who compete in every one of those events, this is 34 races in the span of 40 weeks, in probably the most physically demanding and injury-inducing sports on the planet.

Considering all of this, Red Bull KTM’s Ryan Dungey has had a run of health and success that has been very rarely matched. But right now, he’s on a “vacation” he earned when he went over the ’bars at round three of the 2016 Lucas Oil/AMA Pro Motocross Championships in Colorado on June 4, resulting in a fractured vertebra in his neck.

We recently caught up with the champ and chatted about the 2016 season, his injury and his future plans.

HEALING UP

At the Colorado National, early in moto two, Dungey went down hard. It’s uncharacteristic for him to go down really at all, but especially to crash violently. He still got up and finished fourth, and although he was sore, he figured all was well and he’d be able to use the forthcoming weekend off to heal up before returning to the fray in two weeks. But as his neck stiffened, and the pain didn’t subside, he decided to get it checked out, and it’s a good thing he did. He had a fractured vertebra in his neck.

“I felt something different, for sure, after I crashed,” Dungey said. “I felt something just wasn’t right. That night, I was in a lot of pain, especially when I tried to sit up out of bed. I was just like, ‘Man, this scares me a little bit,’ which is what caused me to go get a check-up. You don’t want to accept it until it’s right there and there’s just no way to deny it anymore. Gosh, I had a hard time accepting it, but the scary thing was that the one doctor said it was broken, and I was thinking, ‘I’ve got to be there in less than two weeks, so I’ve got to figure out how I can do this.’ And you want to take it into your own hands. And then another doctor said, ‘This could’ve been a lot worse.’ And that was kind of scary, so at that point, I was just like, ‘I couldn’t care less if I ever ride a dirt bike again, really… I’m just happy to be healthy and walking and have feeling.’ But it was an emotional rollercoaster, though; happy, not happy, down, then thankful.”

At the time this interview was conducted, it had been five weeks since he was injured. He said things were going well.

“The weird thing…obviously, I crashed in the race, and I got up and finished the moto. I thought, ‘Geez, I was able to finish the moto, and everything should be good.’ But then I got my stuff checked out. After about two weeks, the stiffness kind of went away and it was just more of avoiding things; no sudden movements, avoiding impacts of any kind. If I turned my head to the left too much it was pretty sore. But the muscles deeper within the neck loosened up more over time, and now there’s more range of motion week to week, so that’s good. More than anything, it’s just about more rest and recovery and relaxing. The season ended a little early, but we’ll regroup and go from here. That’s all we can do to take things as a positive.”

Even though he may be healed up in time to return to action for Team USA at this year’s Motocross des Nations, when asked about it, Dungey was emphatic.

“No,” Dungey said. “At this point, I may come back for the Red Bull Straight Rhythm, and maybe the Monster Cup, but other than that, it’s just all about Anaheim 1 right now. I might do those other races to get some racing under my belt before Anaheim 1, and that could be good, but mainly Anaheim 1 is the goal. The main factor on that race is how late it comes in the off-season. It’s like four or five weeks after the last race of the season here, and your body needs a break at some point.”

FEELING THE BURN

Because Dungey has been healthy enough for so long that he hasn’t missed any races in years, this means he’s had very little time off. As anyone who works a full-time job knows, without time off to recharge the batteries, burn out can set in. It messes with your outlook, your motivation, and often your marriage or other personal relationships, not to mention your job itself. Dungey has been burned out before, and it’s possible this injury is helping him avoid it for 2017.

“My whole career that [burn out] has affected me at points,” Dungey said. “It’s tough because a lot of it can be brought on yourself with just pressuring yourself to want to do good. When I came into the pros, I put pressure on myself right away to win races. I didn’t want to just ‘do good’ or ‘work my way up.’ I wanted to win races, and I wanted to win championships. Early in my career, you saw the pressure I put on myself. Everybody did. I folded under my own weight. That just takes a toll and weighs on you. Racing’s definitely fun, and it’s fun to ride a dirt bike without a doubt, but it’s a job. It really is hard work. We put in a lot of effort, a lot of time, along with the team and everybody who’s involved. It’s a process.”

He’s careful not to give the impression that he’s not thankful, though. Because motocross racing is a hobby to everybody who buys the products from companies that pay him millions of dollars per year, when fans hear a racer speaking frankly about the realities of burnout, they often have little empathy. “Stop whining! You make millions of dollars!” Thing is, money doesn’t really prevent burnout if you have no free time to use it.

And it’s compounded by the fact that this is a very competitive endeavor, and anyone who makes it to his level is a very competitive person. They’re usually the type of person who wants to throw a chessboard across the room if you beat them at it.

“It’s a great position to be in, though, to be able to ride a dirt bike for a living,” Dungey said. “Sure, it’s awesome. Especially for me, because it was a childhood dream, so when it came true and I got to the professional level, it was like, ‘This is awesome!’ But it was a whole other ballgame. As an amateur, you’re like, ‘I hope I make it pro! That would just be a great way to top it all off. I’ll be happy for life.’ Well, no. You get to the pros, and it’s a whole other ballgame, and you’re, like, ‘If I could just win a championship, man, I would just be so satisfied!’ Well, no. Because then you win a championship, and it’s like, ‘Well, that didn’t bring me the satisfaction that I thought it would for very long.’ Then it’s on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. They’re really short-lived.”

Truthfully, many racers have to learn to make a conscious effort to enjoy their successes when they come along. Win a race, take Sunday and maybe Monday off. Win a championship? Make sure you take a couple weeks in the off-season. Some guys even reward themselves with things they really want, and could totally afford, but they hold off on buying them until they can do so as a reward, such as one racer who makes seven figures but waited until after he won a race to buy himself a MacBook Pro.

“At the end of the season, you can enjoy it, but that’s one thing I learned from when I was new to the pros: I used to always be focused just on the next one and never took the time to enjoy my success,” Dungey said. “It’s important to enjoy it. You can’t sit on cloud nine forever, but you’ve got to enjoy it Sunday at least, because by Monday morning, it’s usually back to work.”

BEATING ROCZEN

When Dungey dropped out of the MX Nationals, especially considering that he finished his final moto and charged all the way up to fourth place from way in the back, it was not a stretch to imagine that he wasn’t quite as hurt as he was making himself out to be. After all, Roczen was making beating Dungey look pretty easy. It didn’t seem to matter where Roczen and Dungey started, Roczen was still winning everything. The only time Dungey beat him in the six motos they raced against each other was the first moto at Glen Helen, when Roczen’s forks sprung a leak while he was leading—by a lot—and he was forced to ride “parade-lap” speed for the final few circuits. Dungey lost every other moto, and usually wasn’t all that close to Roczen. And the truth is, Roczen started beating Dungey during the last few rounds of the Supercross Championship, weeks before motocross got going.

But the mark of a champion is confidence. It’s belief. It’s not being defeated, even when you are. Dungey is one of maybe two racers who, during the years of Ryan Villopoto dominating, never rolled over for RV. He was never satisfied with second. And he still isn’t.

“Without a doubt, Ken was going good, but if you look at everything, like how long I’ve raced for…I’ve luckily been injury-free most of my career, and if you back up to Anaheim 1 in 2015, all the way through 2015 and 2016 Supercross, I was on the podium every weekend, whereas Ken spent a lot of the Supercross season with things just being sort of ‘off’ for him,” Dungey said. “I think he came in [to the 2016 season] a bit fresher than I was, but it was still a bit off for him. Then he [tested for] outdoors and he found a few things, and at the end of the Supercross season this year, by round 15, 16, 17, I was like, ‘Okay, the title is the main focus.’ He was going really good, but I didn’t have to take any risks to keep up with him. He may have been taking risks I wasn’t taking, or he may not have had to, but I certainly didn’t need to take those risks at that point. So, I wouldn’t call it ‘burnout’ but it was more the mental side of things that were definitely catching up to me. That’s part of trying to be a champion in the sport, too. It’s not easy to win championships. It’s physically tough. Mentally, it’s very tough. Sometimes championships are runaways and it’s not that mentally taxing, but sometimes they are very taxing. Sometimes it comes down to a few points, and it can take a lot out of you, and I think any champion in our sport, or maybe any sport, could tell you that. I’m not trying to make up for why we were losing. No. Ken was riding really good, especially when the outdoors came around. His bike setup was on point and he was riding really good. We were behind the ball a little bit and had to play some catch-up. I’ve been there before. I was just doing the best I could on the physical side, and I was trusting the guys with the bike setup where we were trying to figure some things out. It’s just racing, and it just got cut short. I made a mistake going for the lead [in Colorado], and unfortunately I got hurt.”

Ever the champion, Dungey believes he was going to start defeating Roczen at some point.

“That’s what I believe,” Dungey said. “I’m not going to say for sure that I could’ve or would’ve done it, but I believe that I could’ve and would’ve. I knew we were behind the ball a little bit, and we definitely caught a break at Glen Helen when he had his malfunction, and so we were only down by 12 points after I hurt myself in Colorado. Things weren’t that crazy. But by after round three, I figured things weren’t that bad, and that I was going to recover from the soreness I had, and I figured that I had two weeks to get back to it. I believed in my people, my program, my trainer, my team…everything. Then I got the news that I was injured worse than I thought, and that was that. But I did believe we could beat Ken, even with how well things were going at the time for him.”

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.

“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 5, 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.