With the Motocross Des Nations just a little over a month out from now, the AMA has officially confirmed their three-man Team USA Squad that'll compete at Matterly Basin. Red Bull KTM's Aaron Plessinger is your lone holdover from a year ago, but joining him this year will be teammate and 450 Pro Motocross Champion Chase Sexton, alongside Honda HRC's Chance Hymas as this year's 250 option.
Things ultimately came down to a five-rider pool, but Eli Tomac bowed out specifically so Aaron Plessinger could get the second 450 spot, while his Star Yamaha stablemate Haiden Deegan was taken out of consideration because of his wrist injury from earlier in the year, needing to get hardware out of his wrist; that, of course, coming out about 20 minutes before the full-on team announcement.
Especially since 2017, the thought of some of "our" top riders not wanting to make the trip for the overseas Des Nations has been a hot topic, but credit has typically been given to those who willingly want/wanted to make the trip. The entire 2019 unit of Jason Anderson, Zach Osborne, and Justin Cooper jumped out right away (who deserved a better result than what they got), and then last year with R.J., Plessinger, and then Christian Craig, who had been off the bike for months. This year, this is a much better balance of talent and the want-to-compete level of the guys they have, but even then, there's a big story to be had with one of the riders not on the squad.
Deegan Ducking
I'm just going to cut straight to the point here: If Deegan wanted to go, he would've pushed Star to send him. We've all known about the wrist injury since January-ish, and while I could understand the 'don't cause any more long-term damage by putting off a surgery' point, how much is one more race weekend going to hurt at this point??? It wasn't slowing him down in the summer at all, and not to mention; the injury point falls flat for me in the context of Des Nations when you remember what happened to Justin Cooper in 2019. If you don't remember, he suffered a boxer fracture in his hand three corners into Moto 1 but still gutted out both Motos that day with top-20 results. Never mind that Chance Hymas is only about 15 months removed from ACL surgery and had a rough incident at Millville and "Dilla, but he was still willing to make the flight over. No matter how you want to spin this, this is a brutal look for the 38.
While I could believe that Star didn't want to send him in any event, this comes off as Deegan ducking what should be one of the biggest honors of his young career, and it's happened twice now. I also don't trust Brian Deegan in this context as far as I can throw him; at the end of the day, it feels like lip service and damage control out of the Deegan camp.
There are some instances that I think you can excuse for not wanting to run Des Nations. Switching to a new bike jumps out right away as far as racing-related reasons go, but I mainly agree with Chase Sexton's sentiment that this shouldn't be a pick-and-choose event. So when we get to this time next year, and the AMA/Roger De Coster decides to look past Deegan for either an MX2 or Open class spot when Des Nations comes to Ironman, he has no one to blame but himself.
Top Competition
Perhaps more so this year than last, the currently announced field for Des Nations is pretty tough on all fronts. The Dutch team stands out instantly with a trio of Jeffrey Herlings, current MX2 Points Leader and likely AMA bound in the next few years, Kay De Wolf, and Calvin Valaanderen. The Lawrence brothers, of course, are leading Team Australia again this year with veteran Kyle Webster hopping down to a 250. Then you have the Belgian Youth Movement of the Coenen brothers, Sacha and Lucas, paired up with Liam Everts, and of course, defending Champions France running it back with Romain Febvre, Tom Vialle, and Maxime Renaux.
Some stragglers, including Spain and the host nation, the United Kingdom, have yet to announce their lineups, but there's some real-deal firepower in all three classes. I wouldn't be too worried about Sexton in any case, but I wonder if they decided to swap him to the open class spot to give AP the break between Motos 1 and 3. Hymas should realistically do enough to hold his own, but there are some elite 250 guys in the GPs that'll bump him down the pecking order, I'd imagine. Then, for Plessinger, the story is, can he perform at a high level in both Motos? Last year, that was not the case after he came home in 18th place in Moto 3, which helped bring the US down from fifth to eighth in the final standings.
While not a home game for the Red, White, and Blue (well...one of the nations with those colors anyway), Matterly Basin isn't a track that should provide much of a learning curve like a place like Lommel would, for example. Several weeks out, I don't think a win is off the table for Sexton, Plessinger, and Hymas, but realistically, coming home with a podium would be a good weekend in my book.
Main Image via KTM
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