Dues to the Daddy

Offspring to ‘re-spring’: Eli Tomac talks about the mindset, the focus and the factors that have led to a powerful 2022 AMA Supercross campaign. We also find out a lot more about the new FIM Supercross World Championship.

By Adam Wheeler, Photos by Align Media

The demeanour is between tiredness and self-assurance. The eyes have a few more wrinkles around the edges and the face has the slight haggard look of a man with two children under the age of two and that of an athlete at the end of a twelve consecutive weekends of supercross; although it’s a streak in which he has added seven further triumphs to his career total and has slipped a few fingers around a second 450SX championship trophy.

Eli Tomac sits down in Seattle to chat about the ingredients that have gone into a thumping 2022. His defection from Monster Energy Kawasaki after six years in green to Monster Energy Star Yamaha raised more than a few eyebrows in the off-season. Tomac had excelled on the KX450F but with a strange ‘hot-and-cold’ existence at Kawasaki that somehow seemed to edge him outside of discussions about the all-time greats of supercross racing. The environment he requested and created around him at Yamaha has seen the 29-year-old produce some of the best form of his career and since the quiet and private Colorado-native first fired onto the Pro scene in 2010 at Hangtown with victory in his first Lucas Oil AMA Pro National Motocross bow.

Eli is friendly and receptive but his slightly conservative nature comes across in answers where he sometimes measures how much he wants to explain, or wrestles with how he wants to articulate his thoughts. It seems like a media-wariness thing. Tomac’s barely passable social media presence and relative anonymity compared to the high-profile of someone like Ken Roczen means his motives and methods have not always been evident. It has left him open for criticism. A conversational on-the-record chat seems like a rare duty for him and other riders these days. “It’s more video [work] now,” he agrees. “Even our press conferences are more digital so it’s quite a disconnected feeling.”

In an effort to connect and discover why he has been able to boss the mental side of supercross that has seen hot competition from his former team and Jason Anderson – as well as evade some of the controversial clashes that have happened on track this season – we sit and take fifteen, as he zips from a Monster bottle in the Yamaha pit complex at the Lumen Field stadium…

You’re a father twice-over now…Yes, we have a daughter that is almost two and our son is just six months old. So, sleeping patterns were pretty irregular in the beginning but now I’d say we are quite settled in. There is nothing like having kids to show you how selfish you were before they came along.

In terms of racing, does the family offer you the perfect disconnection? Yeah, although it didn’t really change my working environment. Since I was 22 and moved out of my parents’ place I managed to have that good balance between the work at the track and what I was doing at home. Having kids didn’t change that much for me. The fame thing…I don’t know: I think it just makes me more appreciative of both sides. I love going home to see the kids but at the same time I’m getting a lot of drive for my riding and working environment.

So, both sides feed into each other? That’s right. They do. That’s what I exactly what I mean. They bounce off each other and, for me, it hasn’t slowed me down. There are hard days when you go home and you’re glad to be a Dad and then good days as a Dad where you are ready to get to work: that’s how it is. It’s a different outlook on life. I believe that you don’t have that true love for something until you have your own kids. You see things in different ways and it teaches patience in all aspects of life. It’s been great for us.

How does winning feel different now compared to when you were younger and when you were only worried about yourself? Is it still the be-all and end-all? To me wins are still wins. It’s what’s driving me. That has stayed the same. It’s my drive and motivation and the reason I’ve kept going. I enjoy that feeling and I enjoy the chase. It is the only thing I really know right now. I’m doing what I want to do on my motorcycle and I don’t have much distraction from home. I still love that feeling of chasing the win.

Are you tired yet of the tag that you might be the oldest champion in the history of the sport? It is wearing thin! I was told I was getting old two years ago! A lot of people were like “he’s 27-years-old, he’s the old guy in the class!” I am getting tired of it, and I heard on the telecast recently that I am 29 but then so is Jason [Anderson], Malcolm and I think Barcia. So, we’re all pretty close. It goes to show that if you still have motivation to do it then you can keep going. It doesn’t matter where the line or where the mark is. It felt like people used to draw it at 26-27 but now we getting more years out of the guys. I think it’s awesome.

Can you see yourself doing a ‘Tony Cairoli’ and going into your late 30s? And then I think of Tony! It’s totally out of the window compared to riders in the U.S. It is so impressive and so cool to be that competitive at the top for that long.

Was there a time a few years ago where you were ‘over it’? Around the time you were getting criticism for not doing things like that Nations…for not being as dominant as you should…I wouldn’t say I was ‘over it’ but what people did see was a lot of pressure. I still didn’t have the supercross championship and there was a lot of pressure to be in that position. In a way that was fine… but a lot of times as an athlete you can get overloaded with expectation. That’s what it was. There was also expectation of extra races. At the time you are younger and you see things a bit differently compared to when you are older and since then I’ve had the accomplishment of the supercross championship and that changed my mindset too. Expectation was putting that image on me [of a guy under stress] and now I have put a whole package together: I have my family, my kids, my team. Everything feels right and good.

 "Tomac’s blaze to seven wins and ten podium finishes from the thirteen rounds to-date puts him on the verge of delivering Yamaha’s first 450SX title since James Stewart banked the prize in 2009. He will be the eleventh multi-champ in the history of the sport and the sixth to take one championship or more since the turn of the century."

Turning blue. Obviously, things are going very well but was there ever a time when you were worried that you’d made a misstep by changing brands and teams? There was a lot of thought that went into the decision. I’m not the kind of guy just to ‘wing it’ that way. I knew there was a lot on the line, like my reputation. I didn’t want to come here unless I really knew that we could make it happen as a team and try to get even better results than what I had at Kawasaki. Yeah, from the outside looking-in it was a gamble but we tried to make sure that the tools were in place to get the job done.

You’ve only been with two brands in your career so was the change motivated by wanting to start a new chapter or purely to follow the best route to another championship? It was both. It was me thinking ‘I can get some more out of what this team has to offer’ and the other things just fall into place, right? That’s the way it has been here. You try to surround yourself with guys that you think will fit and suit you and that’s what I wanted at this point in my career: to be happy in all aspects.

Was it also to seek betterment and what you can do with the limits of your own performance? Yes, that’s what it came down to. I was plateaued with what I had, with my previous platform, my previous bike. I had great success and won a lot of things but I felt that there was still more on the table for me as a racer. I think that in the past two years I have changed mentally. I have been in more of a focused, calm state. I feel more solid, period. It’s where I needed to improve. If I look back to say 2017 and some of the mistakes I made in the series, if I had been the guy I am now some of those things wouldn’t have happened. But at the same time maybe they had to happen to get you to where you are at now.

Why were you making those mistakes? I just had a different mindset…about knowing when to ‘go’, when to perform and having patience at the right time. There were times when I was impatient as a racer. I look back at some of my crashes and I feel like I have changed.

It amazing that you are still able to implement that ‘Tomac rhythm’. It just wipes everybody and must be as satisfying as win…It is! It’s called getting-in-the-zone, when everything is working right. I hope I can find that again…even in motocross.

With the creation of the Supercross World Championship a chance exists to be a full-time supercrosser. How do you feel about that and the prospect of it enticing young racers coming up? It’s interesting. I’ve thought for a while that we should have a world championship in a stadium environment. It should be an option-

You’ve travelled for Bercy…That’s right, and I believe we can pull crowds around the world. It could happen. It will be a building process but I totally believe it’s possible. I’m for it. People probably don’t want to hear it over here… but it could have really cool growth potential for our sport and eyeballs on supercross. As a racer I’ve always thought it would be cool to travel the whole world to do it.