We came to Thunder Ridge on the last night of the season, and by the time the rain started falling on the second 250 moto I understood the place had been built for exactly this sort of madness. A capacity crowd, packed into one of the wildest dirt bowls ever bolted onto the professional motorcycle calendar, all of them howling for blood, glory, or at least a decent view of somebody else’s misfortune. Triple points were on the table. That means the whole season, months of sweat and broken parts and bad luck, could be flipped over like a card table in twenty minutes and one lap. Nobody in the pits was calm. The ones who looked calm were lying.
Two men would leave with their first world titles. Neither of them got there clean.
THE 450s: A SPANIARD IN THE MACHINE
Haiden Deegan, the Yamaha rookie with a hunger you could smell from the cheap seats, launched out of the gate in the first 450 moto and grabbed the holeshot like a man snatching a wallet. Ken Roczen and Hunter Lawrence fell in behind him. Jorge Prado, the man who needed this thing more than anyone, was back in tenth, which is the sort of starting position that makes a title contender start negotiating with God.
Deegan didn’t look back. Wire to wire, a clinic in controlled violence. Late in the going he bobbled, and Roczen smelled it, closing to within a little over a second, but the lapped traffic came along like a merciful accident and Deegan slammed the door. He took the win by 3.1 seconds. Prado had clawed his way up to fifth, which was respectable and also, given the arithmetic of the night, deeply unsettling.
Then came the last moto. Prado, the multi-time MXGP champion, a man who had crossed an ocean to prove something to the Americans, blasted out front for the holeshot. Deegan hunted him from second. For fifteen minutes it was a standoff, two men circling each other on the edge of a knife, until Deegan found another gear and started lighting up the fastest laps on the board. With three and a half minutes left he was on Prado’s rear fender, breathing on him, and the lapped riders wandered through the gap like drunks at a bus stop.
Both of them bobbled on the final lap. Both of them survived it. Prado crossed the line 1.7 seconds clear.
Deegan went 1-2 for the night, two wins in three postseason races, and it still wasn’t enough. Prado’s 5-1 was better where it counted, and when the math settled he had the title by seven points. The first Spanish-born champion in the history of the series, in his second season racing in America, in his first postseason, after missing the whole thing a year ago. Deegan, who came within a breath of becoming the first rider to win world titles in both classes, got a runner-up trophy and a long ride home. Lawrence, steady as a fence post with his 3-3, took the podium’s last spot, 22 points back.
THE 250s: THE LONG WAIT ENDS
Levi Kitchen had spent years learning how to lose championships. Close ones, cruel ones, including this summer’s Pro Motocross fight. The man knew every flavor of heartbreak. So when he rocketed to the holeshot in the first 250 moto, you could feel the whole arena leaning forward, waiting for the trapdoor.
He built a lead of more than two seconds and looked untouchable. Behind him the Yamaha boys were brawling like a bar fight, Thrasher, Gordon, and Davies all elbowing for position, until halfway through when Thrasher tossed it away in a crash. Cole Davies, the New Zealander, inherited the chase, reeled Kitchen in, and made his move with a little over a minute on the clock. It was quick, decisive, and cold. He won by 2.1 seconds.
Kitchen’s rivals were stumbling, though. Julien Beaumer was mired in fourth. Ryder DiFrancesco, the other man who could have stolen the crown, was third.
Then the sky opened. Rain began to fall as the final moto lined up, and Davies took the holeshot with Kitchen and Landen Gordon behind. DiFrancesco and Beaumer were buried outside the top ten, which is a hell of a place to be when your championship is on fire. Kitchen didn’t need to win. He needed to not be an idiot. He settled into a rhythm and stayed there, second place held like a rosary, while Davies rode off into the wet, ten seconds clear, a 1-1 sweep by 6.4 seconds and a sideshow to the real story.
Gordon ran third from start to finish, his 6-3 landing him on the overall podium for the first time in the postseason. DiFrancesco fought his way into the top ten but only managed a 3-10 for seventh overall.
And Kitchen, the Washington kid who’d spent his career one bad break from glory, was finally the champion. Twenty-four points clear of DiFrancesco. The first title for the Pro Circuit Kawasaki team since the 2019 Pro Motocross season, a drought long enough to make the garage walls sweat. Davies, who won everything except the thing that mattered, finished third in the championship, 25 points back.
That’s how it ends. Two men, two titles, and a wet Thunder Ridge night that belonged to the ones who had learned, finally, how to survive it.