Tony Cairoli

And therefore, 13 of 19 versus 17 of 19, I think he's perhaps closer to 2018 level than I maybe realized before having the full picture.

Well, in 2018, the only serious threat was from what, Tony Cairoli? And yeah, this year you had Lucas Coon.

I mean, it pretty was a story of like two halves, wasn't it? I mean, Coonan was very much the man in the first half.

And then once the Belgian got injured, then Hurling's also working with HRC to fix those little technical issues, both in the sand and some of the little reliability wobbles they had.

And hands over the truck.

And it's Tony Cairoli.

Yeah.

Motocross legend.

It was not an event, really.

No one cared.

No, it was all about Tony Cairoli jumping out of a chopper.

Yeah, pretty much.

Joel Robert, the first to climb that summit back in 1972.

Of course, Stefan Evitson, 02, and then Antonio Cairoli.

um, along the way as well.

Jeffrey Hurlings joins them.

But he's just like flown on the Honda.

And I think it's a big, big testament to Hurling's I tweeted this out the other day, but I believe he's the first racer since Tony Cairoli in 2010 to have won a Premier Class Championship his first year after changing brand and changing teams.

So that's also something in the career CV pocket.

But, I mean, what more can we say about him? We've spent hours, I think, on these podcasts eulogizing and just highlighting Jeffrey Hurlings' skills and appetite for victory and sacrifice that he makes to achieve that.

So understandably, you can fall down on either side of the argument and have a very valid point.

If you want to say that Hurlings is the MXGP GOAT, because you can quite logically fill in the blanks of the title he missed and, you know, understand that he should be a nine or ten time world champion, then I think you've got a very valid point.

Equally, if you say Everts and Karolyi are so far ahead in titles that that's impossible to ignore and almost renders the individual race statistics obsolete...

I think you've got a point there as well.

There's a guy that I just don't know, man.

There's a guy named Antonio Cairoli, and for whatever reason, nobody really seems to pronounce the first I in his last name.

So I just don't know, man.

Cairoli? Cairoli.

Yeah.

If you're an all-timer, if you're Jeffrey Herlings, if you're Tony Cairoli in his prime, if you're Ricky Carmichael, sure, you can overcome that.

You really can.

But just your average run-of-the-mill champion on a year-to-year basis, it's too much to ask.

Like, that was remarkable to see the pace he had, and it's not very often where you can see Jeffrey Herlings kinda say, "Yeah, that guy, he, he's the real deal," right? Like, "I was, I was flat out, and I don't know how much more I had to give than what we were giving." That's not very common for, for Jeffrey to throw out there.

You've seen it with Lucas Coenen.

You've seen it with Tony Cairoli in the past.

Even though there were some hard feelings there, you could tell that sentiment was there, and I, and I think Kai de Wolf's entering that arena.