Factory Kawasaki rider Adam Cianciarulo crashed during first practice at the Arlington Triple Crown leaving the 450SX class rookie with a broken left collarbone.
Cianciarulo crashed on the dragon’s back, a section of track that also cut short the night of defending champion Cooper Webb who crashed during Main Event 2. AC was fifth in points going into Arlington but will now likely miss a number of races.
Riders criticised the dragon’s back in the post-race press conference, saying the design and soft soil made it difficult to hit consistently and more dangerous than it needed to be.
“I personally think it’s just the dirt,” said second-place finisher Ken Roczen. “Obviously, you can see the whoops breaking down down at the Dragon’s Back as well. I already saw it during the press day and during the track walk that they’ll have like five whoops at the Dragon’s Back and then the fifth one is the lowest one out of all of them.
“You go hit all four of them and then all of a sudden your front wheel goes over the last one. I mean, all you do is hit it with the back wheel and you know. It ate up Adam and I didn’t see Cooper’s crash but it ate him up too. I don’t know, I’ve seen it happen multiple times, but I don’t really know what the thought process is behind there because you want the last one to be the tallest one — that’s the whole point of it. Then also, they’re breaking down because it is soft, so they’re getting squirrely a little bit.”
Third-place finisher Jason Anderson weighed in; “I also think that they’re just so small that you can go so fast through them and you can get ahead of yourself.
“Obviously, we’re trying to go as fast as we can and just that split little bounce off the last one to get over the top one, and it can eat you up. Then with the ruts and everything, too, when your front end drops into one of those, it’s soft.”
Eli Tomac agreed; “I’m with these guys. “ I don’t understand why they built the last one lower than the first four. It seems like they’ve done it multiple times. You kind of sit there and scratch your head, like you’d want to hit the last one, but then they made that thing low. It’s not good, and then you see the crashes.”