Rookie Geico Honda Rider Jett Lawrence was dealing with food poisoning but still somehow carded a top-ten in his professional U.S. supercross debut.
Lawrence had enough to deal with in taking on his first race, but the drama compounded when he got sick before the race.
“Well, Friday started off with getting food poisoning from a Chick-fil-A sandwich!” said Lawrence. “I ended up waking up at one in the morning throwing up and having diarrhoea and really bad stomach cramps so I couldn’t make it to press day. Saturday morning I was feeling a little bit better but I didn’t get very good sleep. I was pretty tired plus couldn’t eat anything—just a rice cracker and some sips of water so my energy was pretty low. In practice, I was struggling to dial the track in and get a good flow and was struggling with the whoops a bit because they were very close together and fast. It was easy to miss a whoop with the front wheel and go over the bars, and then, of course, that’s exactly what I did! By the time it came to the main event I was starting to feel a little bit better but halfway through I started to get some belly cramps and started to feel a little bit lightheaded. At the end of the day it was not the result I was wanting but I guess it is not such a bad result for my first race.”