Weekly Round-Up | 2025-01-20
The 2025 Enduro and Off-road season is starting to kick into high gear, especially here in North America as we saw both the US Sprint and National Grand Prix Championship series get underway. We also saw another absolutely dominant performance from Husqvarna Factory Racing’s Billy Bolt as he took maximum points to win the FIM SuperEnduro Championship’s 3rd round and take an insurmountable lead in the series. The US Hard Enduro Series is getting ready to launch this Friday at King of the Motos and, for Canadian readers, the application period is now open for Team Canada ISDE 2025 in Bergamo, Italy, this August. Let’s dig into it all!
Image courtesy Husqvarna Factory Racing.
(Read our full SuperEnduro Round 3 recap here…)
There’s really no question that Billy Bolt is the undisputed king of SuperEnduro, and the start of the 2025 season has only reinforced this as he has gone 3 for 3 over the first three rounds of the season, including another dominant performance this past weekend in Romania.
Bolt was fastest in qualifying, won the SuperPole, and then went 1-1-1 through the motos to secure maximum points for the second straight round. It wasn’t all easy, though, and we saw what had to be the most exciting race (so far) of this year’s championship as Bolt had to make a last-lap pass of X-Grip Racing’s Mitch Brightmore to take the checkered flag.
Jonny Walker went drama-free in Romania for 2nd overall.
Future7Media courtesy Triumph Factory Racing
Triumph Factory Racing’s Jonny Walker had his first drama-free round of the series, and he went P2 in Super Pole before going 2-3-3 in the motos for second overall.
For North American fans the biggest story of the round was Sherco USA’s Cooper Abbott scoring his first SuperEnduro podium with an extremely gutsy Moto 2 ride where he took the holeshot and held the lead over Bolt until lap 5 of 10. Abbott has looked tremendous in the reverse-gate second motos and has done enough to move himself into P6 overall in the series, 9 points out of 5th and 11 points out of 4th. If he can clean up his qualifying enough to secure consistent front-row starts we believe that he’s got the speed to hang with the top-5 in every moto.
The next biggest story for the North American fans, and one of the biggest stories of the night, was the injury sustained by Rieju Factory Racing’s Dominick Olszowy. Olszowy has raced the last two Endurocross seasons on this side of the Atlantic and has picked up a lot of fans based on his speed and all-or-nothing racing mentality. The 2022 World SuperEnduro champ had seen great success through the first two rounds of this year’s series, including handing Bolt his only loss of the season in the second moto of Round 1.
Olszowy struggled early in moto 1 in Romania, bending a handlebar before crashing hard from 4th place on the final corner of lap 2. From the broadcast feed it looked like he had likely hurt his shoulder, but he was able to finish the moto in 11th before heading directly to the hospital. As he let us know in an update, it turned out that he had sustained a large hematoma in his groin. Unfortunately for Olszowy, his zero points in Romania saw him drop from 2nd to 5th overall.
Jonny Girroir (FMF KTM Factory Racing) | Noel Flatters - The Enduro Bureau.
The US Sprint Enduro series got underway this weekend in Hephzibah, GA, and we certainly weren’t shocked to see close racing and familiar faces on the top of the Day 1 and 2 podiums.
In Pro 1 it was defending champion Johnny Girroir (FMF KTM Factory Racing) leading the way on both days to take the combined overall. This pushed Girroir’s incredible streak of Pro 1 USSE consecutive daily wins up to 20, and he now hasn’t lost a Pro 1 combined round since February 13th 2022. Incredible streak by this US ISDE Men’s Trophy Team stalwart.
Behind Girroir in Pro1 we saw AmPro Yamaha Racing’s Liam Draper picking up 2nd place on both days, with Phoenix Honda Racing’s Cody Barnes in 3rd both days.
FMF KTM Factory Racing Landers’s Grant Davis took the Pro 2 class wins on both days in Georgia, and finished 2nd overall on Day 1 behind Girroir in a great start to his 2025 season.
Husqvarna Factory Racing’s Gavin Simon grabbed P2 on both days behind Davis, and we Collier Martinez (Rocky Mountain Red Bear Kawasaki) in P3 on Day 1 with Davis’ teammate Cooper Jones taking P3 on Day 2.
In Pro Women we saw a great battle between US off-road speed queens Korie Steede (Husqvarna Factory Racing) and Rachel Gutish (Sherco USA) with Steede taking the Day 1 win, and Gutish taking the Day 2 win and 1st in the combined results. Australian enduro legend Tayla Jones picked up P3 on both days for her first outing with Phoenix Honda Racing and in her first USSE racing appearance.
National Grand Prix Championship Round 1
Over on the West coast it was the National Grand Prix Championship kicking off its season in Delano, CA, and like at USSE we saw familiar places on the podium when it was all done and dusted.
In the Pro class it was defending champion Dante Oliviera (FMF KTM Factory Racing) taking the win ahead of Dare DeMartile (Liqui Moly Beta Factory Racing) and brother Mateo Oliviera (FMF KTM Factory Racing).
FMF KTM Factory Racing’s Dante Oliviera in action at ISDE 2024 in Spain with Team USA | Noel Flatters - The Enduro Bureau.
Colton Aeck (Hatch Racing / Kawasaki / McCarthy Electric) picked up the Pro 2 win ahead of Mason Semmens (FMF RPM KTM Racing Team) and Kai Aiello (3Bros / Hatch Racing / Husqvarna).
Monster Energy Honda’s Mikayla Nielsen led the way in Pro Women by setting the fastest lap time for each of the 8 laps completed, with Ava Silvestri (3Bros / Kilmartin) and Mackenzie Caverhill rounding out the podium
Cody Webb leads Trystan Hart on lap 1 of the 2024 King of the Motos main race | Noel Flatters - The Enduro Bureau.
The US Hard Enduro season kicks off later this week at King of the Motos in the Johnson Valley desert of Southern California.
King of the Motos is a unique event in the series as it’s the only navigation-based round, which always makes for some interesting times! Featuring steep rocky and sandy terrain interspersed with high-speed desert floor transitions, this year’s edition is going to be an interesting one.
One of the main storylines going in is Cody Webb’s switch from Sherco FactoryOne to Yamaha for the 2025 season. Webb had an incredible start to the 2024 USHE season as he won King of the Motos (ending FMF KTM Factory Racing’s Trystan Hart’s winning streak in the process), and then going on to beat Hart again at Round 2’s Grinding Stone Hard Enduro in Page, AZ. Webb and Hart then traded wins through Rounds 3/4/5 before Webb went down with a knee injury in the Red Bull Erzbergrodeo’s Iron Road prologue, ending his championship hopes.
With the switch to a brand that doesn’t have much hard enduro notoriety, it’s going to be interesting to see how Webb fares through the first few rounds of the season. If you’ve watched his YouTube channel you’ll know that he’s put a TON of work into the new bikes to make them race ready. This is going to be fun to watch either way.
Trystan Hart racing across the desert floor at King of the Motos 2024 Race 1 | Noel Flatters - The Enduro Bureau
Canada’s Trystan Hart is coming into the season as the 4x defending series champion and must be considered the favorite again this year. His loss to Webb at KoM last year seemed to boil down to a late start to training for Hart as he recovered from a brutal 2023 season schedule that saw him racing both sides of the Atlantic in the US and FIM hard enduro championships, and then heading straight into the Endurocross season, which overlapped with the end of the FIM championship.
After all of that he took a lengthy break that included travel to New Zealand and Australia, and his longest off-the-bike ever as a pro. He readily admitted that he was overweight and under-prepared for KoM, and he was also on the back foot a bit with navigation skills that weren’t on par with Webb’s.
We’re also interested to see how Canadian Branden Petrie starts out this season as he makes his debut the IRC Moto / Beta USA team alongside new teammate James Flynn. Petrie finished 8th overall in USHE last year, despite scoring 0 points in Round 3. With more team support for 2025, Petrie may be in a position to take the next step and finish consistently inside the top-10.
Team Canada’s Tyler Medaglia (GDR Honda Racing) in Cross test action on Day 2 of the 2024 ISDE in Spain | Noel Flatters - The Enduro Bureau.
For all the Canadian Enduro and Off-road riders, just a note that the 2025 Team Canada ISDE application window is now open for the 99th edition of the race in Bergamo, Italy, this August. If you’re interested you can find the application form here. You can read about Team Canada’s 2024 ISDE in Galicia, Spain, here.
