“The Spanish GP comes at the perfect time to hit the table and start winning races again”
MADRID, 27 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish motocross rider Jorge Prado (GasGas) admits that the Spanish Grand Prix, which takes place this weekend in the Madrid town of Arroyomolinos, arrives “at the perfect time to hit the table”, because running in Spain “with all the fans supporting you” makes him take the “200 percent”, at the same time that he is clear that his goal will be to “reduce points” to continue in the fight for his first MXGP title.
“When you run in Spain, with the whole public supporting you, you get 200%, just because of that support you feel. Everyone wants you to win. On the one hand it’s pressure, you put a little pressure on yourself, but I take it well and it favors me. This GP comes at the perfect time to hit the table and start winning races again,” Prado said in an interview with Europa Press after a meeting with fans organized by Red Bull on the occasion of this event.
The young Galician rider, 21 years old, two-time champion in the MX2 category (2018 and 2019), arrives at this test “with great enthusiasm”. “It’s the GP I look forward to all year, it’s my favourite”, he admits, after winning in 2020 and taking second place in 2021. “This year I’m going to go for the victory. The shoulder injury was a shame. I was in the middle of the fight for the championship, now I’m further away in points… I’ve trained as well as possible. It’s a circuit that I like, with all the fans supporting me, that will give me a plus”, he explained.
Prado saw three weeks ago how his chances of achieving that first MXGP championship lost weight after suffering a “significant” injury to his shoulder that prevented him from getting on the bike at the Italian GP. “I am not one hundred percent, but I am at a good enough level to fight for victory. Giving my one hundred percent now will be enough to win,” he analyzed.
The Spaniard arrived in Maggiora as second classified and is now fourth, so he must come back to be close to the Slovenian Tim Gajser, leader of the championship. “Now I’m far away, I was able to cut points in the previous race in Sardinia. My goal is to cut every race and every weekend. My goal is to go for both races this weekend, it’s complicated, but it’s what I have what to do if I want to win the championship,” he asserted.
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The one in Arroyomolinos will be the ninth round of the World Cup, in a season in which the pre-pandemic format has been returned, with the Grand Prix divided into two days. “It’s strange. In the last two years we competed for everything in one day. Now the circuit is not fixed so much for Sunday, it is much more physical. The one-day format helped me to adapt to the category. Now I am well enough to go deep both days. It doesn’t hurt me, but the tracks are more broken and more complicated,” he said.
And it is that the Galician confesses that he did not have “many problems” during the pandemic, although the uncertainty about the start of the World Cup did affect the pilot. “You trained, but you didn’t know when you were going to start, you don’t have a goal. At first it was difficult to assimilate, in Belgium I could go out to play sports during confinement, mentally I was lucky to be there, and I was able to do my day to day” , he pointed out, assuring that he was “lucky”.
It was in 2012 when he went to live in Lommel (Belgium) with his family, for motocross, in a key move in his career, to achieve the “base” that he maintains today. “It was essential to go to Belgium, it helped me to train on complicated tracks there. My strong point now is sand racing, it is a base that I have. When you are little, the most important thing is how good you are at this sport. I went to the school like everyone else, I didn’t train like now, I was just better at it than the rest,” he said.
“MOTOCROSS FOR ME NOW IS 80% TRAINING AND 20% SKILL”
“When you go to the World Cup, skill takes a backseat, and you start to see that the most important thing is training. Now I can say that 80% is training and 20% skill. Racing is very physical, it’s a very dangerous sport. and being physically well reduces injuries”, added Prado, who in 2011 and with only 10 years, already won his first World Championship (65 cc), but it was not until 2016 when he made his debut in the MX2 category, in which he was champion in 2018 and 2019.
After reaping successes so prematurely, the Galician does not hide that winning the MXGP title could become an obsession for him, after two years without a prize because “something always happens and it’s only a little”. “It’s complicated. Sport is like that, it’s difficult to balance a season like 2019, in which I won all the races, it’s very difficult to achieve. But I think it can be repeated, and this year if everything goes well and I can improve until the end of the season, try to take the title”, he wants.
Finally, he assesses how motocross has evolved in Spain, stating that “right now it is getting easier” to become a professional, since “young riders are much more supported”. “Now you can organize your training and competitions better. They are also opening more tracks and working harder. I always trained on the same track, you have to move a little more. You have to balance everything a bit, because you are also conditioned by the teams, but by power, you can”, he concluded.