The great Roger De Coster spoke with Donn Maeda recently and had some really interesting things to say, including the Coenen brothers coming to America and learning Supercross, Eli Tomac’s retirement and how he was to work with as well as the signing of Jorge Prado last year.
On the Coenen brothers – even Roger admits he is a bit worried about Sacha in Supercross!
“I’m start to get to know them, they are so intense, especially the little one, pretty crazy! They have a lot of talent and really strong work ethic. But it is not going to be easy, especially in Supercross, they have zero experience. They are going to do Paris, I don’t know if that’s the best idea because there is a lot of pressure on them to do good. Supercross is not so simple.
After Donn said he is a little bit worried about Sacha, Roger responded: “We all do, everybody is! He is a little bit like Magoo was. He wants to be up front, he just pins it and hopes to stay on. My job will be mainly to try to calm him down.”
On working with Eli Tomac, Roger could not have been more complimentary: “That was really nice, too bad that he ended up wioth injury at the first National. But there was a lot of good that came ot of it. The team was so happy to work with him, everything was so black and white. He’s very clear what he wants, when he doesn’t perform he says it, you don’t have to worry if it was the bike. When the bike is good, he says it when it’s not good, he says it. The guy is so professional, you tell him we start testing at 9am, at 8.59am he is in riding gear, ready to go. It was really good to work with him.”
On getting Prado back on KTM Roger said they made sure it was on their terms: “We knew from working with him before the guy had talent. Coming from Supercross when you have not grown up on it it’s really difficult. So we felt if he came in on our conditions not as a top that dictates what he wants, if he came in on our conditions we would give him another chance.
“He put in the work, he has a pretty good feel about what he wants in testing. If you can make him happy in testing, usually what he picks works in the race which is not always true with toher rider. Many times you test with the riders and it comes to the race day they are not happy and they want to go back and are searching. in that way he is pretty good. He put in the time and is disciplined in his practice, he works hard during the week, he can do beautiful things on a bike.
“His weakness in Supercross is more related to get used to being so close, you have to go over a huge jump and there is a front wheel from another guy, a back wheel of another guy on the left side. To get comfortable with that was the big thing he had to learn and still I think he can still get better there.”
Watch the full show below and discover why Roger is known as “The Man,” with an incredible story from when he was in the Army!
