We caught up with Ben Townley in Arco to dicuss, amongst other things, the rapid rise of Kiwi teenage sensation, Cole Davies. The 17 year old is taking the US and world by storm with his performances in supercross as a rookie, and he underlined that again with a brilliant win in the East/West shootout on Saturday night in Philadelphia.
It was Ben who spent a lot of time coaching Cole in New Zealand, including his supercross technique, so what was Cole Davies like to coach and what is his potential? We asked Ben to find out:
I was at Anaheim One, and he caught my eye, even practice just with the style and the precision, but even in the race, he got the bad start and Deegan was going as hard as he could through the pack, but Davies wasn’t losing anything to him. And that’s when you were like, this guy, this is special doing this from the back at Anaheim One. You’ve obviously known this was coming, I guess, but how, what’s so special about him and what did you see early?
It’s not special to me. Like I wouldn’t, like, I know a lot of people are super excited and there’s heaps of hype about it, but you know, the, myself, Josh, you know, the boys and everyone that sort of being in that circle in New Zealand helping him, you know, get to the point, Will Hahn in the US, we all knew he had this capability. He had the ability and the capability to achieve it. So it isn’t surprising to me.
It’s, certainly satisfying to see. Firstly, just for the effort that a lot of, I guess on the, being on the backside of it, you know, the amount of people it takes to get one person to the top, it’s a huge commitment by so many people to see it come to reality. So that, that’s really cool. And then just for the sport in New Zealand in general, you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s so cool for us to have a horse in the race again, you know, like it has been so, so long. I think since me, really.
Yeah, Natzke was on the brink of achieving it. But you know, unfortunately he didn’t. And then Cole’s the next guy. So it’s been really, really inspiring for the sport. You know, all these youngsters in New Zealand now, I can see it’s, it’s real again.
Did you expect him to do it so quickly?
Yeah.
Is he a quick learner then?
Yeah, extremely.
Jett’s dad Darren said Jett is a visual learner, he can see something and just do it, is that the way it Cole is? Or is he more step by step?
No, if you explain it to Colin, he can do the equation and his head of what that takes and he’ll go and immediately apply it. At least attempt to apply it, but he has to understand how to do it. Yeah, and he’s a real, real deep thinker about it to understand it, yeah.
And he learns super quick, yeah. So would you say he’s easy to coach? Like he’s just here to take on board everything you said. He’s not like a way to tell me to do that.
I wouldn’t say that he’s just willing to take it all on board. Like he definitely wants to know why and how and understand it and work it out and to make sure that it’s gonna work for him for sure. And that style is very like Jett and Prado, with a very little body movement. It’s just a new age, right?
Did you coach that or did he have that? Like is that something you’re looking for?
No, he was obviously like you say he’s a pretty special rider, but you don’t, you know, you have to coach that into riders, those are intricate details of, you know, how to approach things in certain ways with your body English and understand how that affects what you do. And, you know, that’s certainly paying dividends and it’s still now, just in general with how fluid he is, you know, there’s certain things they does that I don’t even think people are picking up on, you know? Like they don’t see it, but certainly it’s competition up because they are not doing it. So, yeah, it’s cool to see.
On his whoop speed, recently has been unbelievable. He’s just going for it and he’s making up that in a second here and there. Was that something you really worked hard with?
I think the big thing for Cole is that he just rode a lot of Supercross, just repetition day in, day out from a very young age. I had some, like, inside knowledge that that Futures thing was going to become a big part of the American program. And so I just said to them when we mapped out a plan, I said, like, just focus on that. If you can be successful in Supercross, you’ll write yourself a contract. It’s how it works.
You go to motocross, the first question they ask, can you ride supercross? If you write supercross well, they don’t ask if you’re good on motocross. They don’t care. So, Supercross is so important.
So, he just wrote supercross day in, day out and just really did it. Because obviously he was writing alone with me, just one-on-one, it was just like step by step and just like layer in, layer by layer. So, that’s how we did it.
And do you expect him outdoors to still be good, or take away more time.
He’ll be very good. He will be good. But I think one of his biggest stumbling blocks is going to be just around, it’ll be a lot tougher, like mentally and physically tougher. And I don’t know if he’s going to be prepared enough for that just yet. American racing outdoors in that heat, you got to be able to suffer.
And I’m not sure he’s going to be ready for that just yet. He struggled at Loretta Lynn’s last year, a little bit with that. And that’s not a touch on what he’s going to have to do. Two motos back to back within an hour and outdoors because of the TV program. So, that’ll be challenging for him. And so, it’ll be interesting to see how he can navigate through that.
In saying that, like he’s showing me a lot of resilience just in Supercross. So, hopefully he can carry that over.
Get the full interview with Ben below including his return to the GP scene with Levi (before Levi got injured on Saturday), his thoughts on MXGP and the 450 supercross battle between Webb and Sexton.
