Jake Sheridan on winning the Irish Championship and Coupe de l’Avenir

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Last year was a great season for Jake Sheridan as he clinched his first championship by winning the Irish MX2 title – he’ll be hoping it’s the first of many! The guys over at B4MX caught up with Sheridan to discuss a range of topics..

On clinching his first National title..

“It feels great, it was a massive learning curve for me and I had great battles for championships in the past in the MX Nationals with Glenn McCormick. This one was nice to have that feeling of winning a championship and especially being able to learn how to deal with the pressure and being at the front. I was never a top, top rider in the youth and the 85’s, I was around 3-5 so it was nice to add a title to my name. I think it was the consistency, it’s key for any championship and also the good starts, it allowed me to finish at the front. I thought there were maybe only five guys that could win the Irish this year whereas in England the gates are stacked. To win the championship I had to be consistent, I was on the podium at every round and I think I only lost out on one overall at Tandragee”.

What needs to change to improve Motocross in Ireland..

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“In my opinion, I think there needs to be a lot more tracks that we can go too. They’re never really opened to be honest with you, I suppose it’s hard for the clubs to be open as well but I’ve saw the way the North support their riders and stuff like that and they’ve a lot more tracks than what we do down the South. They’re open at least once or twice a week as well which allows you to get out on the bike and to build your confidence. A lot of people from the South don’t have the opportunity to go up to the North during the week or even the weekend – they need help because it costs money to go up and down every time. Having more tracks would improve the rider ability and help bring them on – to open up tracks and keep them prepped as much as they can. Invest in the clubs and that would help with the track maintenance and water etc.

On winning the Coupe de l’Avenir..

That was big, it was like a dream of mine really, it was a big achievement for myself and my team mates. I was there the year before and it was my first time there, it was a big eye opener. To go back the following year and win it was definitely something very special. It was a tough weekend and we had to really work hard, it’s MX1 and MX2 together combined and it’s an uphill start too. The track is quite hard to pass so you need a good start but we managed to pull it off in the end, we all had strong rides.

You can watch the entire Champion chat with Jake which discussed a range of topics: