Ken Roczen and Hunter Lawrence had a joint press conference to discuss the title finale that sees a winner takes all final round in Salt Lake City and both riders are trying to take it as a normal race and not let the magnitude of the situation over power them
Hunter commented: “You just welcome it, there is going to be a time when you retire and you are going to dream of a night like this and thinking how good it was, the atmosphere, the aura of the stadium and everything on the line and as a man to have such a high stakes pressure cooker moment and to pull through and deliver that is probably one of the coolest feelings in sport.
“Mental strength is not built when everything is going good, it is built when everything is pretty shit. You go the enough hard times and you just get greater as a beast inside out, as I said, there is nothing to be nervous about. I could call a sickie tomorrow if I didn’t want this but I want this, there is no misperception on what tomorrow night is for me, I know exactly what it is and it is all I want.”
Ken said: “I have dreamed my whole life, especially in these last few years, to be in a championship position, and with that comes high stress situations and a lot of things to deal with emotionally. So now I am here and I have those things, I am in this position to be able to wrap this up, it’s time to enjoy that and take it all in.”
“That’s the work that is being put in (to deal with the pressure), we are aware of the situation, there is really pressure every single weekend, the work starts and home, mentally and whatever you need to tell yourself to treat this as a normal race, that’s how you have to look at it. We know tomorrow is probably one of the biggest days of our lives but you do the things you can to keep your internal nervousness as low as possible.”
Amazingly when Ken had his almost career ending crash in 2017, Hunter was with Ken’s dad watching the toughest moment of Ken’s career – and now they are both fighting for the title nearly a decade later! “I remember sitting through Kenny’s injury at ironically his place with his dad in Germany. To come back from that is amazing, I can’t speak for him if he ever looked at hanging the boots up after that but I know what I went through, (nearly retiring after a run of injuries) and to come back, it’s kind of like playing with house money, you almost get to a point where you are defeated and you have accepted walking away from it but to rebuild yourself is cool.
But Roczen said the storyline of coming back to win the title after that injury isn’t something he has been dwelling on: “My story, you keep hearing it every single weekend but, to be honest, I haven’t been in that mindset, I haven’t thought about it’s been almost ten years and came from the bottom of the barrell, all of this, whichever way it goes will settle in after the race.”
Roczen also revealed that his team manager Larry Brooks, who is battling cancer is coming to the race to support his man in the title fight: “He’s been a vital part in my programme, for the team, for me personally and i just think his style of managing a team and the way I go about racing, it’s like a puzzle piece that fits together really well. He hasn’t been at a race for a long time but we saved the best for last. He’s here this weekend and I couldn’t be more stoked to have the whole crew back together.
It will be the biggest night of their lives, both both Ken Roczen and Hunter Lawrence are trying to remain cool ahead of the the ultimate test of execution under press even if the watching millions may not be!
