Tommy Searle on being chosen again for team GB at MXoN


Tommy Searle was searingly honest in the pre-race press conference at the MXoN, talking about how he was chosen to race and admitting about some nerves in the lead-up to this event. The former GP winner said he now feels relaxed now that he is here at his home MXoN! The GB legend also joked Mark Chamberlain, the GB team manager, paid him to race!

Searle said: “I only want to ride for team GB if I have earned my spot, I don’t want to be on here becaue I have done a few videos or a few people watch them. If there was someone better to do the job then I was the first person to say to Mark, put someone else in, put the best team in. But then i won a couple of races, came into form and when the time was right to be picked, I was the best rider to pick other than these two, they earned their spot and that was a given.

“Then the third rider, we had a few to choose from, a list of five or six of us, some of them racing GPs and doing well in the their National series. But when it came time to be chosen, I was the one that stepped up and earned my spot. I always said that to Mark, if there is someone better to do the job, please do it, I don’t want to step in unless I’ve earned that spot and I feel like I am the best man for the job.

“Mark then said, ‘please do it,’ paid me a bit of money to do it (smirks, everyone laughs) a lot of money, sorry! And here I am now…. I shouldn’t have said that out loud.

This article continues below

“Now I am here, I am actally really, really excited to do it. I have actually been a bit nervous the last few weeks and I don’t really get nervous beforehand. Now I am here, it’s really nice, it feels like I have never left the GPs, I feel quite happy to be here. I am looking forward to it more now that I am here than the past two weeks. I was a little bit nervous, it is a big race, it’s in the UK and the last thing I want to do it is let anyone down, more for them than for me. I have done it before and I have bad races, good races and I know that whether you have had a good race or a bad race, the weeks come and the feelings go away, you crack on. But I don’t want people to come, pay their money and cheer us on and me not give them what they feel they are coming to watch, so that was playing on my mind a little bit.

“But now I am here I am lokoing forward to it. We have two of the best riders GB has to offer right now alongside me. The way Conrad has been riding in the National series in England and what he has been doing against Jeffrey Herlings who is one of the fastest if not the fastest rider in the world, the majority of weekend’s and Conrad has beat him straight up sometimes and made him look silly like a couple of weeks ago.

“If Conrad can ride like that, he can do what Max did a couple of years ago (2017). I think we have a great team with Max and his bike, I am proud to be next to these two and I think.”

Watch to the full team GB section below at 1 hr 21 seconds in: