New Motocross Bercy Supercross Night One Race Report

by Ray Archer

The 28th annual Bercy supercross is taking place this weekend in Paris, France at the Omi Palacesports (which is French for “We grow green grass on the walls” or something like that) and the history and prestige of this race is not to be fooled with.

Pretty much every legend of the sport has touched their knobbies to the French clay and the track truly is more of an arenacross track with some fast tunnels thrown in for good measure

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French racers like 2010 MX2 Champion Marvin Musquin, Greg Aranda and Gauthier Paulin were obviously the crowd favorite but the European riders also had the MX1 champion Antonio Cairoli there as well as GP winner Ken De Dycker and CLS Kawasaki rider Max Anstie. It was a stacked field that the “American” riders faced. Going over there to represent the AMA circuit were GEICO Honda’s Justin Barcia who was coming off his first career 450 pro race last weekend in Genoa, BTOSports.com/BBMX’s Michael Byrne, former World and National champion Grant Langston, Barcia’s teammate Blake Wharton, Rockstar Suzuki’s Ryan Morais and Motoconcepts Yamaha’s Kyle Chisholm.

There would be three different races to feature all the best riders. First up was a best lap time in a single lap-take it contest. The riders were staged from the slowest qualifier to the fastest and Justin Barcia managed to hold onto the lead until the very last rider and fastest qualifier, Frenchman Gauthier Paulin, snatched it away from him.

The kid nicknamed ‘Bam-Bam’ wouldn’t be stopped as he took the holeshot in the final race and sped off for the win to make it two out of three in the elimination race. Barcia, Musquin and Paulin were setting themselves up to be the guys to beat entering into the final 15-lap main event. All points from all the events are collected and count towards being named the “King of Bercy” at the conclusion of Sunday’s main event.

Chaos ensued early in the main event when Greg Aranda did a different rhythm than Langston early in the main causing a spectacular crash where Aranda’s bike ended up flipping upside down and into the other lane. None of that mattered to Barcia as he grabbed the start and quickly put four seconds on Musquin. The top two pulled away from everyone else and put on a show with Barcia being the only rider to consistently do the triple/triple.

Kyle Chisholm is showing that his upward trend of 2010 is continuing as he made a sweet pass on Christophe Martin and Cedric Soubeyras (who was riding a KTM 250 two-stroke) in on turn vaulting himself from fifth to third in one smooth move.

From there the rest of the racers battled the now rutty and rough track and some not so successfully. England’s Max Anstie flew off the track at the end of one of the tunnel sections, Wharton got some headshake and went down in a heap and everywhere you looked riders were crashing out. All told, over half of the top ten qualifiers didn’t finish the main event!

So after night one, it looks like Justin Barcia is the man to beat here in Bercy but after what we saw tonight, who knows what is going to go on the next two nights!

Posted in: New Motocross