Two issues previously in OTOR we ran a story about MX1 World Champion Tony Cairoli heading over to take on the best of the AMA. It was a deserved focus as Cairoli was – and is – still very much hot: the complete package. After six rounds of the series however his limelight is shrinking ever so slightly and being invaded by a rider a few metres away on the other side of the factory KTM awning.
Jeffrey Herlings is reaching a position where he is becoming the fastest, bravest and most unstoppable rider in the world (in the framework of Grand Prix, perhaps beyond). The clamour to see Cairoli represent the best GP has to offer outside of the annual festival that is the Motocross of Nations is being eroded by the build-up around Herlings.

First the stats. Herlings is just eighteen and already has twenty-two Grand Prix victories. Before he can legally have a beer in the USA he is set to become Holland’s most successful motocrosser (just five more to beat Dave Strijbos) and enter the higher echelons of the ‘all-time’ FIM list. He is undefeated in six rounds and twelve motos this year and won eighteen races and nine events in 2012; a term where his impetuosity was turned down a notch. Some wayward personal incidents aside, the rough edges were polished to such a fine degree that a rider with the speed and talent of Tommy Searle was unable to do much about him.

Herlings is not an archetypal MX2 rider. He is almost 6ft and with an irrepressible style that sees him throw the 250SX-F around like a two-stroke. To the uninitiated it sometimes looks like he is on the edge of disaster but he barely crashes and has only sustained one substantial injury in four years of Grand Prix, a dislocated shoulder that prematurely ended his outstanding debut season in 2010. He is currently beating the MX2 pack by minute of race-time and posting lap chronos that would see him fronting the MX1 field as well…on a 250.

At the moment Herlings holds the unbeatable combination of youth, energy, fitness, supreme confidence, and a touch of arrogance. It is hard to find a weakness. Supposed training sessions where the Dutchman is pounding out Grand Prix motos and then bursting a vessel in the final two laps of the distance means that he is as hardworking as he is skilled (perhaps this is where Stefan Everts deserves credit). Herlings best lap-time came on the 20th circulation of 21 in Portugal.

Between motos we found him lying on the sofa in the hospitality unit at Agueda, joking around with his girlfriend. I asked if he could make the MX2 contest a bit more interesting and try entering the gate facing the wrong way. Herlings laughed off the suggestion but does quite like the banter. He gives off an aura of being the best, and the comfort, elation and confidence that goes with it. ‘84’ is not just winning but he is crushing, and it is a rare phenomenon for a professional athlete.

If the – frankly – impossible happened and Herlings won all the remaining motos this season and his nearest threat, team-mate Jordi Tixier, finished second every time then the teenager will have successfully regained his crown by the Grand Prix of Belgium at Bastogne in mid-August, two rounds before the series concludes at Lierop and home turf for Herlings. That leaves an AMA ride at Lake Elsinore the following weekend a real possibility if he doesn’t fancy the MXGP Festival/British Grand Prix at Matterley Basin.

This season anyway American fans will be unable to marvel at his sand skills as the Moto X 338 National at Southwick falls on the same fixture as the popular Grand Prix of Sweden. MX1 surely beckons for 2013 and Herlings strongly denied rumours in Portugal that he is looking to vacate the KTM camp with a year still on his contract. Cairoli and Herlings in MX1? Scary stuff