This weekend marks the 41st running of the biggest international supercross race of all, the Paris SX, established back in 1984. Monster Energy AMA Supercross Champion Jett Lawrence (the 2023 King of Paris) is the headliner, along with his older brother Hunter, as well as two-time 450SX Champion Cooper Webb, veterans Malcolm Stewart and Dylan Ferrandis, and more. The races will be streaming on Saturday and Sunday on www.mxgp-tv.com, hosted by the great Paul Malin.
We rang Paul up to do a little bench-racing about the Paris SX, as well as last month’s Monster Energy FIM Motocross of Nations.
Racer X: Big weekend over there, Paul, it’s the Paris Supercross. After a month off you gotta be excited to be back in the booth for MXGP-TV and have such a compelling race coming up with the Lawrences, Cooper Webb, and just the whole big show.
Paul Malin: Well, actually, after the Motocross of Nations we drove north to our house in the UK and I was back on a flight again first thing Friday morning because I was doing studio shows at the ISDE [International Six Days Enduro] in Spain! So I was away for 10 days, so I've not been completely stopped working for the year, but Paris is my last gig for the season. I fly out first thing Friday morning and will be inside the stadium when they do the media session on Friday. And then, yeah, supercross racing on Saturday and Sunday, home Sunday night, then we’re New Zealand-bound on Tuesday for a holiday to see my wife Nikki’s family.
Watch the Paris Supercross on MXGP-TV.com
Well, let's go back to last month’s Motocross of Nations at Matterley Basin. I've been around a lot of races, and I know you've been around many as well, but man, that last moto might have been the most star-packed competitive race I've ever seen.
Yes, it was a fantastic way to round out the season no matter who you were supporting. I think it was a great advert for racing on both sides of the Atlantic and all over the world as well. I wish we would have put a GoPro in the TV booth because the last lap, the final climb, you just see Jett make a little bit of a bobble and [Tim] Gajser had that momentum, but I still couldn't see a pass happening the way that it did! Tim just committed. And I was out of my seat. I was kind of like smashing JT [Jason Thomas] next to me. I was literally full, full gas, right in the red zone! It was a fantastic. Yeah, great way to round out the season, with that amount of talent in that final race.
And think of the guys that were in the 250 class, like Tom Vialle and of course, Cooper Webb, and Lucas Coenen and Kay de Wolf. If there would have been a moto with all three classes, some moto statistician could have easily made the argument that it was the most talent-packed motocross race of all time.
Like you say, the final race, the riders that were in it: Tim Gajser, Eli [Tomac], Jett and Hunter [Lawrence], Jeffrey [Herlings], Jorge [Prado], Jeremy Seewer, Aaron Plessinger, Ken Roczen, Romain Febvre, Ruben Fernandez… Yeah, it was just stacked. The weather wasn't the best, but at the same time it held out enough that it wasn't a mudder and it kept everybody on their toes, that's for sure.
![Jett Lawrence and Tim Gajser at the 2024 MXoN.]()
Jett Lawrence and Tim Gajser at the 2024 MXoN. Ray Archer ![The 2024 MXoN overall podium.]()
The 2024 MXoN overall podium. Ray Archer
Fortunately, the weather won’t be a problem inside La Defense Stadium in Paris this weekend, right? The place should be jam-packed once again.
Yes, and what an event Paris has been over the years, with so many great riders that sort of grace us with their presence over here. Going back to David Bailey winning the first one back in the spring of 1984, and then his Honda teammate Johnny O'Mara winning it when they came back again at the end of the year… You know, I have been doing my research, and from the first race through the 11th, ten of those winners were on Hondas—Bailey, O’Mara, Ricky Johnson, Jean-Michel Bayle, Jeff Stanton, Jeremy McGrath... The standout performer on another bike during that time was Jeff Ward, who won the sixth edition and obviously he was on green.
Overall, Paris is just one of those events that’s stood the test of time and continues to draw in the crowds. We've got a bigger stadium now since it moved from Bercy to La Defense, I think it's 32,000 capacity. It's primarily a concert venue, with seating around three sides of the venue, and the back wall that has the biggest screen in Europe. I think Pink was the first performer there, or maybe the Rolling Stones back in 2017. It's also the home of Racing 92, which is a premier league rugby team in France, so it's a massive venue. The acoustics are fantastic and they get a much similar size track to what you guys get in the U.S..
Related: History of Paris Supercross
In the years that I’ve attended the whole weekend seems very much like a giant French moto celebration, practically a reunion, sort of like Anaheim is here in the states.
Yeah, and everything the French do, they, they just go all-in, don't they? To sell out the old Bercy Stadium in its first ever attempt and to keep selling out this venue, which is more than twice the capacity, is just amazing. The French go at this 100 percent. If they're going to create a show, they create a great show. Of course these days the opening ceremonies aren't quite like they were in the mid-eighties. I think my first visit was1987 when RJ came out in this giant mechanical hand! And they also sort of had this “Fantasy Island” set dropping down from the stadium roof, with a couple of palm trees and a mock swimming pool, with the Dutch riders John Van den Berk and Davey Strijbos parked on lounge chairs. But then at some point you run out of ideas and then I guess later on down the line, the “Health and Safety Brigade,” as boring as they are, they come in and say, “No, no one's being lowered from the roof anymore. No cables. Just keep it on the ground, please.”
Yes, now it’s more of the lasers and pyro and special effects, but it’s still cool. My first time was 1995 or maybe ’96, and the theme was this western-style Cowboys and Indians battle, and they had all these people dressed up like in the movies or old TV shows. It was really strange, but also just so typically French! It was quite the spectacle.
Another cool thing as well is the fact that everybody's just there to have a good time. Invariably the American riders pretty much stick together, but they're all accessible to everybody else that's there racing, so it’s a real nice atmosphere. I'm looking forward to it. It's one of my favorite events of the year and, for me, just a nice way to round out the season.
You've had a front row seat for this for a long time. Did you ever actually race Bercy?
Yes, I was just telling a friend of mine today about it, back in 1991. Do you remember the French photographer, Pat Boulland? He was the one that always wore a bandanna, with sort of long hair and very, very cool guy. Well, I had become pretty good friends with him, when I was in my second year in 500 Grand Prix. And he contacted me just to say that the promoters wanted me to be there for the supercross. I was like, “Yes, sweet! Let's do a deal.” However, Alec Wright was my boss at Kawasaki and he wasn't too pleased that I was going to do this, at the end of the British National Championship season, which ran a few weeks longer than the GP back then. Alec just said to me, “Yeah, when you come down to the last round, bring your training bikes as well and we'll just get them all serviced up.” But then I think they sold them because the new bikes [for ’92] were supposed to be arriving. Well, they didn't arrive until the Wednesday before I was set to go to Paris. By then Alec was telling me, “Well, there's no point in going, is there? You haven't ridden for six weeks. You haven't been on a supercross track.” There wasn't any real supercross tracks for training in the UK back then anyway. So I'm like, “No, I'm going, I've agreed to a contract. I'm going to honor the deal and that's it, regardless.” I managed to get out on the bike on an outdoor track with no real jumps, let alone whoops. It wasn't ideal practice and the bike was a stocker straight out of the crate. No firm suspension, nothing. So the Paris race was three days of punishment. Didn't even make the main! It was stacked back then as well, with Jean-Michel Bayle, Jeff Stanton, Bradshaw, a few others. But it was great to be a part of it, even if my weekend was not the way I had expected it to be! It was what it was, but I can say I rode the Paris Supercross, at the original Bercy Stadium, and I've actually still got the Camel bib we all had to wear because they were the sponsor back then.
As far as this weekend goes it’s hard to pick someone other than Jett, as hot as he has been in supercross. But Hunter is no slouch, and Cooper Webb is getting back to 100 percent...
Yes, and Dylan's there, Malcolm's in there… You know last year the racing was good, though Jett did win everything, and obviously he's been quite the phenom over the last two years doing what he's done, winning the AMA Supercross Championship in his rookie 450 season, winning SMX two years on the spin, outdoors last year—obviously he got hurt this year. And how cool was it that they won the Motocross of Nations? The two brothers plus Kyle Webster.
Yes, and with Jett being only 21 years old, we may be in for a long run here… but it couldn't happen to a more interesting family. From the, from the day they showed up in the U.S. five or six years ago they have been fun to watch, and both Jett and Hunter seem to keep to continue improving as well.
I was recently talking about Jett’s improvement because I remember when he raced EMX 250, the European Championship, after he literally just come off 85s—he was 14 years old. He struggled the first part of the year on the bigger bike, but then he got on the podium at one of the hottest races that year in Italy, and by the end of that summer he came away with a win in Assen [Holland] in the sand. Once he figured it out, sort of the second half of the season, he really took off. The kid obviously knew that he could ride a bike, and at the same time a lot of people were talking, “You know, Hunter's good but his kid brother is even better and blah-blah-blah...” And, you know, it's kind of nice to have that kind of praise and all the rest of it in time, but if you're Hunter Lawrence, you've got to be sitting there thinking, this is a little disrespectful. I'm still riding too!
Here's a funny story about Jett: When he got on the podium that first time in Italy, for third overall, I was calling the race. After we came off air and I saw his mom Emma afterwards and she was saying, “Oh, it's quite funny just watching him up there because it was his first time on the podium…” and obviously the podium etiquette isn't there! You know, third guy goes to stage right, and then stage left is second position, the winner in the middle, then the trophies come out: third, second, first. Then it’s the red plate, and then they have the national anthem of the winner, which they see that as a part of paying respect for the winner and their anthem. And she said the whole time Jett was just up there just kind of like just looking around like, ‘Oh, so you're taking your hat off? Okay, I'll take my hat off.’ Jett just was lost on that podium being up there for the first time!
And then my wife Nikki and I bumped into him as we were leaving the circuit and she just said, “Hey mate, good ride.” And he was like, “Oh, yeah, thanks, thanks Nik.” She then asks, “How do you not get arm pump out there?” He went, “Yeah, well, gotta have muscles to have arm pump! And I haven't really got any muscles yet, you know?” He was just there in his shorts, T-shirt, long socks up to his knees, just a 14-year-old kid being a 14-year-old kid, enjoying the moment, not even phased that he had just been on the podium for the first time. Pretty soon he would have his first win and then it was just onwards and upwards for them ever since.
And now he is, back in Europe, an absolute superstar. Wish I was over there to see it all weekend but I will be watching on MXGP-TV.com. Good luck Paul with the show and I hope it's some good racing, hen enjoy your holiday when you go back to New Zealand.
Thank you very much, looking forward to it!
