GYTR Yamaha’s 2015 MX Nationals MXD champion Wilson Todd had a ripper of a season by anyone’s standards, but he’s now scheduled to miss the upcoming supercross championship after undergoing ACL surgery last week. MotoOnline.com.au caught up with the 17-year-old Cairns racer to get his Fast Thoughts on a range of topics.

Image: Simon Makker.

2015 as whole…

It actually didn’t go as good as I thought it would. I won half of the rounds, but I would’ve liked to have gone better and I found myself battling with injuries throughout the season. Right at the start of the year I came back from Japan and went to test with Yamaha for the first time, but I hit a water rut and stepped through the bars and hurt my shoulder quite bad. I never got it checked out, but for a couple of weeks I couldn’t lift my arm and was in a lot of pain. Then two weeks before round one I was hit by a car while out cycling and broke my hip and elbow, so I had to ride the first round with two broken bones! At the VIC titles just before Murray Bridge I hurt my wrist and rode around in a fair bit of pain, then I got arm-pump real bad and stepped off again and re-aggravated my wrist. I could hardly twist the throttle, so I just had to ride it out then try to recover for round five at Coolum. After the mid-season break I was okay injury-wise, but I got stuck in a rut and caught in the same pace as others and got bad arm-pump. But I thought about it all today and there was only one round where I finished outside the top two, so that’s a pretty cool achievement. I can’t be too bummed about coming away from the nationals on top.

Battling with Jayden Rykers…

It’s been interesting. To me it seems like he wants to be a bully on the track and came across on me a few times, especially at Horsham. I don’t know if he knew I was riding injured, but he definitely made it hard on me that day and was pretty aggressive with his moves. At Coolum last weekend he cut me off on the start straight right out of practice, then when I lined up for the motos he lined up right next to me. I changed my gate four times and he changed every time to be next to me. It was like the only way he knew he could win was to cut me off at the start or take me out. He builds a little ramp behind his bike on the start-gate so he carries more roll-speed into the gate-drop, which helped him launch straight out in front of me. I hit the brakes and let him go, then came through the field and passed him anyway.

Image: Simon Makker.

Off-season plans…

I crashed at the Queensland titles back in 2012 and knocked myself out and wrote everything off. My knee was really swollen so we got it checked out and the specialist said my ACL was gone, but to come back when I had hair on my face! It would’ve been better to have operated on it last year, but mum had to get insurance to pay for it and we had to wait a year for that. I had the operation the day after Coolum and am now playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto. They’ve said it’ll be six months, but on Saturday I’ve got an appointment to see a physio guy who’ll give me a program to start building it back up again. Hopefully I can be back sooner. The surgery means I’ll miss supercross, but I’ll be back for MX Nationals next year where I’ll step up to MX2. I’m not sure which team I’m riding for yet; I’m keeping my options open.

Snapchat…

It’s pretty much the only social media I use, except for Instagram and a little bit of Facebook. I dunno, it’s just a fun app and I’ll send a few stories and Snaps to people every now and then. It’s always funny to see what everyone’s getting up to.

Australia’s chances at MXoN…

I think it’ll be tough to go past France, but I’d like to think Australia can finish in the top five. Obviously Todd’s going really well and Dean’s been putting in some really good results lately. I think Jay Wilson’s really picked up his speed in the second half of the MX Nationals, but we’ll have to wait and see. I haven’t looked into the other countries’ teams that much, but I think Australia’s looking quite strong.