Cole Seely: On His Own Terms

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COLE SEELY: ON HIS OWN TERMS | BY JASON WEIGANDT

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ole Seely doesn’t retire from full-time racing with an uncountable number of race wins and titles, but in some ways his career was the best of all, because it was never supposed to exist in the first place. Seely was far from a highly touted prospect, and he even quit the sport in his amateur days, burned out from the pressure. He returned determined to keep it fun, and so simply making the grade in each manner—getting a privateer ride, making mains, then a fill-in spot, getting podiums, then a factory ride, then winning races—all took on the look of bonus time. Seely had a true appreciation for the racing life as he was living it, and it’s that richness of spirit that makes for a great life. See, racing a motorcycle for a living is the dream, but at the top, it becomes so steeped in pressure and work that it doesn’t always feel that way. Seely was the rare man able to actually enjoy it in the moment.

“This was more than a dream come true,” Seely said in a post on his YouTube channel. “I never imagined I’d come so far in this sport.”

Seely was also the rare rider who could actually maintain interesting hobbies off the track, which he began chronicling on YouTube. That added to the enjoyment but invited the inevitable criticism that he could have worked harder. The reality is that it’s impossible to train for 12 hours a day. At least Cole made his downtime interesting.

The moments did get darker after his huge crash at last year’s Tampa Supercross, where he sustained fractures to his sacrum and the left and right sides of his pelvis, temporarily confining him to a wheelchair. Cole fought back to return in 2019 but was never quite the same, admitting that he simply was not going to try the biggest rhythm sections anymore.

“Probably about middle or mid-March, I had kind of a gut feeling I should step away, but part of the reason I didn’t say anything was I didn’t want people or the media to get this perception that I didn’t care anymore because I was retiring,” he explained. “I still wanted to put in results. I was trying my hardest. I was moving to Florida again for the summer. I had actually just gotten there for the summer when I injured my shoulder.”

Another injury ended his Lucas Oil Pro Motocross campaign early, and his retirement announcement came August 1. Cole is still enjoying the sport, though, following his dual sport CRF450L build with a CR250 two-stroke project. In racing and now in retirement, Cole Seely enjoys life more than most.

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