nly four riders have won FIM Motocross World Championships this decade—two of them while wearing Red Bull KTM colors—but 2019 has been turbulent for both Jeffrey Herlings and Tony Cairoli. What’s been going on?

1. Where has Herlings been?
Largely on the sidelines since breaking his right foot in multiple places in late January and only weeks before the first Grand Prix. According to the team, the reigning champion was apparently faster and just as intense through training as in 2018, where he won 17 of 19 GPs and posted a 100 percent podium record. A hairline fracture in a bizarre sighting-lap crash in the first moto at Latvia in mid-June meant another period of convalescence.

2. But wasn’t he winning in 2019?
Amazingly, he went on to claim that first race in Latvia—with a broken tibia! The fixture at Kegums was round nine of the series, and Herlings was competing for just the second time in MXGP this year.

3. Does the list of injuries match the list of accomplishments?
It’s starting to look that way. Herlings won in MXGP at his second attempt and took his career tally of championships to four (three in MX2). He has 84 Grand Prix wins. His list of injuries is pretty brutal: a dislocated shoulder, three broken collarbones, a mangled little finger, broken femur, and a dislocated hip, right foot, and now a right leg. He turns 25 in September.

4. Wasn’t there talk of coming to America?
It was an idea brewing in Herlings’ head post-surgery in January, and even reached a tentative discussion stage with KTM management. The reality of coming stateside to tackle Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross was far-fetched due to his fitness. Herlings competed for the first time in Holland toward the end of May. He would never have been in race shape for Hangtown, and coping with the all the logistics of the transatlantic hop would have been overkill.

5. Will he be back this season,and will he win?
Yes and yes. He won’t appear for the Indonesian double-header in July but might surface in the Czech Republic at the end of the month. The next Grand Prix is in the Belgian sand of Lommel: ideal terrain for Herlings and the start of his preparation for the Motocross of Nations on home turf at the end of September.

6. Tony Cairoli was leading the championship this year. Where is he now?
Thanks to four wins in the first five GPs, the 33-year-old stretched a 30-point gap over HRC Honda’s Tim Gajser. However, mistakes while dueling with the Slovenian in Italy, Portugal, and Spain were uncharacteristic. He tweaked his knee and then his shoulder in a qualification tumble in Russia for round eight. The weakened state led to fall a week later in Latvia, where he dislocated his right shoulder (the first time in a 14-year GP career he’d suffered that type of injury). At press time, the full extent of the damage to the joint was still unknown.

7. Is the bid for a tenth world title over?
Unfortunately, it looks that way. Gajser won in Latvia and Germany to turn that 30-point deficit into a 80-plus-point advantage. Even if Cairoli were to return for the Indonesian double and exact some of his top-three consistency against the odds, he’d still need Gajser to have one of his “brain melts” from the Grand Prix of Lombardia (round five, and Tony’s last win to date), where he crashed repeatedly.

8. Could Cairoli retire this year?
Very unlikely. He has another season on his Red Bull KTM contract, and even though he is expecting his first child with wife Jill this year, he has not slowed or shown the slightest sign of losing motivation or interest. He is the second-oldest rider in the class behind Kevin Strijbos.

9. Why does he continue to be so successful?
An honest and fierce passion for what he does—it’s as simple as that. He also has a comfortable and efficient setup with team manager and friend Claudio De Carli, and has largely the same team around him that he first joined in 2004. He’s got his own track near Rome and a productive training/mentorship relationship with Jorge Prado, his heir apparent.

10. Will he duel with Herlings again in 2020?
Oh yes—and there’s more. Other MXGP teams are already starting to mobilize with the oncoming prospect of Red Bull KTM fielding Cairoli, Herlings, and Prado next year. (The Spaniard will have to move out of MX2 if he defends his title and has inked a four-year deal to stay in orange in Grand Prix.) It will be arguably one of the best FIM World Championship lineups of all time, with the trio on factory 450 SX-Fs.