Haiden Deegan, 18, clinched the 2024 Pro Motocross 250 championship with three motos remaining in the season and has his sights set on defending his 2023 SuperMotocross World Championship title.
Hearing the confidence in his voice, one would be hard-pressed to bet against that eventuality.
In 2024, Deegan earned six holeshots, nine motos, and five overall victories while leading 99 laps. He’s shown both the ability to maintain and extend massive leads and the skill to slice through traffic with the intrepidness that only a teenager can muster.
At High Point in Round 4 of the Motocross Championship, Round 21 of SuperMotocross, he recovered from an early crash and deficit of 15 seconds to win the first moto; he came within a bike length of doing that again in Moto 2.
Last week in the Budds Creek National, he held a 24-second advantage on the field on Lap 13 and was determined to get more.
“I just wanted to make a statement in that first moto,” Deegan said after the race. “It was all that I cared about. I wanted to see how far I could get of a lead and I got it up to, like, 25 seconds at one point - and then fell. Just a dumb mistake, went into neutral trying to gain more time.”
In Moto 2, Deegan showed restraint after a bad start once he acknowledged the best way to defend his SMX Championship is to enter the final three races as healthy as possible.
“Back there in 12th with my teammate [Nick Romano], it was a straight war,” Deegan said. “I was quite stuck. I ended up getting around him, but where I was, I was pretty deep still. Honestly, I just wanted to hold the title up on the podium. That’s what I was looking forward to. I wasn’t risking anything in that moto; I was just having fun. After I got around my teammate for 15 minutes of blockage, we were good.”
Deegan is taking a critical step toward maturation, which will eventually make him one of the riders to beat in the 450 class. He’s in no hurry to advance to that division, however, and wants to win the third prong of SuperMotocross by taking a 250 SX championship. Deegan finished second to Tom Vialle earlier this year in his second full-time campaign.
“It’s been a long season, a lot of work,” Deegan said. “This MX title is nothing easy. I had to put a lot of work into getting to this position. A lot of work from my team, from my family. This is more for the fans, motivating me, the non-supporters motivating me - everyone, honestly.”
Defending a Title
Now, Deegan turns his attention to the SuperMotocross series, where he is the defending champion.
The Pro Motocross season finale, Ironman National, is on his mind, with two more motos to win and a big check for the overall to cash. But first and foremost, he wants to enter zMax Dragway with momentum in three weeks.
“It’s time to get on some supercross hybrid tracks and start getting prepped for the SMX title,” Deegan said. “I’ve got the Pro Motocross title. There’s still money to be made and a win to add to the books in the last round, so I’m going to try my best to do that, but it’s time to start working toward defending my SMX title.”
Deegan entered the 2023 SuperMotocross championship seeded second to Hunter Lawrence. He finished third in Round 1 at zMax Dragway and left tied for the lead with Jo Shimoda.
Lawrence rebounded the following week to win Round 2 at Chicagoland Speedway, but another third-place finish that week kept Deegan in contention. The finale at the Los Angeles Coliseum would decide the championship with triple points awarded in SMX’s unique playoff formula.
Deegan scored the overall victory in that iconic venue with consistency. He finished fifth in Moto 1 and second in Moto 2. The two race winners, Jordon Smith (Moto 1) and Levi Kitchen (Moto 2) finished 10th in the races they failed to win.
But the defending champion did not have nearly as much confidence in 2023 as he will bring to Concord, North Carolina, in two weeks. Deegan won three Motocross Nationals and would win one of the SMX races.
He still has the potential to double his win total before the playoffs begin.
“This year, besides SMX - outdoors and everything - I feel like I have a lot more confidence. I’ve matured, gotten a lot faster. After Fox (Raceway), going 1-1, I was like, damn, we have put in the work.”
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