With the title already wrapped up, Haiden Deegan rode free and fast in Salt Lake City, dominating the 250SX East/West Showdown main event from start to finish. The Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing rider cruised to a wire-to-wire win, crossing the line almost 10 seconds clear of the pack in tow. In this Conversation feature, Deegan breaks down his statement ride to close out Supercross 2025.

Image: Octopi Media.

Haiden, you did as you said you were going to do! You came out here today and you didn’t just win, you dominated – how satisfying is it to end your Supercross season like this?

Yeah, I needed this. I just needed a statement ride like this, especially in a Showdown. It feels really good, this is where I should’ve been at the whole season. Unfortunately, we only tapped into it at the end, but we still won the championship. So that’s all that matters, hopefully we can keep it rolling into outdoors.

Can you talk about your riding today? Your technique… watching you was a blast! You seem like you were bouncing around through everything, all the TV cameras caught that little pocket into the corner, some big quads.

Yeah I know, today felt good! It was a little harder to breathe here than it was in Colorado for some reason, I was actually gasping for air in that heat race – I just let JuJu [Julien Beaumer] have that one. But yeah, bike skills felt pretty good today. I mean, I just felt loose, the championship was over. I even told my dad, I’m like, ‘Dude, it is hard when I’m not racing for anything.’ I had to self motivate myself pretty hard before that main event to get it done, but yeah, I just felt loose today, because I mean, I don’t really have much on the line.

Just talk about racing today and the lack of nerves and pressure on yourself. Could you just ride more free knowing that you really didn’t have anything to lose?

Yeah, it was good! I knew those boys were going to go at it, so I knew I just needed to get a start and ride my own race and I was pretty sure I could gap them. So that’s what I did, I pulled the holeshot and flat tracked the landing of the jump, which was pretty cool. Other than that, I hit a couple lines that no one else was hitting, I actually [over-jumped] it one lap and it hurt pretty bad. But yeah, just rode good overall and yeah, got the dub.

Image: Octopi Media.

What do you think has been your biggest point of growth throughout this season?

I think just being consistent. I’ve been on the box, or winning, nine out of the last 10 rounds. It was pretty amazing, and I think that’s how I won this championship. Consistency helped a lot, plus just building in the whoops. I have to get better at those, and I feel like even this round, every lap I blitzed them. Bobby [Regan] was on me saying, ‘You might as well not even race if you’re not going to blitz the whoops,’ pretty much! So I had to just blitz them every lap, and got the dub.

You [and Julien Beaumer] gave us a pretty cool rivalry this year and got into a bit of the back and forth. What was it like for you having someone step up and take on that role of really trying to challenge you?

Yeah, it was fun. I just wanted to win, so I was trying to mentally break the kid and I did it. I was just riding him dirty at a couple of rounds and talking a little bit, we definitely got a little bit of clout off of it – his follower count went up crazy [laughs]. It is what it is, he rode good this season too, there was definitely some good battles.