Oklahoma native Colt Nichols has been a mainstay in Supercross and Pro Motocross competition for the past decade, earning the 250SX East title in 2021 before transitioning to the premier class the following year. It’s largely been a mixed transition for Nichols, however, the 31-year-old is far from having capitalized on his full potential, which is what he is chasing as his career continues to develop. MotoOnline spoke with Colt in this Conversation feature to find out more while he’s on the mend from UCL surgery.

Image: Octopi Media.

Colt, thanks for taking the time to chat. Let’s start with the thumb injury – I felt like that one was almost a bit random, given your ninth-place result at Washougal in 450MX. Take us through the injury and what happened there.

Yeah, I guess it would have seemed pretty random to the outside as not a lot of people knew what was going on. The second moto at Fox Raceway, on the first lap, I got together with another rider. He got a little bit sketchy and went off the track – or not off the track – but from inside to the outside, and I was on the outside and had nowhere to go. I ran right into him and went flipping over the bars, and my thumb was hurting pretty bad after that, and I didn’t end up finishing that race. I went back, and I couldn’t get an MRI super quick, so I ended up getting one after Hangtown. I was just like, ‘Let’s just ride through it,’ but I didn’t ride that week [after round one] because of the pain, and then I got the results of the MRI on the Saturday of Colorado. I got it through my physio, Dr. G, and he told me, ‘Yeah, your UCL is not great.’ There’s not much you can do other than get surgery – it’s not one of those things that can just heal. Then during Southwick’s first moto, I had a crash, and I must’ve done something kind of similar to my thumb as it went back a little bit more than it should’ve. And ever since, I just couldn’t hold on. We eventually decided to get it fixed – I did get ninth at Washougal, which was better than expected, but I really couldn’t hold on anymore. So yeah, we decided to get it fixed and come back for World Supercross.

Yeah, that’s pretty wild, so no SuperMotocross World Championship (SMX) Playoffs at this stage?

I mean, if I could make maybe the last round of a SMX or something that’d be great, if I’m solidified within the top 20 in points, but we’ll just wait and see. I don’t want to rush this injury, but we’ll see if I can make it back for that. I would love to race at least the last round, but as of now I’m focused on just trying to get back for WSX.

I took a look at the last few years and didn’t realise that you’d been on a rainbow of bikes in the 450 class. There was Honda, and then Kawasaki, then Beta, and now Suzuki. I was wondering, without a level of continuity across that time with the machines, do you think that it has a bit of an impact on your results?

I mean, it’s absolutely one of those things that, once you get used to something, you can ride it and you know what it does, and whether it’s good or bad. Every bike is going to have a flaw and something that you don’t like, but it’s going to have a lot of stuff that you are comfortable with and you do like. But for me, it’s been a little bit more difficult because I never really switched bikes like that before. I was a Team Green Kawasaki rider when I was younger, and then I was on a Yamaha for pretty much seven to eight years as a pro. I was so used to riding a Yamaha 250 that when I got on the 450 with Honda, that was just such a different bike. It took me a while to figure out what I like and what I don’t like because I didn’t know – I’d been on Star for so long, and everything there was pretty turnkey as far as what they thought worked, and it did work. So, trying to find that elsewhere – it was hard. I felt like the Honda was the polar opposite of what you could get from a Star 250. It’s been a bigger undertaking looking back on it, like you said, going from a factory Honda, which was an incredible experience, to a privateer Kawasaki and then trying to develop a completely new motorcycle with Beta, then to get on the Suzuki, which is considered to be an older bike if you will. It’s been difficult. I don’t want to ever make excuses for what I’m doing. I feel like I haven’t ridden and raced as well as I wanted to and got the results I feel like I’m capable of in the past few seasons, and that’s been really frustrating. I do think it’s hard, you know. To go the direction I’ve gone, like you said, I’ve kind of been on the rainbow of motorcycles, and it’s been harder to find out what you like, what you don’t like, and to try and get comfy to get your best every weekend. I’m trying like hell, but it’s been a little bit more of a rollercoaster than I’ve wanted the past few years for sure.

Image: Octopi Media.

For sure, I feel like it would undoubtedly have an impact, whether it were something you were even aware of or not. Just lacking that continuity from season to season to build a base…

It seems like as soon as I start to find my footing, I’m on something new. You even see guys at the very peak of what they’re doing, like Chase Sexton or Eli Tomac, the guys that are considered to be generational talent, and in the first year they’ve been on different teams, they’ve struggled a bit in the first year. Like Chase’s first year going to KTM, or Eli with Kawasaki, for them, it was considered more of a struggle for what their potential was. For me, it’s been a little bit more of like… as soon as I start to kind of figure out the bike and I like it, and I get a P4 at Nashville on the Honda, then I’m done, you know? The same thing with the Kawasaki. I raced it as soon as I got off the Honda through World Supercross and into SMX, and the last SMX Playoff, I think I got fifth in Los Angeles, and then I was off of it. That was my last race on it, and then the Beta was just a struggle from start to finish. I got off that and now on this Suzuki, and it’s been another big process to go, ‘Okay, let’s try and figure out what I want and how I want this bike to work,’ and all that kind of stuff. So it’s been a lot more of an undertaking than I anticipated, but I like where I’m at. I like the team. I like the bike. There’s still a lot of progress that can be made, you know, per usual, but at least I just wanted to be somewhere where I could be there for more than six months, before I have to switch to another bike, so it’s been cool. A blessing to be on the team, and hopefully I will continue to be there next year.

Then the next thing I feel like you’re up against is a really gnarly 450 class. Both indoor and out, from that eight to 15 range is as competitive as it’s ever been. We say every season, but the level of racing just seems to elevate year on year.

Yeah, man, honestly, it’s crazy. I’ve never been in a position where I felt like I wasn’t one of the best guys on track, but when I first got on the Honda 450, I was like, ‘Yo, holy shit’, I was kind of taken aback a little bit. It was just a lot different, not that it was bad at all. It was so much different than what I thought it was going to be, and it was such a polar opposite from the Star 250 that I was like, ‘Dude, I’m just slow as shit on this thing right now, like I have to figure out how to go a little bit faster, because I’m like, really slow.’ It was noticeable at first whenever Chase came out to ride with me for the first time in California, and I was just like, ‘Dude wow’… the level that he was at that day during practice compared to where I was – just like, Jesus Christ, I’ve never been that far off you know where I was just like this guy is unbelievable and I still felt like I was doing decent. I mean, honestly, I feel like the past few years it just keeps getting better and better, and the level gets higher and higher, and there are new young kids. Jett [Lawrence] coming in and taking everything by storm, and that elevates everybody else, you know, which is incredible for the sport but for me, coming off the backside of some bigger injuries and switching teams one million times, I’m just like, ‘Man, slow down’. I need this all just a little bit so I can kinda get my feet underneath me, and then we can take off. You’ll be busting your balls at some of these races, and we’re just straight up getting 12th or 13th or whatever. It’s just no joke, the level of the riding nowadays, it’s honestly insane.

I’ve had a question on my mind for a while now, and I think you’re a good guy to ask about it. Every year, it seems like we have a track or a round that takes a few guys out. One year, it was Nashville, where you finished fourth, and this year it was Tampa. I think that when these things happen, that track catches too much criticism and then we end up with no dragon-backs or only nine whoops, so what do you think about all of that?

Yeah, I mean kind of… I can see both sides of the sword here. I understand why they’re doing it. You need your best guys out on the track. So they try and tailor the track to say, ‘Okay, well, how can we make this to where it is safer now?’ I haven’t seen the data that supports the nine-whoop theory. I don’t know, they say they have it, but as far as how they’re building the rest of the tracks, no dragon-backs, and no this and no that, like that is the technical side of Supercross – I think that’s what makes Supercross what it is. I think you need the tracks to be more technical. If you go back and watch races from the earlier 2000s – 2004 always comes to mind – the tracks were insane. They had these huge split options, [Travis] Pastrana designed St. Louis one year, and it was insanely technical and had some of the craziest obstacles on it. The technicality is what separates a lot of guys, and to me, that’s cool. You need some separation, that’s what makes Supercross very, very cool. If you’re a guy who’s technical and can get through some of these sections, you can separate yourself from the rest of the field, so it’s kind of an interesting situation to be in this new era of Supercross that’s trying to kind of make it a little bit simpler and the same obstacles every weekend, just rearranged a little bit. It does get a little monotonous, I think in a way, but you have guys who are racing through the whole season, I guess. So yeah, the track thing is I think a hot topic for a lot of people, but the bikes are so fast, they just tear the track up a lot more than they used to, but I think overall they need to be a little bit more technical, honestly, for some separation.

Image: Octopi Media.

Shifting onto the World Supercross stuff, you’re one of the guys who has competed in the last few seasons. I think that your Melbourne win was probably one of the cooler wins or races that you’ve had in recent memory, that was pretty legit. Do you enjoy doing it and having that option available to you?

I love it. I think World Supercross is really fun, I mean, you get to travel the world and you’re getting paid to do it, and race dirt bikes, and the whole purpose of it is to try and get more people involved. We went to Abu Dhabi for the first time when we raced there, and it was so cool because a lot of the fans who came were like, ‘We’ve never even seen dirt bikes before, and we’re hooked!’ I was speaking to a lot of the fans in the autograph line, and they loved it. They thought it was the coolest thing ever, so that’s what it’s all about. I thought that was really, really cool, and that’s the whole purpose of what they’re trying to do, to expose more people to it. Make this a worldwide thing and try to make these athletes more of what they are, which are world-class, so for me that’s the best thing and I enjoy doing it. For guys to have an option to race supercross only, I think is awesome. It brings nothing but more money to the sport, and you know they say that the SuperMotocross thing would’ve happened regardless of World Supercross, but I don’t know if I believe that, so for me it’s cool. It’s elevated the sport, and everyone seems like they’re getting paid a little bit more. It’s kind of changing the landscape in the way the sport is going, so I enjoy the series. I love racing it, the format is a little bit different – it feels like you’re just racing a bunch of heat races, but, for the most part, dude, I enjoy getting to travel and getting all these races. It’s kind of the opportunity of a lifetime, so it’s been a really fun experience so far, the past few years.

That’s awesome. And lastly, where are we at now – Colt Nichols at 31 years old – in your career, would you say?

I’ve always told myself, whenever I didn’t have the desire to train and to give my maximum effort off the bike and in preparation to go to a race, I would be done. At the moment, I don’t feel like I’m anywhere close to that point. I still have a burning desire to wake up in the morning and go train, and I’m trying to just get better. I think that’s the most exciting thing about racing, is there are always ways to be better. Even the guys who are dominating, like Jett or whatever. There’s always something to learn, and I still have that desire. I’m still searching for that opportunity to grow. That’s exciting for me. You know it makes me feel like I’m still alive, and I’m not at that point of wanting to go do something else in life, so I’m still chasing that. I still feel like the past few years I haven’t been at my real potential on where I could be, and I’m still trying to find that. So yeah, the show goes on for me right now, I’m enjoying it more than ever, and really just want to get to my full potential and race as best as I can.