{"id":128564,"date":"2026-05-11T11:01:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T17:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ken-roczen-wins-450sx-supercross-title-in-salt-lake-city\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T11:01:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T17:01:29","slug":"ken-roczen-wins-450sx-supercross-title-in-salt-lake-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ken-roczen-wins-450sx-supercross-title-in-salt-lake-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Roczen wins 450SX Supercross title in Salt Lake City"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Ken
Ken Roczen clinched the 2026 Supercross 450SX championship title in Salt Lake City on Saturday. (Courtesy of Team Suzuki; photo taken at Round 16 Denver)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Ken Roczen, whose Supercross career was believed to be over after a devastating crash in 2017, was crowned the 450SX champion for the 2026 Supercross season in Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n

Roczen\u2019s victory on Saturday came after defeating second place overall points finisher Hunter Lawrence. The two were separated by only one point at the start of Round 17.<\/p>\n

This marks the German\u2019s first ever Supercross championship victory, highlighting his remarkable comeback from injury and silencing doubters who said he couldn\u2019t finish the second half the season strong.<\/p>\n

Initially, Lawrence and Cortez\u2019s Eli Tomac were the dominant names at the top of the leader board, but over the course of the season, Roczen narrowed their lead.<\/p>\n

Following his win, Roczen spoke of the importance of believing in a dream and never feeling like a dream couldn\u2019t be accomplished due to age or circumstance.<\/p>\n

In 2017, at the Round 3 race in Anaheim, Roczen suffered a devastating crash that included a compound fracture to his radius that required surgery, a dislocated wrist and dislocated elbow. At that time, many wondered if it would be a career-ending crash.<\/p>\n

Despite the struggle, Roczen fought his way back to this championship victory.<\/p>\n

At the start final round\u2019s Main Event on Saturday, Lawrence took the hole shot, but Roczen moved to the inside and passed around the first turn. Lawrence stayed close behind in second, while Jorge Prado rode in third.<\/p>\n

Commentators noted the race would be \u201cthe ride of his life\u201d for both riders, as Roczen is known for being stronger in the first half of the race, while Lawrence is stronger in the second half.<\/p>\n

While Lawrence worked to stay close to Roczen, Prado began drastically narrowing Lawrence\u2019s lead. Lawrence briefly rode off the track, allowing Roczen to gain more of a lead and to put Prado within striking distance.<\/p>\n

Lawrence soon crashed around a corner and dropped his bike as he tried to get going again, pushing him to seventh place.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s over,\u201d commentators said.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of the race, Chase Sexton passed Prado for second, setting his sights on Roczen. He soon passed Roczen for the lead, followed by Justin Cooper, Prado and Cooper Webb.<\/p>\n

Despite being passed by the four riders and placing fifth in the race, all Roczen had to do to clinch the championship title was finish ahead of Lawrence. Lawrence finished in seventh behind Justin Hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s looking at the big picture,\u201d commentators said of Roczen, who rode safely across the finish line to be named the 2026 overall champion.<\/p>\n

As he finished, Roczen began to cry as his fellow racers crowded around to congratulate him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dream became a reality,\u201d commentators said as the crowd cheered for Roczen.<\/p>\n

Prior to the Main Event in Heat 1, Sexton placed first, followed by Prado and Cooper. Heat 2 saw a crash from Tomac after he clocked the fastest lap in the qualifying round. He was unable to finish the race, with his team noting that forfeiting the race was a precautionary measure after the \u201cheavy blow\u201d to his hip and stomach in the crash.<\/p>\n

\u201cShaking my head on yesterday\u2019s crash, but what do you do, it\u2019s Supercross and stuff happens \u2026 totally hammered my hip on my bike and footpeg,\u201d Tomac said in an Instagram post. \u201cNothing broke, just muscle beat up and locked up again. Almost identical injury to Cleveland, but the opposite side. Quite the up and down season, but the highs were higher than the lows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tomac placed fourth overall for the Supercross season and will return for outdoor Motocross this summer.<\/p>\n

In that heat, Lawrence placed first, Justin Barcia second and Malcolm Stewart third.<\/p>\n

The 2026 Motocross season will kick off on Saturday, May 30, at Fox Raceway in Pala, California.<\/p>\n

\n

2026 Supercross 450SX Final Point Standings<\/p>\n

Rider<\/strong>Team<\/strong>Points<\/strong>1. Ken RoczenSuzuki 3492. Hunter LawrenceHonda3463. Cooper WebbYamaha 3154. Eli TomacKTM2755. Justin CooperYamaha2736. Chase SextonKawasaki2377. Malcolm StewartHusqvarna2038. Joey SavatgyHonda1949. Jorge PradoKTM18910. Justin HillTeam Tedder188<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

bduran@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cortez\u2019s Eli Tomac injured in the heat race<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":128565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6313],"tags":[21,162,28,60,29,447,6419],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-128564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-2","tag-cortez","tag-eli-tomac","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-supercross","tag-tj-trueanthem"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128564"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=128564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}