{"id":70770,"date":"2017-04-24T15:16:47","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T21:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/tomac-takes-supercross-lead-with-stunning-comeback-in-salt-lake\/"},"modified":"2017-04-24T21:16:47","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T21:16:47","slug":"tomac-takes-supercross-lead-with-stunning-comeback-in-salt-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/tomac-takes-supercross-lead-with-stunning-comeback-in-salt-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"Tomac takes Supercross lead with stunning comeback in Salt Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Tomac\"
Tomac<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Eli Tomac, of Cortez, Colorado, made a stunning comeback in the Salt Lake City Supercross on Saturday night, racing from 15th place to overtake rival Ryan Dungey for the victory.<\/p>\n

With the win, Tomac stands alone atop the 450SX leaderboard, with 319 points to second-place Dungey\u2019s 316.<\/p>\n

The rivals entered the race at Rice-Eccles Stadium tied for first. A loud crowd of more than 43,000 fans had watched Dungey and Tomac duel in a heat race and was primed for the main event.<\/p>\n

KTM rider Dungey grabbed the lead in Lap 1 and held it for the first 18 laps, according to the official lap chart.<\/p>\n

Tomac started badly and was as far back as 15th at the start of the race. In 11th place in Lap 2, Tomac began his charge, quickly passing riders in each lap. The Kawasaki rider benefited from Justin Bogle\u2019s crash in Lap 8, and he passed him and Blake Baggett to tuck into third place just behind Jason Anderson and about 8 seconds behind Dungey.<\/p>\n

He went by Husqvarna rider Anderson, who went wide on a curve, and passed the lapped Vince Friese to come up behind Dungey in second place in Lap 14.<\/p>\n

Dungey, running out in front of Anderson, had lost track of Tomac, who was deep in the pack for the first five laps. He didn\u2019t see him coming until Tomac challenged Anderson for second place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was actually kinda surprised,\u201d Dungey said in the post-race news conference. \u201cHe kinda caught me off-guard.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the race became a two-man contest, the difference came in the whoops. Dungey chose to jump through the bumps, while Tomac skimmed over the top of them and attempted to pass Dungey in the curves.<\/p>\n

Tomac immediately pressured Dungey in the whoops and curves, and after several attempts, passed him in Lap 19. He opened up a 6-second lead and kept it for the final nine laps, beating second-place Dungey by more than 6.3 seconds.<\/p>\n

It was Tomac\u2019s ninth win of the AMA 450SX Supercross series, and his ninth in the past 13 races.<\/p>\n

Husqvarna rider Jason Anderson, of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, finished third. KTM rider Marvin Musquin, of Clermont, Florida, finished fourth. Tomac\u2019s Kawasaki teammate, Josh Grant, of Wildomar, California, finished fifth.<\/p>\n

Tomac later described his bad start as nerve-wracking.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of guys and everyone\u2019s tight, and you know, banging bars, and it\u2019s not a position you want to be in,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter that, it was just go time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Tomac and Dungey seemed to say at the press conference that the race was won in the whoops.<\/p>\n

Dungey regretted his decision to jump through the bumps while Tomac skimmed the bumps. \u201cI just feel like that left-hander going into the whoops to the left-hander after \u2013 that chunk \u2013 I just gave up everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe skim was working,\u201d Tomac said.<\/p>\n

The 2017 race for the Supercross title is being billed at the closest race in 44 years. For Tomac, that\u2019s not surprising.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the days of one guy completely dominating and running away with races is pretty well gone,\u201d Tomac told the Deseret News during a prerace news conference on Friday. \u201cIt\u2019s so competitive now. It\u2019s tough. If you\u2019re buried on the start, a lot of times, you can\u2019t make it all the way to the front because there is so many good guys. \u2026 There are not many secrets left out there, and at the end of the day, you just have to go do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s it going to take to beat Tomac?<\/p>\n

\u201cJust win,\u201d Dungey said. \u201cAnd fight like hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to race each other pretty respectfully,\u201d Tomac said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to race each other hard, but nothing that\u2019s going to be out of control or really dirty. We\u2019ve got two to go, we\u2019ll do what we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their next race is on April 29 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The final, 17th race of the 2017 AMA Supercross series is May 6 in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

races remaining, Cortez rider leads rival by 3 points<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-70770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70770","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=70770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70770"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=70770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}