Killy Rusk never planned to ride motocross. It just happened.
The 18-year-old has raced since age 5, when his dad bought a motorbike to ride around town in Durango. After a while, Rusk’s father got tired of sharing with his young son.
“We went to a local store and just got a cheap, beginner bike, and I’ve been working and training hard since then,” Rusk said.
He’ll be riding his not-so-cheap orange-and-white KTM 250 SX at the Lucas Oil Motocross championships at Thunder Valley Park in Golden this weekend.
Rusk isn’t part of a factory-supported team. He and his dad, Rob, do it all on their own, traveling around the country each weekend with hopes that a major team will see his results and hire him.
“I’ve been trying to do well my whole life at races so that people will know my name,” Rusk said.
Rob Rusk said that while racing is a huge financial and time commitment, he wouldn’t trade the feeling of watching his son race.
“Almost every weekend, you walk out there and there’s 40,000 people in the stands and you’re like, ‘Whoa, we actually made it somewhere,’ ” Rob Rusk said. “We’re kind of a team effort.”
When Killy Rusk started seriously considering racing as a career, he and his parents decided that home-schooling would be easier than missing weeks of class each semester.
Though his parents were a little concerned about what he would miss in high school, racing taught him confidence and a strong work ethic.
“Just the fact that you’re out there racing against 40 other tough guys,” Rob Rusk said of his son. “As far as life lessons go, that’s more than any school could ever provide.You can’t replace that with anything. It’s the school of hard knocks, you could say.”
If racing doesn’t pan out as a full-time career, Killy plans to head back to school to become a paramedic or a firefighter — but not because he has endured many accidents on the track.
He has broken his wrist three times, which is nothing compared to some racers, he said.
“The speed gets a little crazy at times,” he said. “We’re pushing the limit right now. It definitely gets wild. It gets your heart beating, but I’ve been pretty lucky, considering what the sport is like.”
He met one of his best friends, 19-year-old Tevin Tapia, after a minor crash in Sacramento, Calif. Tapia tried to get out of the way after falling but accidentally hit the front end of Killy’s bike.
Afterward, Tapia apologized and discovered what he called a “class act” in Killy and his father. It’s easy to be friends off the track, he said, but when they’re racing, it’s still a rivalry.
“There’ve been plenty of times where we get into it and bump bikes, but we just leave it out on the track,” Tapia said.
Rob Rusk knows that soon his son won’t need him around on race day. For now, he’s trying to spend as much time with him in case that day comes soon.
“Each year I’m always thinking, let’s enjoy it while we can,” Rob said. “The places we’ve been and seen are just amazing. You can’t ever get that time back.”
Sarah Kuta: 303-954-1033 or skuta@denverpost.com
Motocross
What: Lucas Oil Motocross championships
Where: Thunder Valley Motocross Park, Golden
When: Saturday, 12:30-6 p.m.
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