Vurbwes Chilidog
The Vurbmoto King of the Classic Presented by MX Trophies is quite literally the most sought after award in ALL of motocross – heck maybe even supercross, too. [insert blooper bleeeep] Okay, I’ll level… people haven’t been grasping the level of satire in most of my captions lately, so I’ll just squash this on its head. Of course it’s not THE MOST in the industry, that part I’m CLEARLY joking about, however it is definitely the most prestigious award you can win at our pinnacle southeast event, the Vurb Classic. An event that draws an insane amount of insane talent to rip the lands of Gray Court, SC at a facility called NxtLvl101. We coin it as a local race with national talent, and the 2024 edition, presented by Michelin Tires, was even more epic than years past. We “LVL’d up” as Jessica Patterson and Eddie Ray (the facility owners, FYI) would say.
Now, this award does have an insane amount of history. From 2012-2016, we used to run three Vurb Classics; one at Oatfield in California, one at MX207 in Maine, and then our iconic round in the southeast that would swap between Silver Dollar and Echeconnee. So we used to crown a lot of KoCs. Here’s me ripping off as many as I can by memory:
Justin Barcia, Josh Mosiman, Ryder DiFrancesco, Axell Hodges, Brandon Hartranft, Mike Alessi, Gage Linville, Rusty Holland, Seth Hammaker, Owen Covell, Kyler West, Austin Kapoukranidis, Earl May, Perry Warren, Sean Cantrell, and most recently 2021 Clayton Sain (RIP), 2022 Dawson Cobb, and 2023 Kyle Bitterman. That’s all my brain can recollect currently, but I have the complete list at my office that I will have to post at some time in my lifetime.
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How does one become King of the Classic? Pretty easy math actually, for those that are able. First and foremost, the racer must race a minimum of two classes per day, and each class that has more than 5 entries is eligible to be counted. We then add the finishing positions of every moto, and divide it by the total of motos raced, and that gives us the finishing average of the racer. We’ll break down this year’s winner here in a minute.
For 2024, with a 1.25 finishing average, we present you our MX Trophies King of the Classic, Ryan Sampson. With a perfect day in 250 C and 450 C on Saturday, followed by 1-2, 1-2 scores on Sunday, Ryan did exactly what he needed to do to keep that finishing average low – WIN. Every single year we typically have standouts in every class that seem to make their sweeps, and the math for KoC contention actually becomes complex. But this year it seemed the raw amount of talent in all the classes kept things mixed up, and despite losing two motos to Cooper Bergeron on Sunday, Ryan captured our highest award from the Vurb Classic.
After presenting the award, my man Jason Crane went to grab a few words with Ryan.
Jason Crane: Talk to me about it. What did you get?!
Ryan: We got the Vurb King of the Classic award, just almost perfect scores I guess!
We tried to make you nervous on the line by taunting you with the trophy and then waving it in the corners throughout the race. What was that like?
It was pretty nerve racking, to be honest, but I kept my cool. Just tried to get a good start. I got a pretty good start and just brought her home.
I talked to your mechanic and he said after you got second in the Moto you were saying how you didn’t really care about it. Is that true?
Yeah, inside I cared about it. I was just trying to show that inside I wasn’t really too nervous. But yea, I cared about it!
Did you expect to take that home?
No, not at all, I was just coming here to have fun to be honest with you.
