UNSTOPPABLE JORGE PRADO WINS HIS FOURTH MOTOCROSS WORLD TITLE.
The 2024 season saw an epic battle between three multi-time World Champions, as Jorge Prado took the #1 plate he had earned from his 2023 title and fought to defend it against the two five-time World Champions in the class, Tim Gajser and Jeffrey Herlings. It was the first time that two existing quintuple Champs had lined up together since 2004. Between the big three, these riders have dominated MXGP for the last half-decade, taking every title since Antonio Cairoli’s final crown of 2017. While his 2023 crown was never straightforward, this time Prado had to take on the other two multi-champs for the entire season, and Motocross fans were treated to a back and forth, unpredictable, and season-long struggle for supremacy.
The 23-year-old Spaniard, who celebrates his birthday in the first week of the year and is still at the age where many riders would be racing in MX2, has truly matured into one of the all-time greats with this amazing Championship battle. Taking 11 Grand Prix wins against four for each of his main rivals, the consistency of his competitors pushed him to continually get the best out of himself. For a rider whose career holeshot record hovers around the 50% mark – truly one of the best starters of all time – that means riding at the front and enduring the pressure from legends who have the fearsome reputation of being untouchable towards the end of a Grand Prix race.
As Jorge’s father, Jesus, told the Behind The Gate crew, Jorge has been riding in this way since the age of nine. “For Jorge, it is natural to get the holeshot and lead a race. It might not be for everyone, but this is the way he has always raced. Some riders cannot do this as well, but Jorge can take the pressure because he is so used to being in front.” This ability caught the attention of the KTM management, and in his early teenage years the Prado family moved to Belgium, the mecca of Motocross, to support him in his quest to become a professional Motocross rider. With a natural style and balance that has been shaped in part by his love for Trials – a sport that has been led by the Spanish for decades – he soon mastered the sand riding techniques of the Benelux riders like nobody else from his part of the world.
All of this contributed to Prado’s rapid development into one of the hottest prospects of European Motocross. In 2015, he won the EMX125 European title at the age of 14, starting his career successfully. A year later in 2016, after finishing a less successful EMX250 season, the young Prado lined-up in his first MX2 Grand Prix in The Netherlands, in the deep sandy track of Assen. That is when he entered into the big league with a bang, racing dominant Champion Jeffrey Herlings hard in the Dutchman’s local sand, confirming all of his talent as he directly climbed onto the third step of the podium, at the tender age of just 15.
The 2017 campaign was his first full MX2 season, finishing seventh in the standings with an impressive trio of Grand Prix victories at Trentino, Lommel, and Assen, with five podiums, becoming the first Spanish rider to win an MX2 Grand Prix. The Spaniard was already on his way to greatness as he emerged in 2018 as one of the most complete riders of the year in MX2.
Jorge moved to the Italian squad of Red Bull KTM Factory Racing, alongside Antonio Cairoli, and Claudio and Davide De Carli took the challenge to guide the young Spanish rider to the top of the MX2 class. Prado went on to take a whopping 12 GP wins, making 17 podiums out of 20. With these impressive stats, Prado rose above his main rival Pauls Jonass to win his first MX2 World Championship, and the first for a Spanish rider outside of the defunct MX3 category.
He didn’t stop there as he rode even better during the 2019 season to completely dominate the Championship, winning every Grand Prix he contested apart from Uddevalla, which was where he steadily took a fourth place in race two to clinch the title with two rounds to go, even after completely missing round two in the UK due to a shoulder injury. His margin of 213 points was the biggest ever seen in MX2, and his second straight title saw him move up to the MXGP category as he turned 19 years of age.
In the premier class, Prado had to deal with a heavy-hitting line-up of former World Champions like Antonio Cairoli, Jeffrey Herlings, Tim Gajser and Romain Febvre. Not only that, but he immediately broke his leg in pre-season training on the 450. His first season in MXGP ended with a solid sixth place in the Championship with GP victories in Faenza and Lommel, as well as an emotional home GP win at the first event held at the intu-Xanadu Arroyomolinos circuit.
Fifth in 2021 with a solitary GP win at Loket, the 2022 season saw Prado switch brand to the Red Bull GASGAS Factory Racing Team with Davide De Carli. This proved to be a good move with the Spaniard stepping up a notch and starting to perform at the top on a regular basis. He won a single GP in Portugal and managed to get an amazing 10 podiums out of 17 to claim his first MXGP medal with bronze behind Tim Gajser and Jeremy Seewer.
2023 was the year that Prado rose to become MXGP Champ for the first time, also winning the first title for the GASGAS brand. The Spaniard started the season in top form in Argentina after winning the newly implemented points-counting RAM Qualifying Race, then finishing on the podium on Sunday to wear the Red Plate that he would never relinquish. After that, Prado kept performing to high standards, pressuring his rivals with 11 RAM Qualifying Race wins, and although he only won two GPs overall, in Trentino and Teutschenthal, he won more individual races than anybody with a total of 14, withstanding the charge of Jeffrey Herlings before the Dutchman’s injury, then able to keep a rampant Romain Febvre at bay with consistent scoring, clinching the title at Maggiora when Febvre suffered a mechanical issue to put the Championship beyond his reach.
His 2024 season started by showing impressive form from the very beginning as he hit the MXGP Championship on the back of a non-stop winter pre-season, winning the first four Grands Prix with six of the eight individual race wins. Although getting unstuck in the mud of Portugal, he bounced back with a commanding win in his hometown MXGP of Galicia, on the track that’s named after him in Lugo! With both that GP and a later win in Sweden, he revealed that the 2024 edition of Jorge Prado could actually make passes and win from average starts!
The red plate bounced between Jorge and the consistent Tim Gajser, until Prado got caught up in a first turn pile-up at Maggiora! The track that had given him so much joy in 2023 nearly cost him the title this season, as Gajser romped to the GP win and stretched out a points lead.
After Jorge’s first four wins, nobody was able to win back-to-back GPs, as the three multi-champions slugged it out. Passed by Gajser for the GP win at Loket, then by a stunning Herlings display at Lommel, he stayed in the fight with that win at Uddevalla, before again falling to Herlings in the sand of Arnhem. Even with Gajser’s victory in Switzerland for round 17, extending the Slovenian’s lead, Prado never dropped out of the top three in a race after the second Indonesian round. After a narrow win for the Spaniard in Türkiye, the turning point came in China when Gajser suffered his moment of misfortune with crashes and a broken footpeg in race one.
With the final round in Spain, and two perfect home GPs under his belt already, the slender seven-point advantage Prado held going to the final round at Cozar looked to be healthy enough. Despite a rare error which cost him the second race win, Jorge rode to a third straight GP victory to clinch that fourth title in his home country! Amidst wild celebrations he was able to tell Lisa Leyland that: “It was a great year, and I deserve this title so much. A lot of work goes behind it, with a lot of effort from everybody behind me. That’s the fourth one, let’s go!”
Although there is speculation about his future, to be cleared up in the weeks to come, there is now no doubt that the best Spanish Motocross racer ever, and now equal sixth in all-time GP wins with Gajser on 49, has joined the ranks of the all-time elite with this epic Championship victory. Vamos, Senor Prado!
CAREER STATS
Grand Prix Wins: 49
Race Wins: 94
Podiums: 118
MX2 World Champion: 2018, 2019
MXGP World Champion: 2023, 2024
2024 STATS
Grand Prix Wins: 11
Race Wins: 16
Pole Positions: 5
Podiums: 16
Text/Bild: Infront