El Cajon native Christian Craig competing in Supercross event at Petco Park
SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – The Monster Energy Supercross event is being held this Saturday at Petco Park.
In studio to tell us all about the event, and how the riders prepare, is El Cajon native Christian Craig.
Christian Craig is 28-years-old and he rides for GEICO Honda in the 250SX class. He has earned 1 supercross win at Phoenix in 2016.
Craig is a second generation racer, his father Mike Craig, was a notable motorcross racer in the late 80’s and 90’s.
Christian has had a challenging season in 2020. He started the year with a podium finish at the opening round on January 4, but has failed to finish a race since, largely due to some heartbreak and bad luck. Just a few weeks ago he was on the wrong end of what has been the most shocking incident of the season thus far, and then his hard luck got even worse when he suffered a hand injury the following week in Phoenix. After undergoing a surgery to stabilize a break in his pinky finger and missing last weekend’s event in Oakland, Christian will make his return to action at his home race in San Diego on Saturday.
Even before the 2020 season started Christian had quite a journey. In March of the 2018 season Christian submitted an adverse result from an anti-doping drug test. The global competition body of supercross, the FIM, did not notify Christian of this adverse test result until January of 2019, and while he was eventually suspended from competition as a result of this, Christian appealed the decision. Not only was a trace amount of the substance found in the test, it was also a substance on the low tier of banned substances.
This, in addition to the 10 month timeframe between the test and notification of the result, worked in Christian’s favor when he filed an appeal to the suspension. He became the first rider in the sport to successfully have his appeal accepted and suspension overturned. As a result, his suspension ended on December 31, 2019 instead of March 9, 2020. This allowed Christian the opportunity to race a full 2020 supercross season.
