San Diego, CA
Supercross Round #2 Recap | San Diego | Jan 17, 2026 | Monster Energy AMA Supercross
For the second week in a row the Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship welcomed a sold-out crowd to begin its season, this time inside the intimate setting of Snapdragon Stadium for the second round of the 2026 Monster Energy SMX World Championship. One week after he captured a memorable debut victory with Red Bull KTM Factory Racing, 450SMX Class points leader Eli Tomac went back-to-back following a hard-fought Main Event in which he outlasted Progressive Insurance ECSTAR Suzuki’s Ken Roczen and Honda HRC Progressive’s Hunter Lawrence for the Colorado native’s 55th career win.
Another sold out crowd was on hand inside Snapdragon Stadium as the
2026 Monster Energy Supercross season traveled to San Diego.
The 450SMX Class Main Event began with Lawrence leading the way for the holeshot, followed closely by Roczen and Tomac. The trio quickly asserted themselves at the front of the field and soon pulled away to set the stage for a three-rider battle for the win. Lawrence was impressive early on and successfully fended off heavy pressure from Roczen, but as their battle continued Tomac joined the fight, which pushed Roczen to make a pass around Lawrence with 14 minutes and a lap to go. Tomac was able to move into second as another battle for the lead unfolded. Tomac briefly made the pass on Roczen, but the German battled back to reclaim the position and lead most of the Main Event.
With time running out, Tomac made the move on Roczen again and solidified his hold of the lead with six minutes remaining. Roczen’s pace slowed enough for Lawrence to make the pass for second and from there the Australian looked to track down Tomac. Tension was high in the closing laps, but Tomac kept Lawrence at bay on the final lap for his 87th career SMX win (Supercross + Pro Motocross) by a margin of 1.3 seconds. The victory moved him into a tie with Jeremy McGrath for second all-time. Lawrence’s runner-up finish equaled the best result of his career, while Roczen now has second and third place finishes to begin the season.
Just off the podium in fourth was Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Chase Sexton, who impressed in a come-from-behind effort after he hit the gate to begin the Main Event and started at the tail end of the field. Along the way, Sexton made contact with defending champion Cooper Webb, who went down in the incident and recovered for an eighth-place finish aboard his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing machine.
Tomac’s pair of wins through the first two races has extended his lead in the 450SMX Class standings to eight points over Roczen, while Lawrence moved from fourth to third and sits 10 points out of the lead.
It’s back-to-back wins for Red Bull KTM Factory Racing’s Eli Tomac,
who captured his 55th career Supercross victory and 87th career SMX win
to move into a tie Jeremy McGrath for second all-time.
Eli Tomac – 1st Place – 450SMX Class
“Me and Ken [Roczen] had an unbelievable battle there and once we got into the lead I felt like I was in a really good groove. Towards the end there I was not paying attention and just looking at my front fender, I didn’t know Hunter [Lawrence] was there [because] I was so focused on marking Kenny around the track. I [went] over the tunnel on the last lap and heard Hunter revving his bike and was shocked he was right there. I feel fortunate I held onto the lead there. I guess I need better self-awareness next time. That was close.”
Honda HRC Progressive’s Hunter Lawrence came close to capturing his first Supercross victory and impressed every step of the way in a runner-up effort.
Hunter Lawrence – 2nd Place – 450SMX Class
“It’s bittersweet when you’re so close. I wanted to be there with those guys last week [up front] so we worked really hard this week and made some progress, which is always rewarding. I think I shot my shot too fast on the last lap and thought I’d dive bomb into the corner, but at the last minute I thought it was going to be a really dirty move if I followed through, so I backed out of it. It was cool. A really great race.”
Another podium performance by Progressive Insurance ECSTAR Suzuki’s Ken Roczen has him in the thick of the early title fight in the 450SMX Class.
Ken Roczen – 3rd Place – 450SMX Class
“Me and Eli [Tomac] went back and forth a couple times and then in the middle of the race I just had a couple laps where I was all over the place and fell off the back a bit and got passed. I tried to just settle back in and at least stay close to those guys. We have 17 rounds and it can swap around real quick, so being on the podium is really good. We want to win, but at the same time we can’t be mad at a podium. We’ll keep at it, see if I can snag a couple of wins, and see where it goes.”
A captivating battle between teammates headlined the second race of the Western Divisional 250SMX Class, as Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing’s Haiden Deegan came out on top for the first time this season. The eighth career victory for the defending Western Division Champion wasn’t without controversy, as he went bar-to-bar with fellow Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing rider Max Anstie, who entered as the points leader. After Anstie grabbed the holeshot, he and Deegan resumed their entertaining battle that began in the Heat Race with a multi-lap fight for the lead. Deegan appeared to be faster, but the Englishman’s veteran savvy kept his younger teammate at bay. With nine minutes and one lap to remaining Deegan made his move in a bowl turn and aggressively cut down under Anstie, who went high to concede the position. As he exited, Deegan’s rear wheel hit Anstie’s front wheel and took the red plate holder to the ground. Deegan sprinted away as Anstie eventually remounted in sixth place.
As Deegan established a lead of over five seconds, the attention shifted to an exciting battle for the podium between Honda HRC Progressive’s Chance Hymas, Monster Energy Pro Circuit Kawasaki’s Cameron McAdoo, and Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing’s Michael Mosiman. After McAdoo made the pass on Hymas for second, Mosiman followed through shortly after as Hymas nearly crashed defending the position.
Deegan went unchallenged and took his first win carrying the No. 1 plate by a margin of 7.6 seconds over McAdoo, who finished last (22nd place) at the Anaheim opener and is coming back from a torn ACL suffered last season. Mosiman recorded his 11th career podium finish in third. Anstie battled back to finish fifth.
With the win, combined with Anstie’s finish, Deegan moved from fourth to first in the Western Divisional 250SMX Class standings, a single point ahead of Anstie. Hymas, who finished sixth, sits third, five points out of the lead.
While it wasn’t without controversy, the first win of the season for
Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing’s Haiden Deegan moved
him into control of the Western Divisional Championship.
Haiden Deegan – 1st Place – Western Divisional 250SMX Class
“This one feels good. I wanted to show it at A1, but stuff happens. I came out swinging [tonight]. Sorry to Max [Anstie], I didn’t really want it to go that way. I tried to cut down [in the corner] so he wouldn’t cut down [to counterattack] and we came together.”
After a challenging opening round where he finished last,
Monster Energy Pro Circuit Kawasaki’s Cameron McAdoo
rebounded with an impressive second-place effort.
Cameron McAdoo – 2nd Place – Western Divisional 250SMX Class
“I didn’t expect to get 22nd place last weekend and end up in B practice this morning, so I had something to prove. It has been a long time and as you all know this sport is about trying. I always pride myself on being able to come back after being off the bike for a long time. Tonight was pretty special. I’m just a kid from Iowa living my dream and I’m really grateful I keep getting to do this. I have a lot of belief in myself that I belong here.”
Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing’s Michael Mosiman was consistent throughout the Main Event and recorded his 11th career podium result.
Michael Mosiman – 3rd Place – Western Divisional 250SMX Class
“It feels great. We’ve been putting in the work, and it’s been a long road. Just to be able to hang in there the whole moto, to be right there and end up on the podium. To be able to push the pace feels really great. We’re going to keep it rolling.”
Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing’s Max Anstie entered as the points leader and was leading the Main Event until an incident with his teammate Deegan put him on the ground and resulted in a fifth-place finish.
The Jewish community in Southern California is sharing their fears and hopes following the weekend’s strikes on Iran and retaliatory attacks on Israel, U.S. military bases and other targets in the Middle East.
The exchange of missiles in the Middle East is having a devasting effect on Iran’s defense capability, but retaliatory strikes in the region are taking a toll.
“Weapons of enormous capacity that are targeting civilian areas,” said Elan Carr, CEO of Los Angeles-based Israeli American Council.
Carr says toppling the Iranian regime, taking out its nuclear capabilities and freeing the Iranian people from this oppressive rule should have been done decades ago.
“This is about seeing the most evil regime, the world chief state sponsored terrorism to no longer have the ability to do what it’s been doing,” Carr said.
Sara Brown, regional director of the American Jewish Committee, said the U.S. and Israel are concentrating strikes on Iran’s missile sites and military industrial complex. Iran’s retaliatory strikes are focused on many civilian targets.
“We are hearing from our partners from around the region, who are terrified,” Brown said. “Across the Middle East right now, I think there is a tremendous amount of fear, but also hope and also resolve.”
AJC is the advocacy arm for Jewish people globally. Many members and partner groups are in harm’s way. Brown says the risk is great, but the potential reward is world changing.
“That Iranian people will get to choose leadership for themselves, that we will finally see a pathway forward for peace across the Middle East,” Brown said.
If wars of the past hadn’t produced lasting peace, then why now? Carr says Iran’s nuclear capabilities are destroyed and Iran’s military and proxies are weakened after Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas ambush.
“No more terrorist network throughout the Middle East. Think of what that could mean. Think of the normalization we could see,” Carr said.
President Donald Trump expects fighting to last several weeks. Some critics are concerned about a drawn-out conflict that could spread.
Carr is not convinced.
“Who is going to enter a war against the U.S. and Israel? Russia is plenty busy. China has no interest in jeopardizing itself this way,” Carr said.
Besides the six Americans killed as of Monday night, government officials say 11 people were killed in retaliatory strikes in Israel.
San Diego — Before we see elephants at Elephant Valley in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, we come face to face with destruction, only the wreckage is beautiful. A long, winding path takes guests around and under felled trees. Aged gray tree hunks form arches, for instance, over bridges that tower over clay-colored paths with hoof prints.
The design is meant to reorient us, to take us on a trail walked not by humans but traversed and carved by elephants, a creature still misunderstood, vilified and hunted for its cataclysmic-like ability to reshape land, and sometimes communities.
“It starts,” says Kristi Burtis, vice president of wildlife care for the Safari Park, “by telling the story that elephants are ecosystem engineers.”
Elephant Valley will open March 5 as the newest experience at the Escondido park, its aim to bring guests closer than ever to the zoo’s eight elephants, which range in age from 7 to 36, while more heavily focusing on conservation. The centerpiece of the 13-acre-plus parkland is a curved bridge overlooking a savanna, allowing elephants to walk under guests. But there are also nooks such as a cave that, while not previewed at a recent media event, will allow visitors to view elephants on their level.
In a shift from, say, the Safari Park’s popular tram tour, there are no fences and visible enclosures. Captive elephants remain a sometimes controversial topic, and the zoo’s herd is a mix of rescues and births, but the goal was to create a space where humans are at once removed and don’t impede on the relative free-roaming ability of the animals by keeping guests largely elevated. As an example of just how close people can get to the herd, there was a moment of levity at the event when one of the elephants began flinging what was believed to be a mixture of dirt and feces up onto the bridge.
“Our guests are going to be able to see the hairs on an elephant,” Burtis says. “They can see their eyes. They can see the eyelashes. They can see how muscular their trunks are. It’s really going to be a different experience.”
Elephant Valley, complete with a multistory lodge with open-air restaurants and bars, boasts a natural design that isn’t influenced by the elephant’s African home so much as it is in conversation with it. The goal isn’t to displace us, but to import communal artistry — Kenyan wood and beadwork can be found in the pathways, resting spaces and more — as a show of admiration rather than imitation.
“We’re not going to pretend that we’re taking people to Africa,” says Fri Forjindam, now a creative executive with Universal’s theme parks but previously a lead designer on Elephant Valley via her role as a chief development officer at Mycotoo, a Pasadena-based experiential design firm.
“That is a slippery slope of theming that can go wrong really fast,” she adds. “How do we recognize where we are right now, which is near San Diego? How do we populate this plane with plants that are indigenous to the region? The story of coexistence is important. We’re not extracting from Africa, we’re learning. We’re not extracting from elephants, we’re sharing information.”
But designing a space that is elephant-first yet also built for humans presented multiple challenges, especially when the collaborating teams were aiming to construct multiple narratives around the animals. Since meetings about Elephant Valley began around 2019, the staff worked to touch on themes related to migration and conservation. And there was also a desire to personalize the elephants.
“Where can we also highlight each of the elephants by name, so they aren’t just this huge herd of random gray creatures?” Forjindam says. “You see that in the lodge.”
That lodge, the Mkutano House — a phrase that means “gathering” in Swahili — should provide opportunities for guests to linger, although zoo representatives say reservations are recommended for those who wish to dine in the space (there will also be a walk-up, to-go window). Menus have yet to be released, but the ground floor of the structure, boasting hut-like roofing designed to blend into the environment, features close views of the elephant grazing pool as well as an indoor space with a centerpiece tree beneath constellation-like lighting to mimic sunrises and sunsets.
Throughout there are animal wood carvings and beadwork, the latter often hung from sculptures made of tree branches. The ceiling, outfitted with colorful, cloth tapestries designed to move with the wind, aims to create less friction between indoor and outdoor environments.
There are, of course, research and educational goals of the space as well. The Safari Park works, for instance, with the Northern Rangelands Trust and Loisaba Conservancy in Kenya, with an emphasis on studying human-elephant conflict and finding no-kill resolutions. Nonprofits and conservation groups estimate that there are today around 415,000 elephants in Africa, and the African savanna elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Studies of the zoo’s young elephants is shared with the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in the hopes of delivering care to elephant youth to prevent orphanage. Additionally, the Safari Park has done extensive examination into the endotheliotropic herpes virus. “The data that we collect from elephants here, you can’t simply get from elephants in the wild,” Burtis says.
One of the two entrances to Elephant Valley is outfitted with bee boxes; bees are known to be a natural elephant deterrent and can help in preventing the animals from disrupting crops or communities. To encourage more natural behavior, the plane is outfitted with timed feeders in an attempt to encourage movement throughout the acreage and establish a level of real-life unpredictability in hunting for resources. Water areas have been redesigned with ramps and steps to make it easier for the elephants to navigate.
With Elephant Valley, Forjindam says the goal was to allow visitors to “observe safely in luxury — whatever that is — but not from a position of power, more as a cohabitor of the Earth, with as much natural elements as possible. It’s not to impose dominance. Ultimately, it needed to feel natural. It couldn’t feel like a man-made structure, which is an antiquated approach to any sort of safari experience where animals are the product, a prize. In this experience, this is the elephant’s home.”
And the resulting feel of Elephant Valley is that we, the paying customers, are simply their house guests.
A man in the Mission Bay Park community of San Diego was fatally struck Sunday morning by a hit-and run vehicle, authorities said.
The victim was also struck by a second vehicle and that motorist stayed at the scene to cooperate with officers, the San Diego Police Department reported.
The initial crash occurred at about 2:20 a.m. Sunday in the area of West Mission Bay and Sea World drives.
The pedestrian was in the southbound lanes of the 2000 block of West Mission Bay Drive when he was struck by a silver vehicle also in the southbound lanes. That vehicle fled the scene, continuing southbound, police said.
A 28-year-old man driving his vehicle southbound ran over the downed pedestrian.
“That driver remained at the scene and is not DUI,” according to a police statement. “The pedestrian was pronounced deceased at the scene.”
Anyone with information regarding the initial crash was urged to call Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.
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