The compact Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy again witnessed a battle of noise between highly-throttled motocross bikes and the always animated French pubic who lap-up their annual dose of supercross with vigour.
On the first day of three of the famous SX spectacle now stretching into its 31st edition it was American Justin Barcia who swept the Heat, Superpole and Eliminator sprints on his factory Honda and then controlled the Main Event ahead of team-mate Trey Canard and Kawasaki Monster Energy star Gautier Paulin.
Paulin raised the roof with an impeccable start and fed off the vibe of the crowd to lead the opening laps until some arm-pump saw him drop away from the pace set by the Honda duo. Barcia was faultless and entered the Joker Lane – used for the first time on the tight and bumpy Bercy course – near the end of the race to comfortably take the chequered flag over Canard.
“Oh man, it doesn’t get much better,” the winner said. “It was a good night and I’m really happy. The track was fun and tight and fits my style. There were some big American-style whoops and that was cool. The competition was tough and Trey and Paulin were on my toes all night.”
In the brief down-time between the action the collective of Edgar Torronteras, Andre Villa, Tom Pages and Taka Higashino threw their freestyle bikes into gravity-defying forms that only served to ramp up the excitement even more.
