Herlings’ quest: The double MXGP champ has been the reference for speed, records and comebacks and 2025 could be another twist in the tale
Jeffrey Herlings ends a long winter of silence about his ACL injury, more recovery and talks MXGP 2025 as the Dutchman prepares for another chase after the excellence he knows only too well.
By Adam Wheeler
I was having breakfast at the Van der Valk hotel close to the TT Circuit Assen on Monday morning after the Dutch Grand Prix and the penultimate round of 2018 MXGP. Jeffrey Herlings wandered through the buffet and helped himself to a plate, I cannot remember what he’d grabbed (the previous month he had already spoken to me in an interview about his monastic approach to one of the most dominant seasons in MXGP history and admitted that he was counting down the days until he could gorge on some fast food) but he sat on the table next to ours and the new world champion tucked in. If there were any traces of a celebratory hangover then it was hard to tell. Herlings emitted this powerful aura. It was hard not to look at him. He had been arguably the standout motorcycle racer of any discipline that summer. The numbers justify the claim.
Assen, and the adoring home crowd, had witnessed his seventh Grand Prix win in a row and 14 motos unbeaten on the bounce. It was round 19 of only his second season in the premier class and meant his sixteenth victory that term, edging his moto chequered flag tally up to 31. He had missed only one fixture – recovering from a broken collarbone – but had amazingly dropped only 17 points from the maximum possible all year. Red Bull KTM teammate Tony Cairoli’s dogged pursuit meant that title confirmation waited until Assen but two weeks later at Imola for the 2018 finale he would provide another 1-1 scorecard making it 17 from 19 contested, a 100% podium record and a worst moto result of 3rd place in 38 MXGP starts. I had been watching all year as Herlings staged a masterclass of fitness, thirst, adaptability and confidence. He could win at will and usually in spite of his perpetual weakness with starts. Nobody else, not Cairoli, Clement Desalle, Tim Gajser, Romain Febvre, Gautier Paulin and others could get close enough to lay any roost. In that six-month period he redefined the limits of what was required to own MXGP.
Perfect seasons had existed. Ricky Carmichael and James Stewart carry those distinctions through the truncated AMA MX Pro National summers, and Stefan Everts’ unforgettable final campaign in 2006 was banked with 15 triumphs from 16, against arguably less formidable competition and with main threat Josh Coppins dealing with injury issues. But Herlings’ flight felt like the purest and most ruthless expression of competition. He was a machine. Aside from the right collarbone break while training a week before the Grand Prix at Ottobiano, the campaign was relatively drama free. The streak was bookended by wins on American soil: at the tail end of 2017 at Iron Man (to be the scene of the 2025 Motocross of Nations this year) and then at a soggy RedBud for the 2018 Nations.
2018 had gone so well and nobody could handle the then-23-year-old that it already felt like Herlings had dropped his milestone on the sport. The rule of averages dictated that another term like 2018, which had GPs from Argentina to Russia to Indonesia to Turkey and was the longest-ever on record at the time (one event more than the MotoGP slate), could not happen again. As highpoints go, it was stratospheric.
And, sadly, for Jeffrey the comedown came quickly.
2019 produced a broken leg and ankle. 2020 was ended mid-season by neck injury and more complications with his foot. 2021 was MXGP’s piece-de-resistance where Herlings conquered a last moto, last round three-way spat for the crown with Febvre and Gajser. He was nowhere near the rider of 2018 but banked title #5 as the protagonist in Grand Prix racing’s greatest contest. 2022 was the only time in his career where he failed to start a single Grand Prix after a pre-season broken heel and subsequent reparations to his battered feet kept him on the sidelines. 2023 was marked by that phenomenal 102nd Grand Prix win and more history as most prolific motocrosser; surpassing Everts’ haul and a feat nobody thought possible back in 2006. But by round eight in Germany a broken C5 meant the premature end of another year of preparation and commitment.
Red Bull KTM kept their patience. Herlings had been conscripted as an eager and bustling teenager in 2009 for the factory team and would go on to become allegedly their highest ever earner as well as their longest-serving racer once Marvin Musquin (signed midway through 2009) retired in 2023. 2024 was his first full assault since 2018. He added four more wins to the pile and showed moments of former invincibility, but also vulnerability and caginess. Any MXGP fan could forgive a more measured method to Grand Prix racing, especially considering the pain and setbacks of the previous half a decade. The more calculating (some would say more mature) Herlings was effective if somewhat restrained. ‘The Bullet’ was more buckshot than armour piercing but persistence paid off and he almost dethroned Jorge Prado and got the better of Tim Gajser. After the final race in Spain the championship points for all three were: 996, 986 and 944. Herlings taking ten more than his 2018 total, but with the benefit of 19 Qualification Heats.
Jeffrey was hardly slow, that would do a disservice to the superb levels shown by his Spanish and Slovenian peers and brief flashes from Jeremy Seewer and Febvre, and he was not race-shy. In fact, he turned up for almost 40 meetings from the start of 2024; virtually daring his own body to go the distance.
The last appearance was critical. A dark final round of the Dutch MX series took place at Valkenswaard in mid-October, and after a slightly underwhelming outing at Matterley Basin in the UK for the Nations which came at the end of a gruelling stint of GPs in Turkey, China and Spain and where he’d also been dealing with a fractured rib. The sandy Eurocircuit, south of Eindhoven, was where he scooped the first of his 107 wins back in 2010 as a 15-year-old and was then unbeaten there for the next seven years. His 50th career victory was coated by Valkenswaard champagne in 2016. He also earned his very first MXGP podium finish in the sand in 2017.
“I made a flat landing from a jump quite hard, my foot came off the peg and I felt a very aggressive pain, like someone had jabbed a knife in there,” he told me over the phone last week. “There was also this ‘puff’ sensation. Like there had been this little explosion. I finished the lap and won the race but knew something was not right. I thought I might have tweaked it or taken a bone-bruise. You are always optimistic when something like that happens but I had never felt sharp pain like that before and that explosion feeling had me worried.”
These were already significant words from a rider who has fractured both lower limbs, a femur, dislocated his hip, suffered numerous collarbone breaks (I confess to being wary of asking how many times), dislocated his right shoulder, broken his neck and hand, ribs and mangled his little finger. “The knee wasn’t even that swollen…but then we found out the ACL had gone.”
There were rumours that Herlings had been hurt but his scant social media presence evaporated, and he disappeared off the map. Another long-term problem would have been a thick black mark on a battered CV and would have led to more doubts about a rider who had snapped almost as many records for Dutch motocross as he has cracked bones. Jeffrey had looked mortal but resistant in 2024 so widespread news about a knee reconstruction and one of the few injuries that ensures a lost season would have led to a collective eyeroll. He finally went public with a graphic Instagram post of the operation on December 31st that was carried out two weeks after the breakage. “It was basically the same as Jett,” he says, in reference to the AMA Supercross champion’s similar blight at the Glendale SX. We talk the same day that news emerges that the Australian has had surgery. Lawrence will have to enter the beginning of his own careful recovery programme and a process where Herlings is now starting to see the finish line jump.
“We’re looking good,” he says. “I can do everything aside from ride the bike. I can cycle, do physiotherapy, cross training, swimming. I can’t ride yet because it’s an activity where we cannot have full control; I’d say we are one month away.”
2025 MXGP begins less than four weeks from our call. Herlings won’t make the gate in Argentina and then his inclusion in the rest of the calendar depends on his riding and testing time. If Grand Prix hits the same kind of fierce points accumulation as 2024 (even without the meticulous Jorge Prado) then starting in ‘first gear’ won’t help him get near the front of the pack for a sixth possible career title. It could be a bitty campaign where goals rest on week-to-week achievement rather than a bigger picture. It is also pivotal for Jeffrey Herlings’ career, as his multi-year KTM deal comes to an end just as the factory enter their own evaluation for the future of their racing wing.
“I wanted to be strong coming into this year,” he lamented. “I knew it was a contract season as well. So having this long setback was not good for my position. All I can hope for now is a strong second part of the championship and to win some races to have a good ending.” Herlings has taken at least one Grand Prix in his fourteen active seasons, even the bitterly frustrating 2019 where he lined up only five times (winning the last two fixtures). He has produced the goods for KTM when he’s been fit, and all the trials and tribulations since 2010 has forged a solid link with Pit Beirer and the company but, like the fate of the racer himself, KTM’s fortunes have also altered.
The narrative around Herlings’ future this year will be almost as fascinating as another one of his comeback stories. For the fifth or sixth time in his life he is treading the resurrection path of recovery from a major blow to remind himself and anyone who cares to watch that he deserves a place in any ‘greatest of…’ conversations. 2018 is a distant benchmark but it’s the standard to shoot for. Listening to his voice and hearing his intentions, the desire is still there to make another volley. Wealthy, and a shrewd businessman (he has built an enviable real estate portfolio) Herlings has nothing to race for and nothing to prove whatsoever. Since those surgeons sliced open his knee and reattached ligaments he has been on a personal journey. At least it has not been his most traumatic.
“It’s been really weird,” he says. “Three weeks after the surgery I was able to walk again and get back to a normal lifestyle quite quickly. There was no pain, no cast. Usually after injury you want to walk again and then immediately think about riding…but I knew this was different. It was almost like a ‘nice’ injury.”
There have been scores of decent, fast motocrossers with the knowledge of the work rate and dedication to succeed, especially when a rider like Herlings rolls into the gate next to you; a man who will have out-trained and out-motoed everyone else on the line. I doubt there are many with the kind of insight and drive to keep ploughing back from the brink of despair, agony and disconsolation to get to the highest level of their ability and their sport so frequently.
I’ve written before about Herlings’ sensitive, inhibitive nature. Yes, he’s a man that embraces the trappings of success and has dollar signs as part of his visual ‘brand’ but he’s also reclusive, almost shy. I’ve tried to get to the source of his relentlessness to be the best. It’s a commitment that has come at sizeable social and personal cost (he seems very settled now with partner Steffie) but I just don’t have the required psychological background. Often, Jeffrey seems inhuman because of what-and-how he is against what he does, and in-turn that makes him fascinating and inspiring. I hope the story goes on for a bit longer.
Some of Shakespeare’s greatest theatrical works were shaped into five acts: Jeffrey Herlings, as a master poet himself, could be shaping the next best curtain drop.
Photos by Ray Archer/KTM.