Jorge Prado

SPANISH SUPERSTAR!

For a nation so immersed in motorcycle sport, FIM Motocross World Championship titles have been surprisingly hard to come by for Spanish riders – well, at least until Jorge Prado – GASGAS arrived on the scene.

While Spanish success has come to embody top-flight men’s Trial, it has been in short supply in Motocross with Carlos Campano the nation’s only champion following his MX3 title in 2010, however that has all changed thanks to the man from the historic city of Lugo in north-west Spain.

Successive MX2 titles for KTM in 2018 and 2019 preceded Prado’s switch to the premier MXGP class and following three learning years on a 450cc machine 2023 was his time to shine.

With his lightweight stature delivering an enviable power-to-weight ratio, the twenty-two-year-old is famed for his lightning-fast starting prowess and this season he has converted his holeshots into lucrative scoring opportunities, enabling him to clinch the title after eighteen rounds ahead of the concluding MXGP of Great Britain.

With 2023 featuring points up for grabs for the first time in the Qualification races, Prado had won ten up to and including September’s MXGP of Italy at Maggiora and he was every bit as successful in the points-paying thirty-minute-plus-two-lap motos too.

Despite strong challenges from riders including France’s former champion Romain Febvre (Kawasaki) and Jeremy Seewer (Yamaha) from Switzerland, Prado put together a run of results that no-one else was able to match and he took a championship lead he refused to surrender at the very first round in Argentina in March.

His season statistics make for impressive reading. Out of the first eighteen rounds of racing he missed the overall podium just twice – the first time at his home round and again at the MXGP of Turkiye – and while he only won two rounds outright, in Trentino and again in Germany, he comfortably outpaced his opposition to the crown.

PALMARES

World title – MXGP 2023

World title – MX2 2019, 2018

Junior Motocross 65cc World title – 2011

PRADO’S PERFECT SEASON 

Jorge Prado García (KTM) further enhanced his reputation as the brightest young talent in World motocross as he claimed the FIM MX2 Motocross World Championship for the second successive season at the age of just eighteen.  

Prado began riding trials at the age of three, switching to motocross when he was seven and starting his large collection of prestigious international titles just a couple of years later, including the FIM 65cc Junior Motocross World Championship in 2011 - the youngest rider ever to do so. He made his MX2 debut in 2016 and claimed his first podium, taking a first win in 2017 and the title in 2018. The youngster will now move up to the MXGP class in 2020 on the back of a truly sensational 2019 that saw him wrap up the title with two rounds to spare, having won twenty-seven of the thirty-two motos up to that point. 

Out of those thirty-two races, Prado missed two of them when he was ruled out of the British Grand Prix with a shoulder injury sustained in training, whilst he finished second in two of the others. Meanwhile, his fourth place in the second moto in Sweden came after a victory in the first that already secured the title, and made him the youngest two-time World Champion in the history of the sport.  

Jorge also pursues a successful swimming career and has been crowned Galician swimming champion, as well as having competed with team Portamiñá.

PALMARES

World title – MX2 2019, 2018

Junior Motocross 65cc World title – 2011

PRODIGIOUS PRADO MAKES A SPLASH

Jorge Prado García (KTM) followed in the illustrious footsteps of Ken Roczen and Jeffrey Herlings in 2018 as he became an FIM MX2 World Champion at the tender age of seventeen. After a season-long battle with his teammate and defending champion Pauls Jonass (KTM), Prado was actually crowned ahead of the final round at Imola when the Latvian was forced to withdraw from the event in order to undergo surgery on his right knee.

With a healthy advantage over Thomas Kjer Olsen (Husqvarna) in third place, Jonass’ absence meant that Prado was champion before a wheel was turned in Italy but there could be no denying that the youngster from Lugo, Galicia, had earned it. Signing off with a fourth double, the Spaniard finished the season with seventeen individual race wins, twelve overall victories and seventeen podiums. Prado’s total of 873 points from 20 rounds of racing represents an impressive average of 43.6 points per round - out of a maximum 50 - at the end of a season that also wielded ten pole positions and a total of 331 laps spent in the lead.

Prado, who also pursues a successful swimming career and is a Galician regional champion, is the eighth different rider to have earned MX2 success with KTM in fifteen years and he now lies behind only Herlings and Antonio Cairoli in the all-time MX2 winners’ list. Denmark’s Olsen finished third in the championship for the second successive season after claiming sixteen podium finishes, including a single victory in Latvia.