The 2026 FIM MotoMini Canada season opened on the go-kart circuit at Shannonville on June 20. Five rounds, two classes — Ohvale 160 and Ohvale 190 — and at the end of it, a route to the world final in Valencia in November.
We had been at Shannonville twice already that spring, in May, for test days that produced no results anybody published and a great deal of useful information about tire pressure. Round one was the first time it counted.
In the 190 class the weekend belonged to Jäger Stockill — pole, then both races, by nearly nine seconds each time. I run his media, so I spent a good part of that weekend on the wrong side of the fence with a camera, which is its own strange experience when your own kid is racing two hours later.
The 160 class is where our weekend was. Race two got red-flagged, and the reason it got red-flagged was one of mine. He was fighting for fifth, went for the pass, ran out of road, and put it in the grass. Race stopped. Everybody stood around. He walked back to the paddock uninjured and finished the day eighth.
Here is the thing nobody warns you about: the relief and the disappointment arrive at exactly the same moment, and they do not cancel out. You are enormously glad he stood up. You are also aware that he was in fifth, going for fourth, and now he is not.
What I did not expect was how well he took it. Not cheerfully — he was furious with himself for about an hour. But the anger was aimed at the decision, not at the bike, the track, or the kid he was trying to pass. That is the difference between a child who is upset and a racer who is doing analysis, and I had not seen it in him before that day.
The season went on from there. But round one is the one I keep coming back to, because it is the first time I watched him crash out of a national round and understood that the crash was not the story.