A TALE OF TWO NATIONS – THE NETHERLANDS MATCHES ITALY FOR ALL-TIME MXGP VICTORIES

A little-known statistic, although hardly surprising if you consider the 68-year history of Motocross World Championship, is that Belgium has won by far the most world titles and Grand Prix victories of any nation, weighing in with 591 victories, at the time of writing, through a bumper crop of 40 winners, since the first World Championship season begin in 1957.

As with Great Britain and Sweden, Belgium was helped by having a few manufacturers, in their case FN and Sarolea, who were able to supply their riders with decent machinery in the 1950s, although that wasn’t the case as the 1960s began and the sport started to see much more specialised off-road motorcycles.

It took until 1977 for France to celebrate their first GP winner, but since then “La Marseillaise” has rung out for 35 different riders, taking 289 GP wins between them, to sit second all-time in GP wins.

However, this post is all about the two nations who now sit in equal third place in the all-time lists.  With Jeffrey Herlings and Kay de Wolf adding 10 GP wins between them, The Netherlands have now jumped up to 236 all-time victories, tying with Italy on that tally despite Andrea Adamo adding four of his own for the Latin legends.  Italy have had their wins from 22 riders compared to 19 for the Dutch.

Stereotypically specialising in one form of circuit or another, sand of course for the Dutch and hardpack for the Italians, they have both had recent Motocross titans that have cleaned up on all surfaces, to the point where Sicilian master Antonio Cairoli actually claims to prefer the softer circuits!  Herlings, and more recently De Wolf, are known to be just as much of a threat when there aren’t big sandy waves to contend with, but for sure they are both near unbeatable in their native domain.

The two big hitters of Cairoli and Herlings, who account for 40% (TC) and 47% (JH) of their nation’s tallies, have seen these two countries surpass the totals from the two original big hitters of Sweden (195 from 21 riders), and Great Britain (153 from 29 riders), both of whom have had minimal success in the 21^st century, where of course there have been a few more chances to build up the numbers.  Although we now have two classes, accounting for around 40 GPs per year, whereas in the 1980s & 90s there were three classes which raced around a dozen times a year. 

These numbers, by the way, are purely in the traditional world of men’s Motocross.  If you add WMX into the equation, then it’s looking better for the Latinos with Kiara Fontanesi alone leading the way all-time with 24 wins, although she is the only Italian lady in that list. The Dutch have won 15 with four women, led by 6 for Nancy van de Ven and 5 for Lotte van Drunen.

From here, while both Italy and the Netherlands have promising riders in the wings, you have to say that the immediate prospects are stronger for the Dutch, with Herlings far from finished, and De Wolf maybe only just getting started.  Although Adamo could add to his tally on any given weekend, and the likes of Andrea Bonacorsi and Valerio Lata seem to be on the cusp of breaking into the ranks of the GP winners.

In the meantime though, let’s take a snapshot to see the breakdown of all of those Grand Prix winners.

Italy:

Netherlands

Full Table

Looking for your country?  Here they are then…