Rookie Spotlight: Cole Bradford

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m sure you’ve noticed that there have been a lot of team announcements and news related to Supercross teams leading up to A1. It’s an exciting time of year with teams unveiling their livery, new sponsors for teams and individual riders and more. One piece of news I was thrilled to see was Cole Bradford, an up and coming amateur rider, signed with the Future MX Team to race professionally this year on the 250 East Coast series!

I’ve known Cole for a few years now and worked with him closely in the past. He’s got his head on straight, knows how to put in the work, and has had to work through his fair share of challenges and adversity along the way. I wanted to get in touch with him after seeing the news from Future MX to congratulate him and get a gauge on his mindset for East Coast Supercross.

I recently saw that you landed a team deal with Future MX - Congrats! Tell me about how that came to be?

Thank you! I am thrilled to have the opportunity. It really all came together pretty quickly. Future MX has been a team helping out kids on the Amateur side for a couple of years now but there hadn’t been a professional effort until more recently. Future MX had actually just recently partnered up with another one of my sponsors in HBI racing right before 2022 Mini O’s, but even with that having happened I didn’t think that me joining the team in a professional capacity was a possibility. My plan after Mini O’s was actually to do the Supercross Futures circuit along the East Coast swing of the series and go from there.

About halfway through the week at Mini O’s the owner for the Future MX team approached me and presented me with an opportunity, again kind of completely out of the blue. There were a couple of things to talk through but overall it came together pretty quickly. Ever since then I’ve been working my tail off to prepare and be as ready as I can for the East Coast.

So you get to live your ‘dream’ of going pro! What’s it like knowing you’ve hit that goal you’ve been working towards for so long?

In a way, it hasn’t really hit me yet. The deal came together pretty quickly and since I’ve been with the team I’ve really been focusing on taking it day by day to try and be as ready as I can for my first set of gate drops. It’ll probably hit me at some point once we go racing, whether it’ll be in a practice or when I make my first night show under the lights.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been a couple of moments here and there where I’ve noticed it and thought to myself ‘wow…I’m a professional dirt bike racer’ and those moments of realization kind of puts it in perspective for me a little bit. But I’m also trying to limit those moments so I can focus and keep learning/preparing as much as I can.

I know you’ve been working to go pro for a while, but I also know that a couple years ago you were diagnosed as being diabetic. How was your mindset once you got diagnosed and how has it helped you grow as an athlete?

When I first got diagnosed there were definitely some frustrations from me, but at the same time I had resources to help me through it. I realized pretty quickly that this is something that I will have forever and won’t be able to get rid of. So with that in mind, it was either embrace the negative mindset or figure out how to live my life and pursue my goals as a diabetic.

It’s taught me a lot about myself and helped me deal with adversity in general. One major benefit to it has been it’s allowed me to be more in tune with my body and what I fuel myself with just because I have to. But I would say the biggest benefit and change to my life it’s brought me is just the mindset of not letting it stop me from what I want to do.

I’ve been wanting to go pro for a long time and I wasn’t going to let something like this stop me from doing everything I can to make that happen.

How has Supercross prep been going and the general transition to the new team?

The transition from more of my own program to the team and new bike have gone about as well as I could have hoped. I’ve been on Austrian bikes (KTM, Husqvarna, or GasGas) for close to the past 7 or so years so jumping onto the Kawasaki was a big change right off the bat, but I felt at home with the bike almost immediately. To add to the ‘change’ factor, I really haven’t spent much time on Supercross consistently up to this point in my career. So when you factor in the shift to Supercross, the new bike and team, there are obviously a lot of major variables, but the change to all of them has gone pretty well overall.

The team especially has been great. It’s clear that they want the best for me and want me to succeed, but just knowing that they’re in my corner to support me is an awesome feeling. The team aspect allows me to focus more on my own preparations for Supercross like my riding, off the bike training and recovery especially. Recovering from a full day of motos and off the bike training is tough when you’ve got to put in 3 hours of bike work after a long day.

Prep overall for Supercross has been going well. Like I said earlier, I don’t have a ton of time on Supercross so I’m really just trying to take it one day at a time and get a little better each day.

You’ve already emphasized just trying to learn and grow as a rider going into Supercross, but do you have any goals once racing starts for you?

Once racing starts I really would like to stay healthy and be able to race my full rookie season just to have that experience to build on. You can’t learn from racing at the highest level in Supercross if you aren’t lining up behind the gate every week so I really want to continue to just ‘be a sponge’ and learn as much as I can from a full rookie season.

Outside of that I would say making a main event or two my first year is a good goal and something I’m aiming for, but I would say priority is being able to make it through a full season healthy and having learned and improved throughout the year as much as I can.

Be on the lookout for Cole Bradford, Ayden Shive, and the Future MX Team when the East Coast 250 Supercross series kicks off in Houston on February 4th!

Photo Credits to Tyler Coscia (first image) & Jamie Bradford (second & third image)

Written by Race Grade Media