Maximus Vohland: “It Gives Me Confidence in Myself Because I’m Overcoming and Achieving Something That No One’s Done Before”

It was an uphill battle for Vohland, who not only had to fight back to land a new ride but also fight off pain medication addiction. In an excellent interview with Jason Weigandt last October, Vohland was brutally honest about his struggles with weaning off pain pills and overcoming his injury to ride again. He also spoke about his sister’s traumatic brain injury she suffered while horseback riding a few years ago and how her comeback pushed him to keep progressing forward.

Fast forward to late September, and he landed a ride with the Muc-Off/FXR/ClubMX Yamaha team on the East Coast. He unpacked his van, and the team got to work on many fronts.

Vohland lacks some feeling in his right foot, so the team came up with the idea of a hand-brake lever replacing his rear brake foot pedal. You have probably heard all about it and seen photos of it, and while Vohland grew up riding bicycles a ton, it is still crazy to think about having both brake levers on the handlebars. Trial and error, both at the practice track and at the races, finally led to a setup at the Daytona SX that Vohland said was “solid enough to where I can do what I need to do.” He stayed at it. The progress and results came.

Vohland had finishes of 21-9-5-10-6-18-8-6 heading into the supercross return to Pittsburgh to cap off the schedule’s historic Northeast swing. A California boy turned full-time East Coaster, Vohland said he liked racing the 250SX East Division.

“I honestly like it,” he said. “Fits my style more. I like when it's more rutted and rough, and honestly, Dirt Wurx have been doing a crazy, crazy good job with prepping the tracks this year and honestly haven't been getting too gnarly. …So yeah, I like East Coast dirt; I like when it rains a little bit like this because it gets techy and it gets challenging for the guys, and I feel like that suits my style the most.”

Watching videos, he learned a little bit about his starts and began using starting blocks, a feature now seen more often down on the starting gates.

“I've been dragging my bad foot a little bit because of my foot drop, and it's just been touching the dirt and it's maybe it's just cost me that little inch that gets the other guys' bars ahead of me,” he said. “So, we're on some very small blocks now to where my feet stay above the ground, above the gate and everything. So yeah, that's just another step. And we've just been slowly working. Nothing too crazy but just been getting better and better every week.”

He also said his year has had its ups and downs, but he feels he pushed through the best he could.

“Health wise, I'm good,” he said. “I've stayed on the bike and haven't had many crashes and any really major injury that hindered me all year. You know, I haven't had to deal with something too bad, besides my one from last year. But I'm good. So, I'm glad with that. I don't have to be in and out [of racing] and, you know, the race weekend will beat you up, but I've been somewhat healthy and just been kind of chugging along and building and building and building. So, I've been it's been a bit of a building year for me. I've had some good results here and there, but definitely want to get on the box hopefully before the end of the season. And I feel like this is probably my best chance this weekend.”

Maybe not the way he envisioned it—by inheriting third place from a crash by RJ Hampshire late in the main event the following day—but he landed in third place on the night. Finally, he etched his name as a podium finisher.

“It was such a long road for me, coming out of the hospital, with the injury—the hip dislocation—and then having a sciatic nerve problem and losing pretty much all feeling in my foot and also mobility as well,” he said after the race. “And yeah, it was such a long road, and I went through so many ups and downs. And there were a lot of days when I was in the midst of the injury where I didn’t even know if I’d ever be able to race again. But then the hand brake kinda became an idea and I just kinda ran with it. And we went through so many different variations of it. …We had to go to a new system. Halfway through the season—Daytona was the first race I had on the new system—and kinda, that was it, I was like, ‘Okay, this is solid enough to where I can do what I need to do,’ and just kinda built from there. And it’s just been a slow, steady build. Yeah, we’ve been working hard at Club. Yeah, it’s good to finally get that first podium and kinda get that monkey off the back and just a lot of weight lifted off my shoulders.”

Through the past year, he has learned a lot about himself.

“Honestly, the injury, I felt like, made me a lot mentally stronger,” he said. “Just overcoming being able to ride at such a high level with the hand brake and everything, it gives me confidence in myself because I’m overcoming and achieving something that no one’s done before. So, I just kept running with that. It’s been a steady, steady build, and low-key, just been under the radar and finally decided to show up tonight and make it happen.”

He is indeed the first rider to score a podium without a rear brake pedal.

It was another strong ride for the ClubMX squad, which had already seen Coty Schock score a podium in Texas two months ago and saw amateur Alexander Fedortsov score the SMX Next – Supercross AMA Amateur National Championship race win just an hour or so before Vohland’s podium.

“It’s just good to give back to them with all the hard work we’ve done in the off-season,” Vohland said. “Yeah, I def made them do a lot of hard work with figuring out the hand brake and all that. [Laughs] So, it’s good to just give that back to them and yeah, it’s a great feeling. My first podium, their second podium this year. It also just shows that the work that we’ve been putting in is starting to pay off. Our bike’s good. We’re in a good spot: it’s fast, the suspension works great. Yeah, just steady build, trying to be one percent better each day.”