You know your wife's friend up the street that loves the drama and lives for the negative? She actually finds a positive feeling in finding out something is going sideways for others? Or, further, invents unfortunate scenarios of people screwing her over "for no reason?" Yeah, well, those people can't be helped. To solve their problems would be to give them the worst problem ever, which is not having any sort of problems. Then they wouldn't get attention and dominate the conversation. 

I've developed an easy test to determine if someone is really having issues or if they're just creating bad juju to get attention. Use that "for no reason" quote above. If someone claims the deck is so stacked against them that their boss/spouse/significant other/kid's teacher/neighbor just has it out for them "for no reason" then you know they're making it up. No one is born that unlucky. This person either created that luck, or, more likely, went and pretended to have that luck, for attention.

Some people just get bored and feed off this kind of stress. Joey Savatgy is not one of those people. He's just keeping his head down and trying to win. The stress finds him because he's trying to do the hardest thing of all—win championships. He tries to live his life right, but he's chosen a difficult path—racing professional motocross and supercross. Once again he finds himself in a high-stress scenario.

Here's Joey's dilemma. He's good enough to be in every championship battle every year he races. He's not quite GREAT enough to absolutely dominate. But he's there, in the darned thick of it every time. 

Two years ago he was in the 250SX West Region hunt until Christian Craig turned in a whoop section and Joey went down hard. He fought back and came up one point short of Cooper Webb, who was dealing with his own stress with a broken wrist. Joey either had this title or didn't have it, depending on if Cooper could grind out an 11th place finish. By the way, it also rained in Las Vegas that night, which we all know NEVER happens. Joey missed the title by a point.

A few weeks later he went 1-1 at Hangtown and left with a gigantic lead of like 15 points AFTER THE FIRST ROUND. He lost that entire points lead the next weekend at Glen Helen. Then he got it back the next weekend in Colorado!

His season then devolved into some sort of illness and all those highs of winning and leading the points turned to scrap. Also, Webb picked him as the target of his mind games, which is not a target anyone wants because Webb is good as messing dudes up. There was some major heat at Washougal with dudes threatening to fight and everything. Then Joey's illness took over and he was done.

Next up, last year's 250SX East Region, which we all know ended in the most heartbreaking of scenarios in the history of that championship. Then an up and down Lucas Oil Pro Motocross campaign.

Joey has been through a hell of a ride, and this year is the same. He's won races but also crashed so bad at Glendale that we assumed he was out. Last weekend, he crashed again and was again assumed to be out, especially after a track worker ran Joey over with his own bike!

Beaten and battered, Joey soldiered on into the main, probably set to lose more points and fall out of this year's championship chase. No! No! No! Aaron Plessinger crashed in the whoops, cut the track, and guess what? Joey, even after a bad night, has been dragged back into the drama. He's four points down as 250SX West heads into a big break. He'll have a long time to think about this and then, almost inevitably, this will go down to the final race in Las Vegas, again, with Joey and a championship hanging in the balance, again. 

Forget the red hair and red beard. Joey's gonna be gray here before long. Some people go find the stress. The stress always finds Joey.