The amazing weekend that was the NGK Spark Plugs World Finals 10 at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas wrapped up another first quarter of the year where Monster Jam action played out in front of packed arenas, stadiums, and domes all over the North American continent. While the beginning of the year is packed with many of the highest profile events in the sport, in today’s Monster Jam world the season doesn’t wrap up with the crowning of the new World Champions. Instead the sport has shown it is about as close to a year ‘round circuit as you can find anywhere, but moving into the spring time the focus shifts outside the US and Canadian borders, and again in 2009, we are looking at more expansion of the successful Monster Jam World Tour.
The ’09 ventures outside of this country get underway in Costa Rica, which will host Monster Jam thrills for the second straight year with four big events on tap this coming weekend. In 2008, despite far less than ideal weather conditions, the Costa Rican fans turned out in huge numbers and are expected to do so again this spring. Also this year there’s another expansion into Central America with the sport’s upcoming debut in Panama in mid-May, where expectations are high that another new country’s fans are ready to turn out big to experience Monster Jam live.
Monster Jam’s European presence is also set to expand in 2009 with another new country getting its first chance to witness the Monster Jam phenomenon live. This time the sport will debut in Poland, as Monster Jam action will come to the city of Chorzow on May 30th. Following this exciting new Polish event Monster Jam then returns to a pair of cities where the sport has had incredible success in recent years. On June 6th some of the sport’s top superstars return to the huge Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, where previous stops in 2007 and 2008 have seen some of the largest crowds anywhere on the European Tour packing that ultra modern facility to witness Monster Jam live. The action in the UK will be followed by another huge stadium that has also seen record crowds for Monster Jam in the past – Ullevi Stadium in the beautiful city of Gothenburg, Sweden, June 13th. Then several other cities, including arguably Monster Jam’s most successful annual European stops, are on the schedule for this coming fall.
While the big stadium tour in the US is done for ‘09, for the most part, one of the great things about Monster Jam and the sport’s fervent fan base is that there will continue to be great events, mostly outdoors, to keep fans in many locations entertained throughout the spring and summer months. The next few weeks will see a combination of outdoor facilities in Florida and on the west coast rocking with the return of annual spring events and of course some of the sport’s most tradition rich “Jams” continue year after year in the summer months in places like West Lebanon, NY, and Hagerstown, MD. Monster Jam really has become a presence in the motorsports world pretty much the entire year. Sure, the first three months sport the biggest events and lead up to the grandest event of them all, the World Finals, but it’s great for everyone involved in Monster Jam that when Tom Meents took his World Racing Championship back to Illinois and Damon Bradshaw hauled the World Freestyle Championship back to Idaho as the winners at WF10 we don’t have to wait 8 or 9 months for the next season to get here. The World Tour has become so huge, and so many of the traditional spring and summer events are so much fun and so well attended that the opportunities for great nights out for families at Monster Jam events just keep on coming.
These events also provides some unique tests for the drivers and crews who’ve battled for 13 weeks, mostly indoors in the US and Canada during the winter season. Those events were often contested on similar courses, but the spring and summer events tend to each have their own personality and a bit different style to the race tracks and freestyle courses. Personally I love the variety. We watched some incredible turning course racing this winter, yet I still love some of the old school, straight-line, multi-car stack courses like the one officials construct in Naples, FL, each spring, just to cite one example.
The other aspect of the spring and summer action that has become extremely intriguing each year is to watch for the rising stars in the sport, and especially in Europe, to see which established veterans rise to new heights outside of North America. Adam Anderson is a great example of the rising star who pays his dues on the World Tour and then makes that experience pay off by rising to the top of the sport here as well. Looking at the veterans I remember that Dan Evans and Don Frankish, to name two of them, have recorded some of the greatest victories of their careers in Euro events.
Hopefully everyone checking out this column will be getting a chance to catch Monster Jam live somewhere this spring or summer, maybe at a tradition rich American race track, maybe at a huge stadium in their home country that has become part of the World Tour. Of course the action will be awesome, but be sure to keep your eye out for the new talent that wants to use these events as their chance to break through and step into the sport’s limelight next year, as well as some of Monster Jam’s top veterans who each year look to establish their own reputations at an even higher level on the Monster Jam World Tour. We’ve crowned this year’s world champs, but the action is nowhere near over for 2009 - it’s gonna be one fun and action packed summer, that you can count on.
