Weekend Recap: September 25 - 26

SURF

Griffin Colapinto had a good feeling going into the U.S. Open of Surfing, an intuition that was finally his time to win the title. At 16, Colapinto won the junior title at Huntington Beach and has come painfully close at the main event, and Sunday he won it all. Colapinto met Jake Marshall in the finals and as the clock ticked down, Colapinto put a stamp on the heat, pulling off an air reverse on the outside, then again on the inside to claim victory.

FORMULA 1

Monster Energy motorsports were in top gear this recent weekend, a prism of international competition leading off with the VTB Russian Grand Prix from the 3.634-mile, 18-turn Sochi Autodrom in Krasnodar Krai, Russia. Round 15 of 23 in the 2021 Formula 1 World Championship, Mercedes-AMG F1 ace, Lewis Hamilton scored his 100th Grand Prix victory. In a dramatic late-race deluge at the Russian Grand Prix, Lewis regained the championship lead from second-placed Max Verstappen. Fifth on the day in Russia was Hamilton’s Mercedes-AMG F1 teammate Valtteri Bottas. Hamilton, Bottas, and the entire Mercedes-AMG F1 effort will compete next at the Turkish Grand Prix at Istanbul Park on Sunday, October 10, 2021. Lewis currently holds the F1 World Championship points lead 246.5 points to Verstappen’s 244.5 markers.

WORLD SUPERBIKE
 

The Motul FIM Superbike World Championship hosted the Motul Spanish Round on Sunday at the famed 2.749-mile, 13-turn Circuito de Jerez – Angel Nieto in Andalusia, Spain. Monster Energy’s Jonathan Rea of the Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK effort powering to second and third-place finishes in Saturday and Sunday’s WSBK races, respectively. Rea is now exactly 20 points adrift of Yamaha racer Toprak Razgatlioglu in the 2021 WSBK World Championship chase. The Algarve International Circuit in Portimao, Portugal round is set for next weekend. For the record, Monster Energy’s Scott Redding guided his Aruba.it Racing Ducati to fighting second and fifth-place finishes in the two Jerez races.

MOTOCROSS

The Monster Energy Motocross of Nations – a race that first ran in The Netherlands in 1947 - was staged at the Circuito Internazionale Motocross Citta di Mantova in Mantua, Italy. On Sunday afternoon, Team Italy won the “Olympics of Motocross” over the racing nations of The Netherlands and Great Britain. Monster Energy riders Glenn Coldenhoff of the Monster Energy Yamaha MXGP Factory Team and Roan Van De Moosdijk of the F&H Kawasaki Racing Team represented the runner-up Netherlands team. Ben Watson of the Monster Energy Yamaha MXGP Factory Team represented the third-place team from Great Britain.

FREESTYLE MOTOCROSS

Axell Hodges takes first place in the invite-only Red Bull Imagination 2.0 freestyle motocross competition this week. In the final jam, riders hit the one-of-a-kind course for two 5-minute runs, best score counting, to determine the Red Bull Imagination 2.0 champion. As the heated session continued, the top three riders boiled down to Hodges versus long-time competitors Colby Raha and Tyler Bereman. This time, Axell ‘Slay’ Hodges clinched the top spot, representing the Monster Energy ‘Claw’ in a battle of the energy drink sponsors.

MMA 

Valentina "Bullet" Shevchenko defends her UFC Women’s Flyweight World Championship title against Lauren Murphy at UFC 266 in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Saturday night. In the co-main event fight inside T-Mobile Arena, the 33-year-old mixed martial arts expert from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, shut down her opponent via TKO in the fourth round to defend her 125-pound title for the sixth time. Shevchenko (22-3) stepped into the fight as the favorite after successfully warding off Jessica Andrade via TKO in the title fight at UFC 261 in April 2021. But she faced a formidable adversary in 38-year-old Lauren Murphy (15-5), who came to Las Vegas on a five-fight winning streak