Is Deegan in the wrong, or was it just racing?

The incident between Haiden Deegan and Jordon Smith on Saturday night in the first 250 heat race of Supercross was the crash heard ’round the world.

It’s also caused a lot of keyboard warriors to fight each other on social media while trying to determine who is at fault for the accident.

Deegan is a very, very popular rider in the sport. Arguably, the most popular. He’s been in the spotlight for a long time, and his family has been in the sport even longer.

With such popularity, there are going to be strong opinions on both sides – there will be people who love’em, and others who hate’em. This weekend, they fought it out on social media after the incident between Deegan and Smith.

Here is the incident:

I personally don’t love how Deegan handled himself in the press conference after the main event. You can see that in the video above, but let’s take the incident corner by corner.

Here is the first time they got together. Smith had a better run through the whoops than Deegan, but, he was on the outside. He didn’t have the position to make the pass.

That said, Deegan was a little rough with Smith in this corner, given that it was a heat race and they’re teammates. Overall, not that dirty. Rough, but not necessarily dirty.

Now let’s look at the next corner. Deegan appears to wait up for Smith. I’m not really sure what was going on here. Deegan was possibly waiting to hit Smith in the corner, similar to what happened with Justin Bogle and Justin Barcia a while back. But, that didn’t materialize, so overall, nothing dirty on Deegan’s end in this corner.

Now let’s look at the next corner. Deegan is very clearly aiming inside to hit Smith, which he does. It was a rough pass. He definitely got into him hard, especially hard for a heat race and being teammates. But, was it dirty? I’m not so sure…

Now for the final part of the incident between Haiden Deegan and Jordon Smith…

Smith went inside hard on Deegan, just like Deegan did to him. Nothing wrong there, in my opinion. To me, they’re both equal to this point. You can argue they shouldn’t be doing this as teammates and in a heat race, but, they both went hard at each other.

In this last image, the only difference is that Smith went down. Smith essentially took himself out. If Deegan went down when he got into Smith hard a few turns before, it would’ve been the same situation for Deegan. It just so happened that Deegan stayed up and Smith went down.

Here’s one last interesting puzzle piece to include:

The image above shows previous incidents between Haiden Deegan and Jordon Smith this season. Deegan said it was just a racing incident and he was “just up there battling.”

It seems there may be something going on between the two, but the only ones who know the truth are Deegan, Smith, and potentially the STAR racing team.

I’d love to be at the STAR track this week, that’s for sure.

Here is what Jordon Smith said about the incident:

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The final interesting piece to this Haiden Deegan and Jordon Smith incident is that Jett Lawrence‘s brother, Hunter Lawrence, seemingly defended Deegan in the post-race press conference. He did not explicitly backup Deegan, but his comments made it seem like there as no wrongdoing on Deegan’s end (or Smith’s). Here’s what Hunter said: