The Motocross des Nations: the World Cup of off-road racing

RaceMotocrossNations event

First run on 20 July 1947 near The Hague and won by Great Britain, the Motocross des Nations pits teams of three riders entered in MXGP, MX2 and Open. Three paired motos produce six results, the worst of which is dropped, with the lowest total winning. Roger De Coster's Belgium dominated until the 1980s, before thirteen consecutive American wins from 1981 to 1993, halted at Roggenburg. The United States leads the honours list with 23 victories, ahead of Great Britain and Belgium.

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The “Olympic Games of motocross”

Once a year, world motocross sets its parish-pump rivalries aside. Factory jerseys disappear, championship feuds fall silent, and the best riders on the planet pull on their national colours. This is the Motocross des Nations, MXoN for short, a national-team event that the paddock happily nicknames “the Olympic Games of motocross”. The principle is fearsomely simple: three riders per nation, spread across three categories, and a cumulative points classification that decides the winning country.

In a sport where the feats are usually individual, this collective dimension changes everything. A rider can win his moto and watch his country lose because of a crash three hours earlier. That is what gives the MXoN its particular tension, very different from that of the hard enduro of the Erzbergrodeo or the solitary odyssey of the Paris-Dakar. Here you don't race against the desert or against the clock: you race for a flag, in front of grandstands just waiting to roar.

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1947: an idea born near The Hague

The event is one of the oldest motorcycle competitions still being run. The first edition took place on 20 July 1947, near The Hague, in the Netherlands, with only three invited nations: the Netherlands, Belgium and Great Britain. It was the Britons Bill Nicholson, Fred Rist and Bob Ray who won that inaugural round. Europe was barely out of the war, motocross was still a sport of waste ground and ploughed fields, but the idea of a contest between nations caught on immediately.

As early as 1948, the second edition was held in Belgium, at La Fraineuse, near Spa, with France, Sweden and Luxembourg among the invited nations; Belgium won there. In 1949, Great Britain staged the event at Brands Hatch and won for the second time, which allowed it — under the rules of the day — to keep the original cup for good. The FIM then had to provide a new trophy. After the death, in 1954, of Peter Chamberlain, vice-president of the FIM's international sporting commission and a great champion of motocross, this cup was officially named in his honour. That seniority places the MXoN in the same heritage family as the Tourist Trophy on the Isle of Man or the great historic gatherings of the Goodwood kind: institutions older than most world championships.

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Trophée, Coupe, Motocross: three events merged into one

This is where the story gets complicated — and where a lot of articles get it wrong. For nearly four decades there wasn't one national-team event, but three separate events, run on different weekends and different circuits.

The Motocross des Nations proper, the one from 1947, was reserved for 500 cm³ machines and stayed that way until 1984. In 1961, the FIM created a twin event for 250 cm³ bikes: the Trophée des Nations. In 1980, it decided to add a third, for 125 cm³ machines: the Coupe des Nations. A single season could therefore see three “nations championships” crown three different countries, which badly diluted the media stakes.

The FIM settled the matter in 1985 : the three events merged into a single competition, the Motocross des Nations, with a 125 class, a 250 class and a 500 class — so one rider per capacity in each team. That is the format that built the modern legend of the event, and the direct ancestor of today's. This streamlining went hand in hand with the technical explosion of off-road racing, the very one that would take brands like KTM or the inventive Husaberg to the top of the world stage.

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The format: three riders, three motos, one combined score

The modern format keeps the spirit of 1985 while adapting it to today's categories. Each nation fields three riders entered respectively in MXGP, MX2 and Open. On Sunday, there aren't three races per category but three paired motos: MXGP + MX2, then MX2 + Open, then MXGP + Open. In other words, each rider races twice and the team goes home with six results.

The scoring works like golf: your finishing position is your points. A moto win is worth 1 point, second place 2 points, tenth place 10 points. At the end, the worst of the six results is dropped : only the best five count, and the lowest total wins. That joker changes the shape of the day: a mechanical failure or an isolated crash doesn't necessarily doom a nation, but two incidents do. Saturday is given over to qualifying, essential because the event draws a huge entry — 37 nations were entered in 2025.

Compared with the flat-out sprint of a Grand Prix, the MXoN is almost an exercise in team management, in a spirit that recalls the great collective endurance races such as the 24 Heures Motos at Le Mans or the Bol d'Or : the weakest link makes the result.

🥽 To ride, or simply to show off some off-road style, take a look at our motocross goggles and masks.

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Belgium, then the American steamroller

The first great empire of the MXoN was Belgian. Carried by an unreal generation — Roger De Coster, Joël Robert, Sylvain Geboers —, the flat country reigned from the 1960s to the 1980s. De Coster alone took six Motocross des Nations wins (1969, 1972, 1973, 1976, 1977 and 1979). And in the Trophée des Nations 250, the domination bordered on insolent: from 1969 to 1980, Belgium won every title but one, the 1979 edition taken by the USSR. The sands of Lommel and the heavy going of the Benelux were producing the best riders in the world at the time.

Then came 1981, and the tipping point. A young, barely decorated American team — Chuck Sun, Danny LaPorte, Johnny O'Mara and Donnie Hansen — first won the Trophée des Nations in the sand at Lommel, in Belgium, then, a week later, the Motocross des Nations at Bielstein, in Germany, by a single point from the British — even though O'Mara had never raced a 500 before that weekend. The off-road world discovered that the sport's centre of gravity had crossed the Atlantic, rather as Kenny Roberts Sr. had done on the road a few years earlier.

What followed remains one of the most crushing streaks in motorsport: thirteen consecutive wins, from 1981 to 1993. Thirteen editions, a single nation. American know-how — a flat trackbackground, the emerging supercross scene, factory budgets — steamrollered Europe. Jeff Ward put together a flawless record there: seven wins in seven appearances, a tally matched only by the Briton Jeff Smith. The streak finally fell in 1994, at Roggenburg (Switzerland), where Rob Herring, Paul Malin and Kurt Nicoll gave Great Britain its first win since 1967. One of the biggest upsets in the history of the discipline, in the same vein as the surprises thrown up by extreme events like the Baja 1000.

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Grandstands, flags and patriotism

No other motocross race looks like this one in the grandstands. Because the riders are defending a country rather than a brand, the crowd behaves as it would in a stadium: national flags, flares, air horns, chants, and tens of thousands of spectators camped on the banks. The MXoN moves from country to country, which regularly creates a tremendous “home” effect.

France put on the most spectacular demonstration of the modern era with five wins in a row from 2014 to 2018, then another success in 2023 at Ernée, in front of its home crowd. In 2019, at Assen, the Netherlands won at home, on a site already made sacred by the history of road racing — the same Assen TT nicknamed the “Cathedral”. A sign of the attachment the event inspires: Estonia's Tanel Leok has contested twenty finals since 2001, a loyalty record for a nation that has never won. More recently, Australia pulled off back-to-back wins in 2024 and 2025, carried by the Lawrence brothers. That popular fervour plucks the same string as the great celebrations of road-going off-road machines, from the Yamaha XT600 Ténéré to scramblers : dirt, dust and the urge to be part of it.

🏍️ Want to hang that atmosphere on your own wall? Take a look at our motocross wall art.

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The Chamberlain Trophy and the honours list

The reward handed to the winning nation is called the Chamberlain trophy (Chamberlain Trophy), named after Peter Chamberlain, the FIM official who died in 1954. It is an object the riders lift together, never alone — the very image of the event.

In the historic honours list, the United States lead with 23 wins, ahead of Great Britain (16) and Belgium (15). France and Sweden have seven successes each, Italy three (1999, 2002 and 2021) and Australia two. In 2025 it was Australia again that kept the cup, at Ironman Raceway in Indiana, with Hunter Lawrence, Jett Lawrence and Kyle Webster — a win taken on American soil which, forty-four years after 1981, is not without irony. As at the Daytona 200, the worth of a race isn't measured by its age alone, but by what it means to those who win it.

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Summary table

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FAQ — Frequently asked questions

• What year was the Motocross des Nations created?
  The first edition was held on 20 July 1947 near The Hague, in the Netherlands, with three invited nations: the Netherlands, Belgium and Great Britain. Britons Bill Nicholson, Fred Rist and Bob Ray won it.
• Why do people talk about both the Trophée des Nations and the Motocross des Nations?
  Because they were separate events. The Motocross des Nations was reserved for 500 cm³ machines from 1947 to 1984, the Trophée des Nations was created in 1961 for 250 cm³ bikes, and a 125 cm³ Coupe des Nations was decided on by the FIM in 1980. The FIM merged the three into a single competition in 1985.
• How many consecutive years did the United States win?
  Thirteen years in a row, from 1981 to 1993. The streak was stopped in 1994 at Roggenburg, in Switzerland, by the Great Britain team of Rob Herring, Paul Malin and Kurt Nicoll, which was claiming its first win since 1967.
• What is the trophy given to the winner called?
  The Chamberlain Trophy. It bears the name of Peter Chamberlain, vice-president of the FIM's international sporting commission and a great promoter of motocross, to whom the cup was officially dedicated after his death in 1954.
• How is the classification worked out today?
  Each nation fields three riders in MXGP, MX2 and Open. Three paired motos have each rider racing twice, giving six results. The finishing position is worth the points, the worst of the six results is dropped, and the nation with the lowest total wins the event.

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