From racer to pundit, Cianciarulo is living his best motocross life

Having maintained a remarkable 20-year relationship with Monster Energy Team Green, Monster Energy/Pro Circuit/Kawasaki and the Monster Energy Kawasaki factory team, which included winning the AMA Pro Motocross Championship in 2019, Adam Cianciarulo retired from the sport in 2024. Still, the Floridian has remained front and center, hosting "Race Day Live" on NBC alongside former competitor Justin Brayton, and the pair also put out the AC & JB Show podcast. He's as amped up as ever to be promoting the sport and its athletes via his media platforms,

“I think as I’ve got further and further away from racing myself, you kind of just start to know yourself better," he says. "You know the things that you enjoy doing. I’m doing Race Day Live at supercross and then in the summertime, myself and Justin Brayton still have our podcast. We do The AC & JB Show every week, which is a lot of fun. Besides that, it’s really just riding my dirt bike here and there and trying to stay in shape.

“You know I did a lot of damage to body when I was racing,” admits Cianciarulo. “So now, for me, that is a very high priority. I deal with a fair amount of chronic pain on a daily basis. I’m just trying to make sure I’m doing all the right things. That way I can stay mobile as long as I possibly can.

"I think I’m pretty used to dealing with pain. A lot of guys in action sports are very familiar with pain. It is something that I probably don’t give myself enough credit for, but I think us racers are really not complainers when it comes to that. I think the challenge for me has been to really just try to listen to my body and make the right steps to be as healthy as I can. I’m really used to just trying to brush things under the rug and telling myself it’s not a big deal. I’m taking a bit of a different approach now and just trying to maximize what I have.

"I had those big shoulder injuries early in my career. Really, from the time I did those I was essentially on borrowed time. I had a genetic kind of condition. I was basically just born with bad shoulders. The further that I get away from racing, the more I look at that and I think to myself, ‘Man, the fact that I made an 11-year career coming off those big shoulder injuries, I’ve got a lot to be grateful for.’

"My girlfriend and I both are very into just wellness and trying to be as healthy as we can. It’s just really establishing good routines. I have a full-time massage therapist now. I do a lot of physical therapy. I’m in the gym a lot. I’m swimming a lot. Really, trying to keep up with the body is a full-time job, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I have to commend all the guys I’ve raced with and all of the guys out there right now. It’s hard to describe adequately, but these are truly some of the toughest human beings on the planet, in my opinion.”

The passage of time has given Cianciarulo a more wide-ranging perspective too.

"I think one of the biggest things you learn as an athlete is that you end up thinking about yourself quite a bit, because ultimately it comes down to how you do on Saturday nights," he muses. "What I’ve kind of enjoyed about retirement is that it is changing the way that I view myself in the world. Of course I have my own ambitions and I want to contribute and do the best I can in my work, but I think it’s more about focusing on what I can do for other people and what I can do for the sport.

"I’m very blessed to have the job doing Race Day Live for supercross and the AC & JB Show and working with Kawasaki and Alpinestars and all my fantastic partners, but it’s really just figuring out how I can contribute the best I can to the sport and the industry that I love so much. I have a lifetime worth of experience in the sport. I think I have a lot to offer there. It’s really just trying to figure out where exactly that fits in. I’m pretty busy these days, but I do think that there is probably more that I will be doing in the future and it’s just trying to get a clear idea of what that looks like and what I enjoy doing.

"And there is a lot that I want to do with Kawasaki. Absolutely. If you would have told me back in 2004 when I signed with Team Green that I would never race another motorcycle the rest of my life, I would have been shocked. You know you look through the sport’s history and loyalty between a rider and a brand, it does happen, but it is very rare. Especially with the early strugglers in my career. I cannot say enough about Mitch Payton and Pro Circuit and everything they did for me to give me the platform to stick with me through all of those ups and downs. They always gave me everything I needed. The whole organization, top to bottom, was just very professional. They were so, so supportive of me when I decided to retire.

"There is a part of me that I was bummed that I couldn’t repay all their years of investment in me with more wins and more championships. More than just the way I see myself, that might have been the hardest thing for me because I really wanted to pay those guys back for all their years of hard work and dedication. I tried to do that with my effort. I felt like I left a little on the table there, unfortunately, with some of the injuries, but for Kawasaki now to still be sticking with me and to still make me feel like I’m part of the family, it has done so much for me and my well-being in this transition. It’s a tough transition to non-racing. All those guys at Kawasaki have always treated me the same way, whether I was their number one rider on the team, or whether I was a kid that was getting hurt all the time on Pro Circuit. To have an organization like Kawasaki that continually supported me through my career, I can’t say enough good things about them. I’m green until the day I day.

“There are very few people that have been able to make a living at the highest level and win races at the highest level of the sport and do what I did. I am very proud of that, but I think with my talent level I think if things gone smoother, I would have loved to win way more. I would have loved to win supercross races and a supercross championship. I think my talent, my potential, my speed, I think I had all the tools I needed to do that, but sometimes life has other ideas, right? I think you look across the board at athletes in all sports, it hardly ever goes the way that you picture it going.

"My thing through my whole career is focus on the things that you can contrail. When challenges arise and it throws you off course, if you do the best you can in those moments, I think you end up in a good spot. I look around at the life that I have now and I would be a damn fool to complain about what I did, right? There was that ambitious part of me that wanted to win everything and I was bummed that I didn’t. But the angel on my shoulder is saying, ‘Man, look at what you’ve done. Look at the life you have.’ I am very grateful to all my partners and the fans and the sport and everybody. It’s really provided me with a life that was difficult to even imagine as a young guy. I did my best with what I could. It’s given me a life that I honestly could have never dreamed of.”