Jaiden Blokzijl. A future MotoGP rider?

He is 12 years old, a big fan of Valentino Rossi and already a great upcoming Dutch race talent.

I met Jaiden during the DutchTT in Assen when we could ride on their minibikes. I was interested in his training, so at Saturday the first of September 2018 I went to the Junior track at the TT circuit in Assen. 

I already saw him riding a few laps during the DutchTT, but now I could see him train. He had different sessions on his minibike. His thumb hurt because of a previous crash during a training session, but he kept riding his bike and didn't really seem to care about the pain. 

After a couple of sessions his bike needed to be refueled. And Jaiden did it himself (with a little help from his father). His father Sebastiaan also told me Jaiden helps him with maintenance of the bike, and they try to solve the problems together when there are any problems with the bike. 

Saturday Jaiden told me he was going to ride his big bike the next day. So at Sunday I went to the circuit again to see him ride the big one. It is a 100CC Honda, a NSF100 bike. 

At this day Jaiden was trained by Bryan Schouten (Bryan was an active rider untill last year. He competed in the Moto3 championship in 2014 for CIP on a Mahindra). Bryan stopped his racing career, and now teaches the young talents how to race. 

It was really nice to see him teach the kids how to better ride their bikes, because the best way to teach them how to listen to the bike is making sounds. And I can never get used to grown up men making all kind of sounds of bikes, because it is really funny to see and hear. 

Jaiden had some kind of difficulties with the exact moment to shift to the next gear, but at the end of the day he did so mutch better and improved his laptimes. This was possible because Bryan was riding with Jaiden on the bikes so he could show Jaiden the perfect race lines, but could also get a more closer look what Jaiden exactly does while riding. 

During these 2 days I've learned a lot about Jaiden. He really wants to learn to be a better racer. Even when Bryan told him to sit on his bike in a verry uncomfortable position, Jaiden just did it without complaining. When he had to ride a different way he was used to, he did it without complaining, even when he didn't really felt 100% comfortable he just kept riding that way. 

And I love to see a boy so young already so late on the brakes. 

For all the people that love racing and have a racetrack close where these young boys train I would recommend to take a look when they are training. And I'm 100% sure that these boys are the future Moto3, Moto2 and even MotoGP stars.