Along with Condo, Jake has also conquered the Australasian Safari, which was a tough off-road race held in Western Australia, the last one was held in 2014.
He racked up multiple first place finishes in that one too – in 2009 and 2012 as well as two-second place finishes in 2007 and 2011. The 2011-second placing was actually behind his brother Todd, who took first so that was a very nice win for the Smith brothers.
You could also argue he’s mastered the podium finish at the Yellow Mountain Cross Country – after taking one each time he’s competed there, including 1st place in 2010, 2013 and 2015, 2nd place in 2007 and 2008 and 3rd place in 2014.
Looking through his list of accolades, it’s clear he has worked hard to maintain consistent podium finishes and overall wins, noting out of nearly 20 years of racing he only looks at two of those years as what he called ‘bad seasons.’ With so many years of top-three placings across such a variety of races, it would be hard to see anything but an overall win as a bad season. Those are nice odds if you were a ‘betting man’ (or woman) and very nice stats to look back on.
So how did he come to ride for Honda? Many riders have to chase opportunities where they can get them so long term brand loyalty can often be a rare sight… but then there’s Jake who has consecutively been with Honda since 2009, adding there were early years in his career where he was on the #RideRed train as well.
“Looking back on it Honda was really successful with Mcgrath and in Australia had a strong presence in the Junior MX scene, HRA (Honda Racing Australia) was almost every kids dream and became mine quite early. They had a big setup in the pits, always looked good and most of the time the riders on the team were winning so from a very young age, that was a dream of mine to ride for that team which I did in 2004.â€
