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If only Onorio had known his son’s determination. Two days later, young Nico, with a little help from his grandmother, was riding his bike without training wheels. A dirt bike was purchased, and a career was born.

“I’d watch him on the dirt bike, and I’d think, ‘Any time now, this kid is going to tip over, and he’s going to tell me he doesn’t want anything to do with it,’ ” said Betsy Izzi, Nico’s mother. “And here he is, still at it.”

Izzi, on the cusp of turning 18, will compete in this weekend’s AMA Motocross Championships Saturday and Sunday at Redbud Track & Trail in Buchanan, on the west side of the state. Izzi, who turned pro last year and rides for the Rockstar Makita Suzuki Factory Racing team, is in the Lites Class and is coming off a third-place finish last weekend in Colorado. He returns to familiar turf this weekend, since he grew up racing at Redbud.

“Since I’m going to be in front of a home crowd, I want to do well,” Izzi said. “Expectations are really high. We have some momentum from last weekend, and hopefully we can keep it going.”

Michigan has produced some top-level Motocross/Supercross riders, and Izzi expects to be considered one of them. He has always set lofty goals.

“When I first started, I told my dad that I wanted to be better than Jeremy McGrath, and at the time, he was the best,” Izzi said. “My dad told me it would be a long road, and it’s tough filling the shoes of someone like Jeremy, but that’s what I wanted to do. It’s really an achievement just to be here.”

His career has been a family affair. While Onorio stayed home to pay the bills, Betsy hit the road driving her son, then 13, in a motorhome from event to event.

“It was a little unconventional,” Betsy Izzi said. “We traveled across country training and going to races. I would never have thought it would come to this.”

Now, since their son turned pro, Betsy and Onorio fly to all his races. Nico now lives in California part of the time, and Betsy stays with him.

“He’s still too young to be on his own,” she said.

But he’s old enough to be making his mark in a sport that seems to reward youthful talent. It’s a physically brutal sport, which explains, in part, why it’s a young man’s sport. About a year and a half ago, Izzi suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament and meniscus. He was out seven months, which feels like years in motocross.

“It was pretty hard, and I lost a lot of time,” he said. “It was a bad injury, but every week, I’m getting stronger. I can’t wait to be on top.”

He finished fifth overall in the Supercross standings, which included a fourth at Ford Field this year. After a rough start to the Motocross season, which included Izzi sitting out an event because he suffered a concussion the week before, he is eighth in the standings heading into Redbud.

Izzi is one of the most decorated amateur competitors, having won more than 100 major amateur championships before turning pro last year.

“I’ve always loved the sport,” Izzi said. “Once I started doing really well as an amateur and won everything, nothing felt better than winning. When I came into the pro ranks a year ago, I didn’t expect to win everything that first year. I just wanted to go in and learn, and that’s what I’ve been doing.

“Now, I feel like things are turning, and nothing would be better than to keep the momentum going this weekend in front of friends and family.”