Glen Meier will certainly remember 2013 as the most successful year in his career to date. In the ADAC MX Junior Cup, the Danish rider enjoyed an almost unbroken run of success by claiming six podiums, three of them as overall winner on the day. At the grand finale in Holzgerlingen, the young talent from Scandinavia was handed a well-deserved champion´s trophy. "It felt absolutely fantastic," says the 15-year-old. "I had started the season with an eighth place at Fürstlich Drehna – which was a bit frustrating – but after that, things went consistently well. The title is incredibly important for my career: for example, being ADAC MX Junior Cup winner makes it much easier to get new sponsors. It was also super for KTM Kosak Racing, the team I have always ridden for. They are now taking me to the next stage of my career, which came as a big relief for me. This year, I am competing one class higher in the ADAC MX Youngster Cup. I think that the title has been an excellent springboard."

When 16-year-old Dutch rider Bas Vaessen took the ADAC MX Junior Cup title in 2012, he was continuing a meteoric rise that began in 2011: "The ADAC MX Junior Cup had already been one of my favourite events for several years before I won it. When I finished third overall in 2011 and then became the 2012 Class 3 champion, I was absolutely delighted. Winning a title like this was important, because there is no other series in Europe that offers the same amount of recognition and has so much potential. Usually there are just a handful of riders at any race to provide you with any sort of competition. But in the ADAC MX Junior Cup, you are up against more than 80 others at the qualifying stage, and you have to work really hard to get a starting place on race day. Davy Pootjes and Brian Hsu were always hot on my heels. However, that just increased my motivation to be a better and more confident rider. Ultimately, my efforts were rewarded with overall victory in the series, and I´ve attracted the attention of several new sponsors, including Oakley, Thor, MotoMaster, HGS, Alpinestars, Vrooam lubricants, Ortema and Monster Energy. So things really couldn´t have gone any better."

A year earlier, in 2011, Bas Vaessen´s compatriot Luca Nijenhuis was celebrating his championship win in the ADAC MX Junior Cup. Now 19 years of age, Nijenhuis is competing in Class 2 of Europe´s most popular motocross series, but he still remembers how overcome with emotion he was after securing the title three seasons ago. "It was an extremely tight run-in between Brent van Doninck and me," recalls the Kawasaki rider. "Going into the last race of the season, I had to be faster than him to clinch the championship, and that made the whole occasion very exciting. Before that, I had already been Dutch champion three times, but the ADAC MX Junior Cup title is still by far the most important of my career. The fact that Fox then agreed to sponsor me still makes me very proud. Because I am competing in various other races this season, it means that I can´t always be present for all the ADAC MX Youngster Cup weekends, but when I´m there, I always aim to finish in the Top Five."

In 2010, the ADAC MX Junior Cup title went to Latvia as Paul Jonass saw off all the competition in his rookie season. "That was by far the best year of my motocross career to date," says the 17-year-old. "I was so proud when I was standing on the top rung of the podium and lifting the champion´s trophy. For me, the ADAC MX Masters has to be one of the best racing series out there, because you not only make some excellent friends but also come up against some strong rivals to compare yourself with. This helps you to improve in the shortest possible time and to increase your own speed. Also, all the places in the rider line-up are always taken, which means that the eight events were an ideal preparation for the World Championship which I won that same year in the 85cc class."

2009 saw another Dutch rider – Brent Doninck – leading the way in the ADAC MX Junior Cup. "It was like being in the movies when I lifted that piece of silverware," says the 18-year-old. "With the resulting media frenzy, it felt like I had become a professional motocross rider. I think that, ultimately, my father played a massive part in this success, because without him and KTM, I would be a long way off where I am today." In 2008, it was Doninck´s compatriot Jeffrey Herlings who won the trophy, and the year before that, Russia´s Aleksandr Tonkov was honoured for his consistent performance in Class 3.

"It was very hard work for me, both physically and mentally," says Tonkov, now 20 years of age. "I moved from Russia to Germany when I was 13 years old in order to concentrate on my motocross career. I couldn´t speak either German or English and didn´t have a lot of time to prepare for the ADAC MX Junior Cup, as it was my last year on an 85cc machine. My coach at that time was Sergey Garin of Garin MX Sports; he even put me up for a while at his house. Thanks to intensive training from morning to evening, I soon became so fit that I was sometimes faster than either Jeffrey Herlings or Ken Roczen. Becoming champion was ultimately a huge relief for me, because at that moment, I felt a load pressure come off my shoulders. What´s more, I had proved to myself that I made the right decision to leave my home country for the sake of my sporting career. Winning the title made me not only better in terms of performance but also gave me mental strength, and of course, it opened a lot doors in motocross at an international level."

The first time that Ken Roczen won a title in the context of the ADAC MX Masters series was back in 2006. The 20-year-old from Mattstedt near Weimar followed up with three further champion´s trophies in the intervening years, making him the most successful ADAC MX Masters rider of all time: "That was a huge occasion for me eight years ago, to have achieved so much at such a young age. It was a really good feeling that not only filled me with pride but spurred me on for the following season. Two years later, I finished as champion in the ADAC MX Youngster Cup, and in 2009 and 2010, I took the title in the Masters class. So to that extent, the success in the ADAC MX Junior Cup was the foundation of my career as a motocross racer."

In the very first ADAC MX Junior Cup held in 2005, Holland´s Ceriel Klein was crowned champion at the end of an outstanding campaign. The 23-year-old MX star, who now competes at Masters level, still recalls with great pleasure the feeling he experienced on winning the junior championship: "I was so incredibly pleased, I was lost for words. My toughest opponent was Ken Roczen, and fending off his challenge was no easy task. But in the end, it was me standing on the top step of the podium, and suddenly everyone in the MX scene, including the major sponsors, knew my name. It helped me enormously in my career."