In this episode, Adam Arsenault shares his remarkable journey from humble beginnings in North Carolina to becoming a key figure in off-road motorsports. His path spans 20 years in Marine Special Operations, four combat deployments, and a thriving racing career.
Adam grew up in Asheville, NC; joined the Marine Corps at 18 and served 20 years, including intelligence work and combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He transitioned to Racing, discovering off-road culture in California; competing at King of the Hammers seven times and racing in the Baja 1000.
He now manages the operations director role for Polaris’s factory race program, overseeing four Pro-R vehicles competing in SCORE series races and select US events. Adam’s personal philosophy emphasizes persistence through failure, finding purpose over paycheck, and valuing relationships over individual achievement.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:13.300] – Big Rich Klein
From a humble beginning in the hills of North Carolina to joining the Marine Corps at 18, then moving into the intelligence department of the Corps, 4 combat tours, and then retirement after 20 years, life in off-road started in his third phase of life. With KOH Baja, and now as the manager of the Polaris Factory Race Program. My guest is Adam Arsenault. Good morning, Adam Arsenault. So good to have you on the podcast. We just talked about the pronunciation of your name, and I think I just screwed it up, but we can get into that. But good to have you on the podcast.
[00:01:53.830] – Adam Arsenault
Well, morning, Rich. Thanks so much for having me. I mean, I’m honored to to be invited as a guest. You must be getting pretty far down your list to give me a call. I’m not sure that I even hold a candle to half the guests you have on your show, but honored to be here and tell some stories.
[00:02:10.440] – Big Rich Klein
You know, it’s all about having an impact in off-road and then having people either reach out to me and say, hey, you need to interview this person. And if you’re already on my list, then you move right up the list. And that’s what happened. You have a fan out there that reached out and said I needed to talk to you sooner than later. So here you are.
[00:02:31.960] – Adam Arsenault
Nice. No, that’s good to hear.
[00:02:33.730] – Big Rich Klein
So let’s, let’s jump in at the beginning. Where were you born and raised?
[00:02:38.150] – Adam Arsenault
So that’s actually a part answer because I was born in Spokane, Washington, which is kind of northeastern Washington State, close to the Idaho border, kind of this— I think it’s the second largest city in Washington State next to Seattle. Um, but I only lived there, I think I was 3 or 4 years old when my dad got a transfer for work and took me, my mom, and my younger sister, and we moved to the East Coast to Charlotte, North Carolina. Oh wow. Yeah, we spent about a year in Charlotte, and my parents were just not having it, you know. They, they were both originally born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, so they were kind of used to mountains and trees and rivers and that kind of thing. And Charlotte didn’t really have any of that, you know, pretty, pretty flat, pretty dry. And so after about a year in Charlotte, they moved us up to Asheville, North Carolina, which is up in the mountains, the western side of North Carolina, in the Appalachian Mountain range, the Great Smoky Mountains. And lived in Asheville for the rest of my youth up until I was 18.
[00:03:52.770] – Big Rich Klein
Wow. Okay. Asheville is really kind of a touristy little town from what I understand.
[00:04:00.930] – Adam Arsenault
It is. Yeah. It’s, you know, I didn’t understand this growing up. It’s— they called it Little San Francisco at the time. And later on in my life, I would figure out why it was. It was very, very progressive. You know, like, like downtown Asheville, kind of the heart of the city. Um, a lot of, a lot of art and culture there. And then kind of in the surrounding communities were more traditional, um, kind of mountain towns. Um, so it was a very unique mix, I guess, of people and cultures. And so that was good to grow up because I got, um, um, like a good perspective, um, of, I think, you know, the rest of the United States and the rest of the world, really, in that, you know, cities and cultures aren’t necessarily singular in identity. You know, there’s a lot of mixing of ideas. And so that was good. It was a good, good place to grow up. READ MORE
