Nicky Hayden Remembered

It’s still hard to fathom. Nicky Hayden, at just 35, is gone. His life taken away in a tragic bicycle training accident in Italy. Hit by a car. His family said the doctors told them mercifully Nicky probably never felt a thing. He died on May 22, 2017, a date that motorcycle racing fans will long remember. Years from now many of us will recall what we were doing when we heard the news that the “Kentucky Kid” passed away.

Hayden was incredible on the track. He began riding minibikes at just three years old and began racing a couple of years after that. By the time he became the youngest AMA Superbike Champion at age 21 in 2002, he’d already been racing for more than 15 years! Veteran roadracer Steve Crevier, who won the 1998 AMA Supersport Championship, and had been racing professionally since the mid-1980s, once joked in a press conference after racing against Hayden, “People say I’ve been racing a lot longer than Nicky has, but I’m not sure that’s true. I think he started when he was in diapers.”

Hayden and his two brothers and two sisters grew up doing countless laps around the track next to their home on the outskirts of Owensboro, Kentucky—not opulent but nevertheless a beautiful setting, a horse ranch, with trees perfectly lining a long driveway leading back to the house.

Even Nicky’s parents, Earl and Rose, raced when they were younger, and Nicky ran the same number 69 his dad once wore.

Nicky accomplished a great deal in his career. He was an AMA Horizon Award winner in 1997, AMA Grand National Flat Track Rookie of the Year in 1999, AMA/Speedvision Pro Athlete of the Year in 1999, AMA 600cc Super­sport Champion in 1999, Daytona 200 winner in 2002, AMA Super­bike Champion in 2002, MotoGP Rookie of the Year in 2003, MotoGP World Champion in 2006, and MotoGP Legend in 2015.

Now Nicky in death becomes an American racing icon for the ages. We talked with many from Hayden’s racing career and life to have them share their thoughts and stories about who he was to them and how he influenced their lives. From dirt track to superbike to MotoGP to crew chiefs, mechanics, and young riders coming up in roadracing now, these are reflections on Nicky Hayden, 1981–2017.

VALENTINO ROSSI
Seven-time MotoGP World Champion

“Nicky is one of the best friends I’ve ever had in the paddock. We were teammates at Honda in his rookie year, 2003, when he was a young debutant getting his first European experience. That season closed with a world title for me and his first premier-class podium on Phillip Island. A few years later, we fought each other for the 2006 title until the last race, and in the end—unfortunately for me—he beat me and became a MotoGP World Champion. After the race we shook hands and we hugged. Losing a world title from Nicky was less painful because he was a cool type. Later we were teammates again during a couple of difficult years at Ducati. During those seasons we fought until the last drop of our blood several times, maybe to secure the last place in the top five. Nicky often came to the Motor Ranch, where it was always a show to see him ride, and we tried to sneak in some private battles together. He was one of the fastest flat-track riders in the world, and, before starting his career on asphalt, he had won the most important American Flat Track competitions and the Peoria TT. From him there was a lot to learn, especially on the left, because arriving from the American flat-track, he was very strong on the left, off road but also in MotoGP. When we were teammates, I could check his data and he was able to turn the bike in a very effective way. The same happened at the ranch, when he was coming training with me. He was a very strong rider, and then there was Nicky as a person. He was a fantastic guy, with very good principles, with his family always on top of his thoughts and a very friendly guy. I have many memories related to him in all the years spent together, and the main thing is that he was always fair, whether he was beating you or I was in front.

“The most beautiful memory I have of him is when he came up to me to shake my hand on the lap of honor after the unlucky race of Valencia 2015. For him, it was his farewell to MotoGP; for me, I had just lost the world title. His gaze from inside his helmet, supporting me, is one of the few positive memories I have of that day. Nicky, we’re all with you.”

SCOTT PARKER
Nine-time AMA Grand National champion and all-time record holder of 94 Grand National championship race wins

“Nicky from the start was a great racer. He grew up a huge fan of flat-track, and he treated me with a lot of respect—maybe too much. That time at Del Mar in ’99 he really wanted that Mile win, but I beat him to the line. I heard later he could have maybe stuck it underneath me coming out of four, but he said he didn’t want to be the guy who made me crash in my last race. When Nicky was just a kid of nine or 10, Earl came up to ask me about how they should go forward with Nicky’s career. I told him flat-track was great and he could probably do well at it, but I told him to do roadracing too. I saw that was where the real opportunities were at that time. Every time I saw Earl after that he would tell me that advice I gave him was the reason Nicky went on to become a roadracer.”

JIM ALLEN
Former Dunlop Tire Senior Manager Motorcycle Road Racing

“Nicky was such a good person. On the professional front, never ever did I get anything negative out of him. You work with these guys and are down there in the trenches with them, and sometimes things don’t go the way they want. Sometimes, in spite of my best efforts, I might have let him down. Never was there any criticism. He might say something like, ‘What can we do better for next time?’ Ultimately professional and ultimately respectful. He tried so hard. I’ve seen him finish races and his lips were quivering, his hands were shaking, just from trying so hard. And when a guy works that hard, you just want to work as hard as he does.”

MIGUEL DUHAMEL 1995 AMA Superbike champion, five-time AMA Supersport champion, two-time AMA Formula Xtreme champion, and five-time Daytona winner

“Nicky was always very smooth as a rider. And another thing that stands out is how strong mentally he was. You don’t win by accident and Nicky was also good about communicating about setup to Merlyn [Plumlee] at first and his other guys. I mean, he became MotoGP World Champion. I remember one day at Road America, I passed him at turn five and after the race he came up to me and said, ‘Man, I could hear your front tire squealing. I guess you wanted it more than me.’ And then he didn’t try to make some banzai move and take both of us out. He knew on some days it was better to take second, even though I know he wanted to win as much as anyone.”

PETE BENSON
Nicky Hayden's crew chief at Repsol Honda (from 2005)

“When Nicky turned up in the MotoGP paddock, I didn’t know much about him, but you could see that he had dedication and the ability to do a great job. At the time, I was working with Valentino as engine builder and we could see from the other side of the garage that every week he was learning and he was not making the same mistake twice. Every week he was a bit faster, and for me this is the biggest thing when you come from another championship to MotoGP.

“He was really a breath of fresh air. He turned up from America to a completely new world, and he was laid-back and friendly with everybody. I remember the first race and he wished Valentino good luck. I don’t think any rider ever did the same at this level. But to Nicky it was normal. He simply was himself. He liked people and generally speaking everybody liked him and he had time for every­body. He was a fair person.”

ROGER HAYDEN
Nicky's youngest brother and 2007 AMA Super­sport champion talking during his first race weekend, at Road America, after his brother's funeral. He won the pole.

“Being on the bike is the easiest part. You have to have such focus because the straightaways are so long you can only focus on one thing. Having a fast bike and track, it’s hard not to ride around this place without a smile on your face. Being on the bike is the best part; being off it is the toughest. People care. It’s a good thing and a bad thing, I guess. You want to focus and you wish you could just wait until Sunday night and talk to every single person who wants to talk, but people care. My brother was loved. That’s the way he was, and a lot of people love our family and they want to show their support. Especially people within the paddock. We’re all competitors, but at the end of the day it’s a big brotherhood. I’m glad to be racing, glad to be up to speed because I couldn’t imagine coming here and struggling. It would be really bad.”

JAKE LEWIS
A MotoAmerica Superbike Rookie of the Year who grew up training with the Haydens

“As a young kid he was my hero. I looked up to all three brothers. Our families are really close. I grew up in dirt track, and the Haydens were the ones who got me into roadracing. The past three winters I’ve lived with them out in California. He was like a brother and a really good friend. We had one common bond and that was to try to win races. Nicky always worked so hard, and had the attitude to never give up and that is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

WAYNE RAINEY
Three-time 500cc Grand Prix World champion and MotoAmerica President

“I met Tommy and Nicky just after my racing accident. I was able to get a couple of 125GP bikes for Tommy and Nicky to race in Spain’s Open Ducados Series. I don’t remember a lot about how they did over there, but I remember we went through a lot of tires. They did a lot of laps. To go over to Spain and face kids who were older than them… I don’t see anyone doing that now. They were quite a bit ahead, in terms of talent, by the time we ran them over there.

“You never know [when starting racing at a young age] if a rider is going to stay interested in racing motorcycles or if they’re going to go off and chase girls or play football or baseball, but Nicky always hung around. He was by the bike, very interested in what was going on. He was a sponge. For a kid that young, he was clearly very focused.

“Nicky [with flat-track] had the same schooling of all the American champions that came before him. I think a lot of that came from his father Earl, who was a dirt-track racer also. He saw that there were more opportunities in roadracing and got them into that right away. But never really going away from his roots, Nicky had all the abilities dirt-track teaches you to be a good roadracer. He’s probably going to be the last American world champion who had that kind of background.”

By Larry Lawrence

The first time I saw Nicky was at a WERA club roadrace at Indianapolis Raceway Park, possibly 1992. That would have made him 10 years old. He and his older brother Tommy were racing 125cc Honda GP bikes and showing most of the older and more experienced riders the fast way around the track.

To supplement the less-than-meager earnings of a motorcycle racing reporter, my wife Jackie and I would set up a little booth at the club races and sell photos. Earl and the kids came over afterward. Roger was there too, even though he was too little to roadrace at the time. We chatted with Earl as the kids thumbed through the photos. From then on whenever we went to a race the Haydens attended, we always enjoyed seeing Earl and the kids.

A couple of years later I was in Owensboro, doing a feature on the kids for Cycle News. Their Catholic school was good enough to allow me into the classroom to take photos of Nicky and Tommy during classes. It had to be a bit embar­rassing for them, but they handled it like little pros.

I was always nervous about watching kids race. To this day I have mixed feelings about it, but the Haydens were always smooth and rarely crashed—so as safe as possible in a dangerous sport.

I remember watching Nicky’s first AMA Pro Road Race standing next to Earl atop an infield building at Pikes Peak International Raceway in 1997. As we followed Nicky’s progress through the very deep and talented Supersport field, Earl said to me, “This makes me nervous. That one [Nicky] does not like being behind people!”

I watched and wrote about Nicky’s rapid rise to become the youngest-ever AMA Superbike champion.

I was so fortunate to be among the throng at Laguna Seca in 2005, who watched Nicky win his first MotoGP race. It was especially memorable in that it was probably the first motorcycle race I’d attended in 20 years where I wasn’t working. Jackie and I were on vacation and we both were able to take in the collective happiness the crowd felt that day as an emotional Nicky rode around with his dad on the back and the giant American flag waving at his side.

I had a little pocket camera with me and I hit the button to record a video. I watched the video today and am surprised to hear the emotion in both Jackie’s and my voice. Nicky’s win meant a lot to us.

Hearing the cheers of those around us on the outside of the main straight at Laguna that day, then 12 years later seeing hundreds, if not thousands, of Owensboro residents waving American flags as Nicky was carried past one last time in his funeral procession, I could tell Nicky meant a lot to all of us.