Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 49 DECEMBER 9, 2014 P117 The sacrifices the Hayden family made dur- ing their formative years paid off richly for all the Hayden brothers. All three have had long, suc- cessful, well-paying careers in the sport. Middle son Nicky even became MotoGP World Champion. Earl stays involved today helping to run merchan- dising for his sons. The family is still close and it certainly appears on every level that the Hayden's story is the gold standard example of how a family can guide their children into racing success and remain a healthy family unit. In motorcycle racing parental involvement is the norm rather than the exception. Big James Stew- art guided his sons James "Bubba" and Malcolm Stewart into great achievements in motocross and Supercross. Ricky Carmichael's mom and dad also footed the bills for his racing career up until he turned pro. While in most cases it's dads who are the primary driving force behind their son's motorcycle racing career, there are at least two notable exceptions. In the case of former AMA and World Superbike Champion Ben Spies and seven-time AMA Grand National Champion Chris Carr, it was mom who served as primary sponsor, driver, cook and coun- selor in their early years. In Carr's case his mother was a school teacher so she had the summers off to drive Chris from California to the dusty dirt tracks of the Midwest, while dad stayed home to manage his electronics shop. In Spies' case he was raised by a free-spirited single mother, who did whatever it took for her children to pursue their dreams – even if that meant working three jobs at times to be able to afford to keep racing. One of Mary Spies' jobs was working part-time at the school Ben attended, which helped when Ben needed time off from school to head to a big race on the other side of the country. Often these kids start so early that they turn to home schooling, so parents become teachers too. Having a child on the track participating in a risky sport is something that isn't talked about a lot and something racing families have to learn to deal with. Earl Hayden told me a story of him and his boys being at a race in Pocono, Pennsylvania, where a rider died. "When you see something like that it jolts you," Earl said. "I talked to all the boys about it afterward and they all said they wanted to keep racing. They loved it so much. Tommy told me then that if he should ever die while racing he wanted to be buried in his racing leathers." Besides the obvious dangers of racing, an- other tricky part families have to negotiate often comes when the teenage son suddenly signs that first big factory contract. It can make these families suddenly very wealthy. As happens so of- ten, money can be a source of friction when rid- ers go from children to adults. In the case of the Haydens, Stewarts and Spies the riders found a way to keep the parent(s) involved, sometimes as managers, to help earn back all the money the family spent getting them to the pro ranks. In some cases money can act as a point of friction. Perhaps the most famous case was that of former AMA Motocross and Supercross star Ezra Lusk, who was estranged from his parents for years af- ter he became a pro. Jason DiSalvo and his father had a unique agreement in that Jason paid his dad back in one lump sum after he signed his first big pro contract. "That way everything was clean cut," Jason said. "I recognized that he spent a lot of money to help me get to that position and I wanted to pay him back as a way to thank him for giving me the opportunity." With the economic downturn in recent years the number of well-paying factory seats in motor- cycle racing has diminished substantially, but that hasn't kept families from helping their children go after the big prize in motorcycle racing. One needs only to visit Loretta Lynn's AMA Amateur Motocross Championships or the AMA Dirt Track Grand Championships every summer to see the dream is alive and well. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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