Nicky Hayden: Remembering motorsport’s much-loved “one-off”

The high-pressure nature of professional sport and the personal sacrifices that must be made to become elite often make sportsmen and women polarising characters. It seems that fact is only heightened in motorsport. But, very occasionally, one comes along who totally bucks the trend, who is universally appreciated.

Nicky Hayden typified the latter category.

One of five born into the Hayden family in Owensboro, Kentucky, on 30 July 1981, racing flowed through Nicky’s veins. Just like so many American bike racing heroes before him, Hayden cut his teeth – and proved successful – on the dirt track scene. He blazed a trail through the AMA series, winning the Supersport championship in 1999 and clinching the Superbike title in 2002, becoming the youngest winner of the series.

His exploits were enough to capture Honda’s attention, and he moved to MotoGP in 2003 as team-mate to Valentino Rossi. It would be two years before he tallied up his first win, doing so at Laguna Seca in 2005, but the following season would prove to be the ‘Kentucky Kid’s’ breakout campaign.

In MotoGP’s most dramatic championship tussle, a consistent Hayden – who only won twice compared to Rossi’s five, but retired only once in a crash-strewn season for the Italian, now at Yamaha – beat Rossi by five points in a Valencia finale in which his rival crashed. The pictures of Hayden, his face dripping with tears, as he brandishes the Star Spangled Banner on his cool-down lap are some of motorcycling’s most memorable of modern times.

It was the realisation of a lifelong dream – one which appeared to have ended in an Estoril gravel trap a week earlier after Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa crashed and took the American with him.

A total accident in the heat of battle, and one the Spanish rookie was unfairly vilified for in the press, Hayden’s furious immediate reaction may well have been the defining image of that 2006 season had Rossi go onto win the title. Hayden’s outburst was uncharacteristic, but his…