Page 10 - GRID4

“LEGENDS NEVER DIE”
“REMEMBERING THE KENTUCKY KID”
“RIDE ON KENTUCKY KID”
“I first met Nicky when he was sixteen years old at some club race somewhere
when I was racing. I started racing AMA Nationals in 1997 and Jason Pridmore and
I became friends because a friend of mine was racing with Jason on the Hyper- Cycle team. I watched Nick come in 1997 and race a couple of races on a Kawasaki and one time he put it on pole, then the next year he signed with Suzuki and was Jason’s teammate. One thing that always sticks out in mind about Nick at sixteen was that he was a horrible, horrible interview. Now I was racing AMA Nationals but at the same time I was also doing television and I remember Earl comin’ to me back
in 1998 and saying “Hey, can you work with Nick ‘cause he’s a pretty bad interview?” So, we’d spend some time alone periodically between 1998 and 1999 and just talk a little bit about interview techniques and the things he had to offer -- which his big- gest asset was his smile. So y’know, since that time we were always in a way close. As Nick progressed through the series, it wasn’t until probably 2002 where I became the full-time pit reporter for the series during his championship year. At that time I was always racing and doing television at the same time, and I was slow, real slow
-- like fifteenth through eleventh. So, Nicky would always make a point to throw a dig on my speed, y’know, Nicky style -- he and Jason used to rail me all the time. But, through all the years including the Supersport Championship, the Superbike Cham- pionship, and the MotoGP Championship, Nicky was always the same guy. He always answered my texts, he answered the phone, if I had a request it was always “Yup,
we can do that. I’ll make time, don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out.” One of the things that Nicky always said to me that really stuck with me is that “When you’re winnin’,
the phone’s ringing off the hook and when you’re not winnin’, the phone’s dead.” So, I always made it a point to stay in communication with Nicky in the times that he was down because it meant a lot to him. A number of years ago I started my own effort, an internet based show, and I wanted some experts in the field -- so when I called Nicky to be my guy for MotoGP, he said “Absolutely, I’ll do anything you need,” and that’s the kind of guy that Nicky always was. It wasn’t until these later years after GPs where he called me finally and said “Hey man, can we do an interview? I’m launch- ing these new t-shirts,” or whatever he was doing, and finally Nicky Hayden wanted a favor from me. I have a bazillion stories of him making fun of me and laughing about it, but I think my favorite story about Nicky is when the guy picked up the phone and called me, ‘cause the guy gave me everything that I asked for almost twenty years. It always great connecting with him when we were at the race track -- I always had an open conversation to go to Owensboro or California and pedal bicycles with him. He was always very open like that -- no matter how old I got, how fat I got, or how irrelevant I got, Nicky Hayden didn’t care about that, all he did was care about who you are as a person.”
-GREGG WHITE
10 GRIDMOTO • JULY 2017