Nicholas "Nicky" Patrick Hayden (born July 30, 1981 in Owensboro, Kentucky) also known as The Kentucky Kid is the American professional motorcycle racer who won the MotoGP World Championship in 2006.
As a youth, racing others twice his age in CMRA, Hayden would often start the race from the back of the starting grid while a family or crew member held his bike upright because he could not touch the ground. Later, at age 17, he was racing factory Honda RC45 superbikes while still in high school. In 1999, he won the AMA Supersport championship on board a privateer Honda. In 2001, his first full season as an AMA superbike racer, he came within 40 points of winning the championship, finishing behind only champion Mat Mladin and runner-up Eric Bostrom. The 2002 season, however, would see Hayden answering the bell: he won the Daytona 200 on a Honda Superbike en route to becoming the youngest ever AMA Superbike Champion, defeating reigning treble champion Mat Mladin, among others. He also entered the World Superbike round at Laguna Seca, making a solid 4th in the first race before colliding with Noriyuki Haga in race two.
Hayden is one of a long line of American road racers to come from the American dirt-track scene. In 1999, Hayden won his first Grand National Championship race (Hagerstown Half Mile) and took Rookie of the Year honors. He was also declared the AMA's athlete of the Year. In 2000, Nicky Hayden won the Springfield Short Track. In 2002, despite racing in just a handful of dirt-track events, Hayden was able to win four races: Springfield Short Track (twice), Springfield TT Steeplechase, and Peoria TT Steeplechase. At the Springfield TT race, the three Hayden brothers took the first three places (Nicky 1st, Tommy 2nd, and Roger Lee 3rd). The win at the 2002 Peoria TT came after beating thirteen-time Peoria winner, Chris Carr, despite starting from the penalty line. Hayden only lacks a win at a mile track to join Dick Mann, Kenny Roberts Sr., Bubba Shobert, and Doug Chandler in the prestigious "Grand Slam Club."
For 2006, Hayden was charged with spearheading Repsol Honda's championship aspirations, and was the only rider to be handed the full 2006 Honda bike during pre-season testing. He led the championship from the third race and looked set to break Valentino Rossi's championship-winning streak. Capturing the championship was not without peril: in the second to last round at Estoril in Portugal, teammate Dani Pedrosa lost the front-end while trying to pass Hayden. The resulting lowside accident took out both bikes. This left Hayden eight points behind Rossi in the championship with one race left to go. In the last race of the season on October 29, 2006 Rossi crashed on lap 5 trying to make up for a poor start. Hayden won the 2006 title that day by finishing 3rd (9.3s) behind race winner Troy Bayliss and Loris Capirossi.
2007 started and finished badly for him, with Nicky struggling with performance, and team-mate Dani Pedrosa having showed what the Honda was able to do. A crash at Le Mans dropped him to eleventh in the standings at this stage. However, during testing before Donington, he requested that most of the electronics be switched off and his times improved. His subsequent performance in a wet Donington and a dry Assen showed a slight return to form, challenging for fifth with his trademark sliding and tail-out non-standard lines. However, he ultimately kept crashing, with a pole and 3 podiums but no victories proved to be the worse defence of a championship ever recorded. The 2007 season also saw the release of an authorized biography on Nicky and his brothers--The Haydens: Nicky, Tommy, & Roger, from OWB to MotoGP--timed to coincide with his return to the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.
Hayden finished the 2009 MotoGP championship in 13th place (out of 18), his worst result in 7 years of racing MotoGP. His championship campaign was marked by remarkable misfortune, being speared off the track on three different occasions, resulting in no point scoring races. Yuki Takahashi, Alex De Angelis and Jorge Lorenzo crashed into him at Motegi, Misano and Phillip Island respectively.
Early in the 2010 season, Hayden noted that there is pressure from the American audience for one of the three frontrunning American riders (himself and the Tech 3 Yamaha duo of Colin Edwards and Ben Spies) to win a race.
Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden
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