Riders Preferred Membership
Shop by Vehicle
Track Order
Contact Us
The year 2021 was a dark one in world championship motorcycle racing, because of the deaths of Jason Dupasquier, Hugo Millán, and Dean Berta Viñales, all of them teenagers and Millán just 14. Around that time, director Ronan McCloskey made a documentary about child racers in Northern Ireland that later aired on the BBC.
Recently, that documentary was posted on McCloskey's YouTube channel — exposing it to a new audience and reminding us, just a few years later, that little has really changed.
It's a difficult subject, the topic of children going motorcycle racing. For me, personally, it's probably the most difficult of all in motorcycling. We're adults and we can make our own choices, knowing the risks and rewards. But what 6-year-old enamored of motorcycles can really weigh the potential for glory and disaster? Especially if the parents are willing to spend $20,000 or more to buy a race bike and travel the country or the world to give that son or daughter that experience? Never mind the thornier question of how much of the motivation comes from the child and, in some cases, how much comes from the parent.
After Millán's death, I asked Common Tread contributor Mark Gardiner to write about the topic for us and he produced one of his typically thoughtful and well researched pieces. Mark had his own long personal history of qualms about elementary-school-age children being put on fast motorcycles and he pointed out that other thoughtful motorcycle writers from Mat Oxley to Simon Patterson were also expressing uneasiness in the time of 2021's unfortunate crashes. Later, I followed up with another report when the FIM made some minor changes, raising the minimum age for some classes and reducing the size of the grids (In the case of Millán, it wasn't the initial crash that killed him, but getting hit by another rider in the huge following pack, so smaller grids can help. I was at Indianapolis Motor Speedway the day a similar incident killed a promising 13-year-old U.S. rider, Peter Lenz, years earlier.)
The "Speed Kids" documentary, below, takes a balanced approach to the topic and at least mentions the high-profile deaths of 2021 and has parents talk about their worries. But it still brings back the same unease I've long felt.
The documentary's appearance on YouTube also brought out the depressingly predictable responses. Some who love motorcycle racing praised those parents for making the sacrifices to give their kids these experiences and that shot at stardom, however unlikely. Those who know nothing about motorcycles were aghast at the irresponsibility of putting a pre-teen kid on a racing motorcycle capable of 100-plus mph and expecting them to make potentially life or death decisions in a pack of other young riders.
A few children will emerge from this winnowing process to become famous and wealthy world champions, their families repaid for their sacrifices and vindicated in their belief. We won't hear much about the other families, the ones broken physically, emotionally, and financially when the big gamble went wrong and a child died or was injured before even getting to the bottom rung of that ladder.
And yet this seems to be the world we have, like it or not. Deeply ingrained is the belief that if you're not racing by age 6 and you aren't in Europe testing yourself against the best in the world by the time you hit your teens you'll never make the big show.
Could we ever have another Troy Bayliss? A man who decided in his 20s to try motorcycle roadracing and still, despite that late start, became a world champion. I wish I believed that could still happen, but I'm having a hard time convincing myself.
