Wesyde In The Bronx
Growing up, the environment you live in and the people that blend into the society that surrounds you, more than often, largely influence your attitude and direction in life. So when Danny Ham, or Hammy for short told me his father Harry started racing motocross while he was based in the airforce at Panang – and continued his involvement in the sport for many years once he returned – it’s clear to see where his interest in the sport started. “I’m not too sure if he won any major titles or anything but he was definitely a good racer, and was always up there. Dad pretty much taught me everything about riding a motorcycle to start up with. He was there supporting me through my whole junior years and my first few years in seniors.” Hammy talked me through his story in his groovey pad on top of his parents garage that he built himself from the ground up with the help from Harry, his girlfriend Shelley and a few close mates. It’s a pretty cool set-up. As you clime the stairs from the back of the garage you walk straight into a decent size room painted in bright multi colours that has a pool table placed in the centre, a stripper poll lodged firmly in the far right corner, a mini bar off to the far left corner, and a alloy checkered plate covered T.V. hanging from the opposite corner equipped with Playstation and a comfy lounge below. There was also two bedrooms, the spare one being for his mechanic Iian Southwell, who keeps Hammy on the program 24/7. And as I was glancing around the room I couldn’t help but notice a big gouge out of the ceiling. Curious about how it got there I interrupted our convo to hear Hammy say, “Through my time of growing up around this area it was pretty tough, like no one liked dirt-bike racing and bikes were considered bad. If you were a surfer or a footballer it was all good, so I was pretty much hassled at school and hated everywhere around here. It didn’t help as I was a small kid in those days so I just hung out with a few close mates and pretty much kept to myself. It’s a little different nowadays though as more and more kids are getting into riding bikes, but we’re still not a hundred per cent liked around here as you can see by the bullet hole in the window and the marks on the roof, which is from a bunch of dickheads in the area that think they’re tough by doing a drive by in the middle of the night when everyone is a sleep. Basically they’re just guys with big mouths and big ego’s.” So he wasn’t joking when he told me he lives in the Bronx, and this is where the sticker “Wesyde Moweesha” (short for West Side) planted across his back window of his beat up Hiace van comes from. It was all starting to piece together with Hammy pointing out that, “Basically we just can’t stand these people out there thinking that they’re something they’re not, like big tough guys thinking they’re part of the Metal Mulisha or whatever. So Wesyde to us is a rip off, it’s not a direct go at them but it is a rip off. It’s completely what we’re not. We are the opposite to them. We live on the west side of Newcastle, and the west side of Thornton in the Bronx you could say, but really it’s just a bit of fun for the crew of guys I hang out with.” “Oh, and on the Stripper poll, it’s just there for parties and if someone (a girl preferably) gets on it, they get on it!”
No Frills Racing
In 1986 Hammy started riding at seven-years-of-age on a Yamaha YZ 50, which he says was nothing special. And even though Harry put up most of the money for it he does remember he had to save some money towards buying his first bike. Six months later Hammy hit the racetrack and before too long stepped up to a 60 that they bought from local rider Joel Elliot. It was five years old, and unlike most kids you see at the race track with the latest and greatest, Hammy was quite content with the equipment they could afford at the time saying, “I never really had the best bikes or the flashest gear, and even when I did finally get some new bikes through Suzuki they weren’t anything special, just dead stock compared to some of the modified bikes getting around. This was OK though as it was something you didn’t really need back then. I mean it was great if you had all the gear, but it was definitely something you didn’t need to do well, it more came down to the rider.” The Hunter Valley region is well known for producing some of the countries best riders. Chad Reed has proved the most successful, but you can’t forget the multi Australian champion Craig Anderson and his brother Danny, and Joel Elliot, who was set for the big-time in America until his sudden death caused through a sudden blood clot. Hammy says one of the reasons riders from this area were so fast is that they all grew up racing at Lakes, which had the biggest jumps out of anywhere, and if you could do the jumps on that track it gave you a lot of confidence, which helps build your speed and helps you become a much faster rider. He also said he wasn’t one of those kids like Ando who was fast on a bike straight away. It wasn’t until he started riding the 80’s that he started to get some good places, and like most young racers he spent time at many Stephen Gall riding schools where he had fun and picked up several techniques, but Hammy is strong to point out that his speed started to come through a lot of practice, which took place at a track opposite from where he lives.
Growth Spurt
It was after a solid ’93 season where 14-year-old Hammy rode the wheels off the ’90 model Suzuki RM 125 Slingshot that he started to grow in size and gained more control over the bike, which enabled him to pick up a lot of speed for that following year. This set him up for a strong final junior season where his good results earnt him support from Suzuki, which flowed on to his first year in seniors and then to his first fully backed ride with Suzuki aboard a 125 the following season where he won a few races, and placed well on a lot of podiums against a competitive field of riders including Andrew McFarlane, Paul Timmins, Cameron Taylor, and Mick Cook. But this new-found speed also brought the start of Hammy’s first bad run of injuries, which started during his ’97 season while riding for the CDR Yamaha team, with him saying, “I had two SX wins in ’97, but it’s also when the injuries started happening (I had very few before that period, nothing major at all). I done my knee, plus my shoulder blades, hands and wrist, then I broke my leg coming into the ’98 season. It didn’t heal properly so after I had my first race on Yamaha’s new 400 thumper where I came third at one of the Thumper Nat rounds, I had to have it re-broken the next day to make it right. So I was out for ages after this, then I came back for two or three rides and then had that big crash at the Picton round of the Thumpers. I’ve seen it on video and I really don’t know what happened there. Apparently there was a stump in the track that they tried to get out the day before but couldn’t so they covered it over and I hit it fourth gear wide open. It was a big crash, and it didn’t really worry me too much but it was part of an ongoing cycle of injuries that kept happening to me, which after a while started screwing with my head. I’ve never been scared of getting hurt, but it’s just that I never seemed to be able to ride as fast afterwards as I could before the crash. That’s the thing that played on my mind the most. I mean I knew how I could ride but I just couldn’t do it on the track, which really annoyed me and affected my confidence. It brings you down as you try really hard and it doesn’t seem to work, and after it happening for so long it just starts to get to you. I feel for Metcalfe right now, as he’s probably feeling bad as he’s had a lot of bad luck and injuries of late as well. It’s also tough on you mentally when you go through one after the other. During those few years where I copped a lot of injuries I didn’t really care what other people were saying about me, or if they were at all, it was more the case of proving to myself that I could still do it that pulled me through to where I’m at now.”
The Hard Road Back
Out on the track during this seasons new SX Nationals series Hammy is without doubt one of the fastest riders out there, but before he regained his speed and confidence he still had a lot to go through before getting to this point, explaining that, “2001 was the lowest point for me. I lost a ride with Suzuki, which I understood because I wasn’t getting the results and if there was a better rider out there that’s what happens, but even up to round two of the championship no-one on the team could tell me what was going on, so I started looking around for another ride and talked to Yamaha about getting some bikes to do my own thing. Then after a few months Dacka gave me go as his rider was injured at the time. My first race for the team went pretty well considering I only got to ride the bike four days before the race and I hadn’t ridden for a few months. So I went out there and felt incredibly fast, I even surprised myself as I was so unfit. I only did one or two more races for the team after that as they pretty much didn’t honour their word about me riding the remainder of the season. This left me high and dry and I’d had enough by that stage. I mean I still enjoyed riding but I wasn’t getting the support I needed to be competitive. I was almost done! Then a Kawasaki deal popped up for the remainder of the indoor SX rounds and I never really got any great results but I did do the Crusty Tour and stuff like that and had a lot of fun doing it, which made me realise I still wanted to ride the following season. So for 2002 I didn’t even worry about approaching a factory team, instead I sorted my own privateer deal through a local shop called “On Two Wheels”, plus I received support from Jet Pilot and mechanic friend John Blanch, and for the first time in a long time I actually enjoyed riding. I felt comfortable on the bike, I rode better, and it was so much fun again, which showed in my results half way through the season as I started getting top five finishes. I was feeling my old self again, which gave me the motivation to keep on riding and training hard. It wasn’t the best year but definitely the turn-around year for me.”
Another Shot
Suzuki came back to Hammy with “Lets try again” towards the end of that 2002 season as they could see his motivation and commitment level was there again. The 2002 season was a good one for Hammy as he found that love of riding again, and he also shook free those doubts about injuries that were lingering in his mind, which set him up for his first solid year back with Factory Suzuki in 2003, saying, “My results didn’t really show during the 2003 season but I know in myself that I rode really well, and I think a lot of other people noticed that I rode well too. I also found that my motocross side picked up a lot. My speed and everything was great, and I don’t think I’ve ridden motocross that good ever, so that was a big surprise for me. I was always there with the guys but I did a lot of crashing, which had an affect on my results, and in saying that, it doesn’t seem like it’s changed a lot this year unfortunately, but I’m trying to stay up as much as I can, and when I do I’m getting good results again.” And as I write this story I just got word that Hammy just won his hometown round of the SX Nationals series in Newcastle, which doesn’t surprise me at all after watching him put in several consistently fast motos on the “Wesyde” practice track he build himself with his tight crew of mates. It’s definitely one of the sickest practice tracks I’ve ever seen as you’ll notice when looking at the pics. Overall it’s been a long tough road for Danny Ham, the battler from the west side of town, but like any champion you have to take the good with the bad on your way to the top, and let’s hope that Hammy has had his dose of bad and his future path continues to be “All Good!” Thankyous: Hammy would like to give thanks to all the Wesyde crew, the Fetter Places for letting us use their land, and my personal sponsors SIC clothing, Scott Goggles, Circa Shoes and Nixon Watches.
Freestyle (breakout box, separate to main story)
Freestyle for me? “Well it was never freestyle when I did it. It was just about going out to have some fun, it wasn’t really labelled like it is now. Ben Jones and myself would go out and find a quarry or find something to hit. It didn’t have to be a steel ramp, as long as we could have some fun on it was all that mattered. I did copy a couple of tricks off the Americans such as the Nac Nac, Can Can, Double Can, Superman and was the first one in Australia to do them. They don’t seem like much now but they were pretty cool at the time, but I do claim I was the first one to do a Seran Wrap out of any rider. Most people won’t recognise this, but in ’96 I went over to film Terrafirma in the sand dunes of Utah, and before I left for the trip I happened to watch some mountain bike video where a rider did something similar so I decided to give it a go. When I got there Metzger was watching me try the trick until I finally pulled a couple off, and then he decided to do it as well. On the video they have got me crashing trying the trick off a big jump, which I guess got everyone thinking who watched it that I was just trying to learn how to do it. That’s the only trick I’ve made up myself.
Ben and I also did some filming for Crusty in 2000 when John Freeman came over here. He was pretty much on his way home when one of the distributors here said “Hey, lets call in and see these two guys”, so they did and John was pretty happy with the footage he got, and he even got us a camera so we could get more footage from OZ to him. I actually think that opened the door for a lot of Aussie freestyle riders, like Dayne Kinnaird was in amongst that group with us. I mean he was a much better freestyler than I was at the time, but I think his name got recognised out of it a fair bit. Ben and I also started doing Whip trains on that first Crusty tour. Doing big Whips is something we would push each other with in the early days before there were many tricks around. During that Crusty tour I remember following Ben off the ramp only two metres max behind him, third-gear pinned over 30-odd-metres and my eyes were fixed to the back of his jersey. There were way too many times we came to close but it was a heap of fun. My biggest jump ever was 48 metres out at Stockton sand dunes, top gear and as fast as the bike would go, and that’s pretty much on to a flat landing.”
