Champ Chad

They say true champions eat pressure. If that be true, for 20 years CHAD REED chewed it up, spat it out and asked for more - and more. We take a look back at the legendary Aussie motocross and supercross racer's illustrious career...

- DARRYL FLACK

When Chad Reed came into this world, Supercross had been around for a decade. Twenty-years later he would become one of its great legends, and hold a special place as the only rider from the southern hemisphere to win the Supercross world championship.

Like many of his generation, Chad Reed started out aboard a Yamaha PW50. When he showed promise the Reed family moved to a property outside Kurri Kurri, where they lived in a caravan because they couldn’t afford a house. Proud of his Indigenous heritage, young Chad was touched by a burning ambition that would light up the sky. Former pro rider Danny Ham remembers practising with 14-year-old Reed, who left school in Year 9. “Chad didn’t really act like a junior,” Ham says. “He was already riding as if he wanted to beat us. He really was on a mission and knew exactly where he wanted to go and what he wanted to achieve.”

When Reed joined Suzuki and turned pro aged 16, the team practised at the aptly named Crazers near Newcastle. “It was this bad-ass, natural-terrain track,” Chad told former pro racer Lee Hogan. “In one week, I went through three practice bikes. In two of those days, I went through two brand-new bikes.” It’s when you hear stories like this that you begin to understand how Chad Reed thrived in the dog-eat-dog world of American Supercross, the epicentre of the sport and home to its world championship.