‘Mad Mike' Whiddett has done more than most to earn his moniker. He has broken nearly every bone in his body and suffered close to 20 concussions. Now, after a successful motocross career, Whiddett's all set for his first full season in the Formula Drift Pro Championship; he's confident he can make an impression in his rookie season.

"They all know me in the US and they are all worried," says ‘Mad Mike'. "I'm confident we can do damage to the best in the world."

Doing damage is something 29-year-old Whiddett has proved adept at in the past. Bruises and breaks were a part of life for the teenage motocross tearaway but it was after he started freestyling in his early 20's that he became a regular at Accident & Emergency.

Whiddett's reputation in motocross circles made him an obvious candidate for one of the first freestyle motocross demonstrations in New Zealand at the Big Day Out music festival in 2000.

"I've always had this thing for showing off," he admits. "When I was racing motocross I'd be doing no-handers and knack-knacks over the jumps."

When a friend asked if he was interested in earning an easy 500 bucks at the Big Day Out, Whiddett jumped at the opportunity. He threw himself into the demo with his limbs flailing all over the place and the crowd roaring their approval. The excited commentator kept shouting, ‘...here comes Mad Mike again. Look at Mad Mike...' and the name stuck.

After the demo, Whiddett was invited to pull the same stunts at a 30^th birthday party the following weekend. When he got there he realised he was the test pilot for a makeshift jump. Underneath the ramp was a van with all the windows smashed out. The DJ was in the van setting up his decks. After a couple of dummy runs, Whiddett's bike seized half way up the face of the takeoff. The bike fell off the end of the takeoff, crashed into the van and smashed all the turntables. Whiddett - minus bike - kept going.

"I flew over the handlebars and landed on the down ramp on my left leg. It felt like my leg was buried in the dirt but I had actually flipped and rolled 20 feet past the down ramp.

"I went to grab my leg and I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel it because I had snapped my femur in half and it had folded back on itself and my head was resting on my calf."

Whiddett tells the story so matter-of-factly it's almost as if it happened to someone else. The ability to detach himself from danger (along with some titanium rods and reconstructive surgery) saw Whiddett back on his bike within six weeks, still determined to become a professional freestyle motocross rider in the US.

The closest he got was a couple of tours of New Zealand and Australia with the Crusty Demons. Then in 2002 at X-Air, the New Zealand X-Games, he suffered another serious injury. He compressed and fractured four vertebrae in his back. The doctors initially thought he was paralysed. It still wasn't enough to convince him to give up motocross but it did prompt him to consider alternatives. He settled on drifting.

"Drifting is like freestyle motocross on four wheels," says Whiddett. "It's about showing off. In motocross you learn about weight transfer, traction and throttle control. A kid brought up doing motocross will be a far superior drifter than a kid brought up on karting."

Although Whiddett grew up in Auckland, his mum, Sue, used to take him horseriding at her sister's farm every weekend. He didn't take to jodhpurs, so Sue bought him a dirt bike to keep him occupied. By the time he was 10 he was joyriding in a neighbour's Toyota Corolla paddock hack, drifting on dewy grass and dodging the livestock.

When he got his driver's licence at the age of 16, he spent his weekends ‘hooning' it in the hills with his mate, Mark Tapper, now a professional rally driver. Every Thursday morning they scanned the classifieds in the Trade & Exchange for the cheapest, most beat-up banger they could find.

"We'd spend Thursday night welding up the diffs, taking out the windows and then spend the whole weekend in the bush on gravel roads. Whoever flipped it, crashed it, or wrote it off bought the car the next week."

The weekend wipeouts were the perfect training grounds for burnout competitions and Whiddett smoked the opposition. He won five Skidfests in a row before graduating to drifting in 2006, maxing out his (and his fiancée Toni's) credit cards to build and enter a car in the D1NZ, the New Zealand Drift Championship. He beat the national champion in just his second event and was invited to represent New Zealand at the 2007 World Allstars event at Irwindale Speedway in California.

The following year he finished in the top eight at the inaugural Red Bull World Drifting Championship and last year he won the Formula D Asia Pacific Championship beating 30 international drivers.

Whiddett's rapid rise through the drifting ranks convinced him he could mix it with the world's best and he has poured everything he has into the sport. He lives on the second floor of an industrial unit in East Auckland in a two-bed apartment he shares with Toni (who's also his manager) and their two-year-old son, Lincoln. Downstairs is the workshop for CRE8GRAFX, the signwriting business he started eight years ago. Father, businessman, professional drifter - meet ‘Motivated Mike'.

"A lot of people think because I've got all these flash cars that I'm a ‘daddy's boy' but I've never met my father. I've never had a big budget and I worked three jobs to get to where I am now."

Whiddett has spoken to his Dad just once. "When I was 15 I answered the phone and this guy said, ‘Is your mother home?' When she got off the phone she told me ‘that was your father. He wants to meet you but I will fully understand if you don't want to meet him'."
"I had never heard from him. I didn't even know his name but I told her I would like to meet him. I didn't want to meet him to see what he looked like or to get to know him. I just wanted to tell him how I felt about him leaving Mum to raise me on her own.

"We arranged to meet the next day but he left a message on our answer phone saying he had to shoot away again on business so that was that. I didn't mind but it has made me want to do well for my Mum."

His mother's two younger brothers, ‘a pair of hooligans', according to Whiddett, more than filled the gap left by his father. Uncle Brandon was into spear fishing and duck shooting and he gave his nephew a job cutting trees when he left school. Uncle Clayton worked as a car salesman and took him go-karting.

Not surprisingly Whiddett was a gun behind the wheel of a go-kart. "Anything to do with wheels and I'm there - skateboards, BMX, go-karts, motorbikes or cars. I love having fun and I love going fast.

"Drifting is a lot safer than freestyle motocross. In FMX your life is on the line with every jump, especially with some of the moves the guys are doing now."

So Whiddett has waved a wistful goodbye to motocross.

"I still have a dirt bike, Toni has an 85cc KTM and my son Lincoln has a Pee-Wee 50 so we take our bikes for a family day out. But it's just for fun. I don't want to break any more limbs."

To keep track of Mad Mike's progress visit his website www.madmike.co.nz or www.formulad.com ‘Mad Mike' will feature in EA Games' upcoming release Need for Speed:Shift 2.

Article thanks to redbulletin.com