Carey Hart

Carey Hart spent the mid-’90s living the privateer reality: sleeping in his van, working on his own bike and arriving at Supercross events without ever practicing on a real Supercross track. While the stars fought over championships, Carey was fighting simply to make the Main.

Then the underground videos revealed another path.

Hart leaned all the way in, tattoos, punk-rock attitude and tricks the traditional racing world wanted nothing to do with. He appeared in moto videos and began making a name for himself. By 1998, he was battered, broke and nearly ready to trade racing for community college and accounting. Then Warped Tour offered him $1,500 a week, more than he had made during the entire Supercross season, to jump portable ramps between punk bands.

That summer became paid practice. Carey developed the Hart Attack, carried freestyle into cities that had only seen it on VHS and helped prove riders could build careers outside sanctioned racing.

At the 2000 Gravity Games, Hart attempted a backflip on a full-size motorcycle without first trying one into foam or dirt. He completed the rotation and touched down on both wheels before crashing. He didn’t ride away, but the impossible had become visibly possible.

Carey helped drag freestyle out of the underground. Then he pointed it toward an entirely new level.