(2014)

“Because, you know, I’ve always heard that if you or any of your siblings would put gas in a car, and the sale ended in .69, your dad will pay for it.”

I’m chatting with 2006 MotoGP world champion Nicky Hayden about his father Earl’s not quite an obsession with the number 69. And, I learn, if it’s not an obsession, then it’s a strong attraction to the number.

Hayden’s immediate laugh suggests mild disbelief.

“Well, I don’t know anything about him paying when it ended in .69,” the 2002 Honda Superbike champion says, “but I do know that he has always tried to get the final numbers to read .69 on the gas pump. I’ve seen him, if the tank is full and he can’t get any more gas in there, pull the nozzle out and put gas in other people’s cars, or maybe let a few cents go into a can so it will be .69 cents.”

Most professional riders are deeply superstitious, whether they admit it or not. For some it’s just about keeping their number on the bike—even when they’re supposed to run the No. 1 plate. For others, it veers into the mystical, like Valentino Rossi’s famous rituals.

Behavior designed to ward off bad luck isn’t limited to riders. Thirty years ago, some factory GP bikes were blessed in a Buddhist ceremony before leaving Japan for Europe. In the 1960s there were very few green motorcycles in AMA professional racing because the color green was considered a bad omen. Also, women were not allowed in the pits then because their presence was considered bad luck. A woman wearing a green dress at a motorcycle race was a very lonely girl.

Motorcycle racing has only been around for a little more than a century, but superstition in racing goes back much further—long before the internal combustion engine. Consider the “sport of kings”: horse racing. Chariot drivers in ancient Rome would not race unless they could wear their favorite sandals or had their good luck charms with them. Even today horse racing remains a cornucopia of actions and procedures all of which can be considered good or bad luck. A steel horseshoe tacked to the wall needs to be hanging in the shape of a U—it’s bad luck to hang it any other way. Some colors or color combinations are said to be harbingers of fortune or ruin. A race horse with four white ankles might as well be sent to the glue factory at birth. Also, unless they want bad juju, jockeys won’t shake hands before a race.

Most people, perhaps sheepish, aren’t willing to expound on the depths of their personal superstitions. But Earl Hayden has always been very open and charmingly apologetic about his own devotion to certain beliefs and practices. And, as with motor racing, for Earl most of his superstitions began in horse racing.

“I raced thoroughbred race horses for years and my superstitions, a lot of them, started there,” he says. “I tell ya, you think motorcycle racing is bad with superstition, but horse racing is much worse. I know because I did them all. When I raced horses I wanted to be in the same barn every race, same stalls, and my horses had the same number every time.”

Quiet and reserved, eldest son Tommy Hayden has a gift for understatement. I asked him once if the stories were true, if his father really was as deeply, devoutly superstitious as some suggested.

“Well, it’s not just limited to his lucky underwear, if that’s what you mean,” the eldest Hayden said.

It’s true. Earl enjoys a closet of lucky clothes. Lucky socks, lucky pants, and yes, lucky underwear.

He explains:

“The way it works is, for an example, Laguna Seca 2005 when Nicky won the MotoGP race (Kentucky man Hayden pronounces the word ‘MotoGP’ in as many as five syllables). Well, when I got back to the room that night I pinned the socks and the underwear I was wearing that day together. When we got back home, before they went in the wash, I marked them, I think with an ‘L’. So I’d know that they were the ones I was wearing when he won, they were my winning socks, or what have you. When Roger or Tommy’d have a good race, I’d mark a shirt or pair of pants. Or a hat. Then, come Sunday, I’d try to be wearing all my good luck clothes.”

And if you think it stopped at socks and shirts, think again. Earl’s brand of luck applied just as firmly to gas pumps, parking lots—and even traffic tickets.

He also admits that at a restaurant, when the bill comes, when he adds in the tip, the bill will always end with the number .69. At the airport, he tries to park in stall 69, but if he is rushed for time he will slide his car into stall 22 (Tommy Hayden’s racing number) or 95 (Roger Lee Hayden’s number).

“I’ve done that forever,” Earl says. “I’ve drove around airports for twenty minutes trying to find the right number.”

Earl also believes that $50 bills are bad luck and he will only grudgingly accept them. “My wife loves it when I get $50 bills because I always give them to her. I won’t keep one in my wallet.”

Hayden family lore says that Hayden, himself a dirt track racer, picked racing number 69 because it looked the same whether it was right side up, or upside down in a crash. It’s that, of course, but more.

The number 69 is Hayden family tradition, not limited to just number plates. Earl says, “I always told Nicky and the other kids, if you ever get a speeding ticket, and the ticket is for 69 mph, well, I’ll pay it. Well, wouldn’t you know it? One time Nicky was off driving somewhere and got pulled over and the police officer was going to write him for like 64 in a 55 or something. Nicky asked the officer if he could write the ticket for 69 mph in a 55, instead. The officer, who had been doing police work for twenty years or more, said he’d never had anyone ask him to write them for more speed than they were actually doing. I had to pay that ticket.”

Some horse trainers always close a gate twice. At first it was just to be sure, but soon it became a ritual—and a bad omen if they didn’t. For Earl, this has morphed into every airplane that he has flown on: as he boards, he knocks four times on the fuselage. He does the same thing when he gets off the plane.

“I’ve been doing that since I started flying on airplanes,” he says. “I just have.”

Yet, for as much as he puts into this, Earl Hayden really isn’t a big believer in all of these superstitions culminating in good fortune. They are more acts of insurance than anything. “You can’t luck your way into success in racing, everybody knows that,” Hayden says.

The next time you put gas in your bike, try to intentionally stop the pump on .69. With a strong pump it can be maddeningly difficult. Suddenly you’re tipping the bike upright and trying to sneak in those last few cents. Or asking the stranger in the car across from your pump if he minds if you stick a few cents in his tank, with your pump, so it ends at .69.

“It’s a long story,” you’ll say.

“It isn’t an easy thing to do,” says Earl Hayden, “believe me, I know.”