It was an off weekend for Monster Energy/Yamaha USA/OTSFF Racing’s Iain Hayden at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado, which were held on January 28-31.

Although everything went well for Hayden during practice and dialling in his 4-stroke Yamaha FX Nytro®, things went far less favourably in the qualifying heats.

In the first heat, Hayden got a terrible start that left him at the back of the pack in a field of 12 riders. Anxious to make up time as quickly as possible, he aggressively worked his way towards the front. Hayden was making nice headway but on the third lap, while passing another rider on the outside, he caught his ski on an ice edge and was pitched off his sled.

It took Hayden a while to recover from the high speed get-off and to get back into the fray, to then take it to a non-qualifying finish at the checkered. In the LCQ, Hayden suffered another miserable start and was again faced with making up ground on the rest of the competition. He was able to muscle his way into seventh place but stranded there missing a starting berth for the final by two positions. “It was a bit of a letdown after all the work we did this weekend. Those guys in the trailer did a really good job but I wasn’t able to deliver the results,” said Hayden. “The power was there, the FX Nytro® ran great. I just couldn’t seem to recover from my bad starts and I suffered the consequences.”

While Hayden was unable to find his groove at Aspen his teammate for the weekend, Doug Henry, managed to do just that. The former American motocross champion – a paraplegic since a racing injury in 2007 – competed in the newly conceived Winter X Games Adaptive SnowCross. Henry ran a steady race on Hayden’s backup sled to finish a noteworthy third and the Bronze Medal that goes along with it.


“What a thrill to make the podium on a snowmobile at the Winter X Games. It’s something I never thought would happen but here I am. The Yamaha FX Nytro® proved itself beyond a shadow of a doubt as an awesome racing sled,” said Henry. “I’d like to thank Andre Laurin and everybody on the team for giving me the opportunity to join them for this amazing event.”

Henry, a three-time AMA National Motocross Champion, won a Gold Medal for Yamaha in SuperMoto competition at the 2005 X-Games.

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