Rennie Scaysbrook | June 16, 2021
Cycle News Lowside
COLUMN
Be Yourself
When I was a kid growing up in Australia, Sunday nights were usually filled with watching that day’s 500cc or Formula One grand prix, the two- and four-wheeled heroes and their screaming machines filling every available audible space in the living room and down the halls.
I loved those days, but one thing stands out above all else—the yellow and green helmet of three-time Formula One World Champion Ayrton Senna.
That lid was as good a trademark as the red on a can of Coke or the black and orange of Harley-Davidson. It was not just a symbol of the man, it was something to be feared. If your wing mirrors were filled with that ominous helmet, you knew you were in for some trouble.
Then there were the various designs adorning the cranium of one Jeremy McGrath throughout the 1990s. Painted by the legendary Troy Lee, you could always tell it was made for McGrath despite changing constantly over the years. In direct contrast to Senna’s helmet, McGrath’s were an evolving statement of who he was and where he was at a particular point in his life and career, interpreted by a true genius of the game and put on show for us all to see.
There are a few other designs that come to mind—pretty much every one of Valentino Rossi’s helmets, Anthony Gobert’s green and black grim reaper from WorldSBK, Troy Corser’s crocodile, or the Pascal Picotte Shoei Joker helmet.
I always wanted a custom-painted lid but never thought I would be in a position to wear one. In truth, I didn’t fully understand the effort and the process a painter goes through to make a piece of art for just one person.
Over the last six years, I’ve had two custom helmets, both for my various attempts at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Each was created by another legend in the Southern California motorsports industry, Tag Gasperian, who, in collaboration with his son, Bronson, pumps out an incredible number of personal and intimate designs for some of the fastest riders and drivers on the planet.
Tag and his son Bronson Gasperian (right) with their finished handiwork. You’d be pleased, too, if you’d just spent over 20 hours painting one helmet!
My first helmet was a bit of a tribute to another lost Formula One star in German Stefan Bellof, a young man who tragically lost his life in an accident in 1985 at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. It was a pretty helmet but, as a tribute helmet, it wasn’t about me. It was more a vessel to channel some kind of bravery at America’s Mountain that made me choose the design, and it worked, kind of, with two second places over the two years I wore it.
My second helmet was much more personal. Green and gold and wrapped in a boxing kangaroo for my homeland, I felt a touch emotional when Tag and Bronson handed it to me for the 2019 Pikes Peak race. It’s a thoroughly beautiful design, one very much “me” and is now on display in my father’s office in Sydney, alongside his leathers from the 1978 Isle of Man TT.
Tag and Bronson are now hard at work making my third helmet, and I can’t wait to see the result and rep Tagger Designs, once again, here at Cycle News.
The work put in by a painter cannot be underestimated. It takes usually over 20 hours of painstaking work, all done by hand, to create a design for a customer. There are so many little intricacies impossible to replicate if you’re not a pro, which makes the helmet all the more valuable to the end user. You can imagine the pain felt by the painter when one of their designs gets thrown down the road.
Anything custom is about showing who you are and never is that more evident than with a helmet. I personally hate how riders and drivers now change their helmets more than they change their underwear—it dilutes their power as a sporting star (in my opinion)—making it harder for the general public to know who’s who.
More recently, I’ve started seeing custom-painted helmets ripping around on the canyons and at the moto track, which is wonderful because America has a plethora of incredibly talented painters who can make you really stand out. I spoke to my good friend and now KTM Flat Track team manager Chris Fillmore on this subject, a guy who has a career’s worth of amazing helmet designs by Troy Lee.
“It’s part of your brand,” Fillmore said. “I saw it as my identity. Whether I was riding adventure bikes, supermoto, superbike, motocross, if I kept the same colorway, for the most part, it became identifiable.
“When I was 16 racing supermoto for Troy Lee, I wanted what was on my mind at the time, whatever influenced me that month (perks of riding for a custom-helmet painter). I’d incorporate graphics from bands I liked, or aspects of other racers helmets I thought were cool. When I went to superbike, I wanted the design to be clean and consistent. That’s why I kept similar colorway and design features for over 10 years; everyone knows Rossi is a yellow 46!
“Nowadays most teams have a team sponsor that takes priority on the helmet but you can still see a lot of the MotoGP riders finding a way to express themself in the details of the design, even with a full Red Bull lid. When you’re at the races, racing is 100 percent your identity and focus, but with helmet designs it seems like riders have chosen to show off bit of their personal side and I love it.”
We all like to be individual, isn’t that part of why we like riding in the first place? And, hey, maybe it’s time to look at a custom-helmet design? They make the helmet become far more than just another thing protecting your squash. It becomes your identity, part of who you are. There’s probably not a single iPhone out there in the same layout as another, so why keep your helmet like that? We can’t we all be Ayrton Senna, but we can stand out from the crowd.CN
