You might know Mad Mike Whiddett as the motorsport sensation that has help define the drifting sport in NZ, but what you might not know about his story is that he almost didn’t get the chance to.
Whiddett was 11-years-old when he got behind the wheel of a car for the first time. A childhood friend of his lived on a farm and his older brother owned a beat up Toyota Corolla he used for paddock hacking – a popular pastime for Kiwi petrolheads.
“When his brother wasn’t around we’d jump in his car and tear around the fields,” says Whiddett. “We got told off by his Dad a few times for crashing through fences but it was a great training ground.”
As a teenager Whiddett and his friends lived the boy racer lifestyle. They’d buy an old car for a couple of hundred bucks, pull it apart, put it back together and spend the weekend hooning around the streets or thrashing it in the forest.
“Whoever flipped it, crashed it or blew it up bought the next one,” says Whiddett. “We did that for years.
“We went through a lot of cars but we learnt so much. One of my mate’s uncles had this big gravel yard where we’d roast the hell out of our cars. That was where I learned about car control and driving sideways. I was always into rear wheel drive cars so I was drifting before I even knew what it was.”
But before he discovered drifting in 2007, Whiddett spent his early 20s riding freestyle motocross, including a couple of tours with the Crusty Demons. His last FMX comp was in 2002 at X Air, the New Zealand X Games. A heavy crash saw him rushed to hospital where doctors told him he would be paralysed for life.
“I was so drugged up on morphine it didn’t really register initially and I was joking with my friends about making a go-kart for my wheelchair,” says Whiddett.
“I compressed and fractured four vertebrae and ruptured disks in my back, lost all feeling to my legs and was told that I wouldn’t walk again.
“Unlike a lot of others who experience spinal cord injury, I was very lucky. The next morning I woke up and felt pins and needles in my toes and yelled for the doctor. The doctor told me it was a one-in-a-million occurrence that I wasn’t paralysed from that injury,” says Whiddett.
In New Zealand four people a week will experience spinal cord injury and remain paralyzed. This means: No feeling in the legs, and in the worst case, no feeling in the arms or hands either. Immobile. Constantly dependent on the assistance of others.
On May 9th Whiddett will be lacing up for those who can’t and running The Wings for Life World Run. Since its inception in 2014, the charity run has had one purpose – to raise funds for vital spinal cord injury research.
“I’ve taken part in The Wings for Life World Run app run many times and I urge as many people as possible to do it too, from my own personal experience and only just missing a serious spinal cord injury, it is so important to support those who weren’t quite so lucky.”
Worldwide, thousands will run together to raise awareness and funds for spinal cord research and this year The Wings for Life World Run app means you can get involved no matter where you are in the world. It even has a training mode so you can download it from the app store and get training straight away.
In Auckland the run will be on Sunday May 9 at 11pm. Register for the app run, and participate from wherever you are: https://www.wingsforlifeworldrun.com/en/locations/auckland
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