After many years with AlpineStar leathers, Nicky Hayden will also wear Dainese leathers in 2011. The 2006 MotoGP world champion will be in Dainese, the same leathers that King Kenny Roberts wore when he won his three world titles.
Some world championship level riders switch leather sponsorships every year, but Hayden has worn just two: Joe Rocket (of which he was a partial owner of the company) and AlpineStars.
(The first time Soup laid eyes on Nicky Hayden, he wore a battered set of hand-me-down Bates leathers. Under the semi-crude block lettering of NICKY on the leathers, one could make out the previous owner's name, ending with "OMMY".
Even then doing an exemplary job of pointing out the glaringly obvious and treating it as news, we casually said to the teen racer from Kentucky "So, wearing your brother's old leathers, huh?".
"No, they're my mom's," Hayden deadpanned, while walking away.)
