Mark Kariya | January 6, 2022
For Joe Wasson, riding motorcycles was an afterthought; it was something fun to do every now and then, and he even parked his dirt bike for a while before getting talked into riding again. Many bumps in the road followed, including having his hand nearly severed in a crash, but an AMA Hare & Hound National Championship was in his future.
A former ranch hand and miner, Beta’s Joe Wasson overcame several obstacles en route to winning the 2021 AMA Hare & Hound National Championship for the first time.
Words and Photography by Mark Kariya
Champions are often forged through adversity and Joe Wasson has certainly faced his challenges en route to the 2021 AMA Hare & Hound National Championship title, a journey that’s taken him from living the cowboy lifestyle to working underground in a gold mine and, most recently, to factory-supported desert racing champ.
He accomplished his most recent goal with a combination of speed and consistency—generally the hallmarks of a championship season—with four victories in the first eight rounds of the series, and podium finishes in all but the ninth and final round where he raced a 125 for fun to eighth overall, having wrapped up the title at round eight.
It’s not something he imagined at 13 years of age when he began working on a ranch in a remote part of Oregon where, he remembers, “We took care of a bunch of cows and rode horses and did stuff like that. I think we had, probably, 500 head of cows so we had a regular working ranch.
“We farmed, too—drove tractors, combines and things like that, moved cows to the mountains and would bring them down off the mountain and take them to sell.
“It was a totally different lifestyle than what I do now.”
Wasson clinched the title at the penultimate round, a moment he celebrated unabashedly and will cherish forever.
Oh, he did ride dirt bikes well before that, but it wasn’t a passion yet and he drifted away from the sport.
“I ended up getting a job in an asphalt plant and one of my buddies that worked there, he kind of talked me into getting back into dirt bikes. That was in 2015; I went and bought a KTM 300 and went out and raced one of the local SIDRA (Southwestern Idaho Desert Racing Association) races and I got fifth overall. I hadn’t ridden a dirt bike in 10 years!
“I was like, ‘Wow, I’ve still got something going on with this!’
“A month later I did the Murphy [Idaho] National Hare & Hound and I got 10th overall. I was like, ‘I’m going to start chasing this [motorcycle racing thing].’ ”
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing, and he began hitting the first of several bumps in the road. “I had some bad luck throughout the rest of the year. I broke a bead putting a mousse tube in, so I failed to finish the Idaho City 100. Then I did the same thing in Utah [at the Hare & Hound National]—I couldn’t figure out how to put the mousses in!
Consistency throughout the varied courses in five states was key to earning the crown this year as he never finished off the box until after he’d wrapped it up. The title safely in hand, Wasson then rode the finale for fun on a Beta 125 RR.
“But then we kind of pulled it together and the following year my dad said, ‘Well, if you’re going to do this, let’s race the 250cc Pro class.’ We went out and bought a YZ250 two-stroke and raced the whole National Hare & Hound series in 2016. I got second in 250cc Pro at the first round and then I won the rest of the 250cc Pro races after that. That’s when I got a call from Beta and started on with them.”
Another one of those bumps in the road followed—a couple, actually, though they ended up working out well.
First, a fire destroyed his home in Idaho, though that wasn’t as bad as one might expect.
“When I decided to start racing again, riding and training in Idaho in the winter sucks!” he said. “You go out to the desert and it’s seven degrees, the dirt’s frozen—it sucks.
“The first year back racing in 2016, I came down for the winter and stayed with my cousin in Arizona. He was neighbors with Taylor Robert and a couple people like that so I was like, ‘This is where I want to be!’”
After getting back into riding, a friend talked Wasson into racing, and he discovered the years off hadn’t stolen his skills. He entered the Rabbit Creek 100 in his home state of Idaho in 2015 and won Open A, finishing 10th overall in the process.
Then came the house fire. Luckily, he, wife Jayme and son T.J. weren’t home at the time.
“The insurance option they gave me, they were going to rebuild the house for the value it was appraised for, or I could take 20 percent or 30 percent less—they would pay off the loan and I’d get X amount of dollars.”
Wasson opted for the cash and moved the family to Arizona.
“It’s kind of funny how it worked out. We lost all of our stuff, but it actually opened up a whole avenue to where we could move.
“It was the worst perfect opportunity. At our place in Arizona, you can ride right from your house or mountain bike from the house or whatever. It’s really worked out to be a cool spot for us.”
Among his closest neighbors are fellow racers David Kamo and Robert, while Destry and Cooper Abbott, Max Gerston, Mason Ottersberg and others aren’t far, prompting him to quip, “It’s like the Mecca of dirt bikes. There’s always somebody that wants to ride, whether it be professionals training during the week or all your buddies wanting to ride on the weekend.”
Of course, that isn’t always ideal, and he found he had to draw the line at times. “There for a little bit, I had to learn to separate it because I would ride Monday through Friday training then all my friends that would work all week would want to ride on the weekends, so I found myself riding six or seven days a week! I was like, ‘I’ve got to separate work from play,’ but it’s hard when work is play. But I’ve got that dialed in a little better now.”
Beta wanted Wasson to carry the banner in the Open Pro division aboard a 430 RR, and he started 2017’s campaign a somewhat disappointed fifth at round one. “I knew I had good speed versus the rest of the top Pros,” he says.
Round two, however, proved to be an even larger bump in the road.
“I had a ton of confidence going in, my bike was working really good, and I just was going so fast [after the start down a pole line road]. I kind of jumped off this little sand dune and basically went from 60 miles an hour to stopped.”
The impact resulted in a severe dislocation of his right wrist—medically speaking, it was a transcaphoid perilunate dislocation. In a layman’s view, however, it nearly tore his hand off his arm, requiring multiple surgeries and months of recovery.
“That was my second race with Beta; luckily, they kept me on. I lost basically the whole year with injuries, but I came back and finished the last two rounds [ninth overall at both] which I was happy with, getting a top 10 after something like that.”
Remarkably, Wasson ended up 13th in final series overall points.
Wasson hit the H&H series full-time in 2016 and bagged his first win as a Pro at round two—the Rabbit Creek 100 in Idaho—in the 250 class…
…he went on to win the class championship.
“The following year I came out and was doing pretty good, but I still had a lot of issues with my wrist. After the fourth round, I could hardly finish the race [and was credited with 50th overall].
“I ended up having to take more time off and get more work done on my wrist.”
He missed round five then spent the summer break recovering, returning with a seventh before getting a second to end the year hopeful.
“After that, I knew I could win overalls and everything was feeling pretty good,” he said.
Things continued to improve in 2019 where he finished a best-to-date second to privateer Jacob Argubright, 242-227, taking three overalls in the process.
“Our overall program was getting better and better; the development of the bikes was getting better.”
It was much the same in 2020, though he ended up third behind Rockstar Energy Husqvarna’s Dalton Shirey and PCI Race Radios KTM privateer David Kamo (who tied on points with Shirey but had to settle for second due to Shirey having more victories at four).
“Same thing: I had a lot of good results [triumphant twice], but a couple little issues caused me to miss the championship a little bit. Then 2021, I had shoulder surgery at the end of 2020 after the last round of the Nationals.
“I hadn’t ridden all winter long so going into the first round of 2021 I was a little nervous because I hadn’t ridden, but I came out and got second overall behind Shirey, and I was like, ‘Shoot, I’ve got it going on this year!’ Everything felt good and this whole year, basically, everything just lined up. I was really confident in my bike; the suspension setup was really nice and my training program was spot-on. I knew I could do it, no matter what.
“Basically, this year, everything went perfectly, and I was able to wrap it up.”
In 2017, Wasson nearly lost his hand in a crash but he overcame that disaster and many surgeries and treatments.
From not knowing if he would even be able to keep his hand in 2017 to winning the championship in 2021 was quite a journey. “It broke my scaphoid in half, and basically took the ulna and radius bones and stuck them out through my skin,” Wasson said. After initial treatment in Alamogordo, New Mexico, he was transferred to a hospital in El Paso, Texas, where he underwent surgery to rebuild the wrist and save his hand, remaining for three weeks during which time he underwent two more surgeries—operations complicated since Wasson refused to have the wrist fused. A wound was left open for two months to allow for cleaning and drainage, with an external fixator holding bones in place while things healed.
“They were concerned because it was an open wound, and there was sand and stuff in it, so they kept me in the ICU there. When the doctor came in, he laid out all my options of things that were possibilities—there was a possibility of my hand not staying on my body because of infection or the surgery not working right.
“It was nerve-wracking, to say the least.”
He admits that opting against fusion may have prolonged the healing process: “That was probably the reason for a lot of my pain that I had in 2018 when I had to stop because the bones were rubbing together and they weren’t right.”
The pain was a constant but especially flared up when he rode: “Definitely 2018 was a tough season for racing and 2019, things still hurt quite a bit. It was a struggle every day to go ride because it always hurt. Working out hurt. You don’t realize how much your wrist is involved in everything you do. There were a lot of times when I probably could’ve given up due to pain and suffering, but I wasn’t going to stop chasing my dreams for a little bit of pain.
“It definitely has made me mentally tougher.”
Modern medicine, as well as exploring alternative healing processes, combined with his mental outlook to help turn things around: “The whole time, I kept optimistic, hoping I could keep the mobility in my wrist. I ended up doing stem-cell injections and PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injections. The summer of 2018 they had to do another surgery and, basically, they shaved down a bunch of my ulna and radius bones to kind of give more room for the other bones to move around.
“After the stem cells and that last surgery, it basically got my wrist to where it’s pretty solid again for the most part. It’s been kind of a nightmare, but it gave me a lot of confidence to know that I can have struggles and still overcome them.
“Now I know nothing can stop me.”
That doesn’t mean he’s 100 percent, though. “There’s still just a nagging pain all the time, but it’s just become the new normal,” he said. “I just deal with it and keep going. People always say, ‘You’re going to feel that when you’re older,’ but I already feel it!”
Besides the surgeries and other procedures, Wasson credits a couple other things that enabled him to ride during the more painful times, revealing, “For two years afterward, I wore a Mobius wrist brace (choosing it after seeing Ken Roczen wearing one). It gave my wrist more support so I could hang on, but in 2020 I started doing a lot of hot yoga. When I started doing that, was when it felt like my wrist started getting a certain amount of mobility back in it and strength.
“After about three or four months of doing the hot yoga, I noticed my wrist didn’t bother me as bad. I started taking the brace off when I’d go practice ride and it was like, ‘Wow, this isn’t that bad.’
“Eventually, I ditched the brace altogether. This whole year I haven’t raced with any braces, except at the beginning of 2021, I had a shoulder brace from my shoulder surgery, but I wore that for probably the first four rounds and then it got strong enough to where I didn’t have to wear it anymore.”
Throughout all of this, another issue Wasson had to deal with was insurance. While his shoulder surgery was covered, the wrist procedures were not, and he was shocked to receive a bill of $348,000!
“Naturally, I didn’t have enough money to pay for it, so I worked out a little deal with the hospital and I think it ended up costing me $18,000,” he said—still a substantial amount but not something that’d require a 30-year loan to pay off.
“I made a little money with Tesla stocks. When Covid hit, I started messing around with investing and I made $22,000 or $24,000 off of Tesla. I ended up paying all my medical bills. Part of them got sent to collections [before the Tesla stocks paid off]. I mean, I was paying as much as I could, but you need some money for everyday living, too.
“That was a huge relief to get out of all my medical debt.
“Now I have insurance.”
Does Wasson see himself becoming a day trader or investment banker?
“I have a little bit of crypto currency, but I just took a little break from stocks. I’m not very good at it so I did lose a little bit of money. It’s still something that’s kind of intriguing. It seems like you can make money, but then you can also lose a lot of money quick, too! Honestly, I feel like it’s a little bit like gambling, so I limit myself to how involved I get. I have a couple things but nothing major anymore.”
That leads to life after racing. “I’ve been thinking about all the different things I could do after I’m done racing. I’ve kind of kicked around the idea—there’s a guy who wants me to help put on group rides, fun tour deals, so I’ve thought about that.
“Ultimately, I’d like to figure out something to do where I could work with Jayme and have T.J. involved, do something that’s the whole family deal. I wouldn’t be opposed to going back to my old lifestyle doing a little farming and stuff like that or go work for somebody.
“I think when I get too focused on what I’m going to do next, it takes away from what I’m doing now. I keep reminding myself, ‘Just focus on what you’re doing right now. What’ll come next will come next.’
“I’ve got to focus on one thing at a time just to make sure I give it my all and don’t get sidetracked.”
That leads him to draw on his mental strength, especially when training. “Sometimes I’ll go out and ride in summer in the middle of the day just to torture myself, just to make myself a little tougher. I’ve found out that I’m willing to do a lot of things that most people aren’t willing to do, but if you do them, it’ll separate you from the rest of the people and build up that mental strength. How hard can you suffer? I figured out I can suffer a lot harder than the next person.”
More than that, Wasson feels, is that training in the Arizona desert makes him a more precise rider. “Idaho, you can brush through the bushes and stuff. Not in Arizona! You don’t miss your corners. You don’t blow through bushes because everything down there [cactus] will poke you!”
Though he’s enjoyed his greatest success in the desert, Wasson has also found success in other areas. In 2019, he placed second in the AMA West Hare Scrambles (WHS) Regional Championship Series.
Another bit of training philosophy that Wasson believes in centers around intensity versus volume. “If you just trail ride without a stopwatch or whatever, you tend to get slow because you’re not pushing that limit,” he said. “Whereas, if you go out and do, say, five 10-minute sprints, that’s 50 minutes of intensity as hard as you can race. In my opinion—and I think in a lot of other professional racers’ opinions—that’s the way to build your speed is putting in timed, interval sprints: 10-minute sprint, five-minute rest, 10-minute sprint, five-minute rest or whatever the case may be. It’s pretty basic; just putting in the time is all there is to it.”
That and his injuries have reshaped the way he attacks a race nowadays. Before, Wasson was the quintessential example of a hold-her-wide-all-the-time rider. Now, he agrees, “When I first started out, I was the kid from Idaho willing to go fast. I didn’t really know how to go fast. I just knew I was willing to do it.
“I’ve changed my approach a lot. I’m definitely a lot more cautious, but there’s still part of me that’s willing to hang it out if I need to.
“I’m trying to get away from that just for the consistency part because it seems like as soon as you start hanging it out, that’s when things get a little sketchy.”
Though only 28, Wasson is well aware of how difficult it will be hanging on to that coveted number-one plate: “I’ve got a couple years left in the tank. It’s hard staying on top like that. There’s a bunch of young kids coming after me—all my competition’s basically 21, 22. Now, I just have to ride with a little more smarts versus speed and just make sure the consistency stays there. It seems like the younger guys still make a lot more mistakes. I kind of know where they make mistakes and how to race them, so I’ve been working on my game plan going into the ’22 season: how to race them, where to push hard, where to back it down a little bit.
“I’ve still got it, I think.
“Now, I have the number-one plate and I’ve got to try to not let that get in my head and keep the same consistency going and try to defend it another year.” CN
