Sometimes parents really do know best – when eight-year-old Craig Anderson pleaded with his dad to upgrade his BMX, the message was clear. “He said, ‘If we’re going to get you a bike, you’ve gotta start racing.’ So we bought a bike, went out to a local club and that’s how it all started,” says Anderson.
Going straight onto a geared motorbike, the nipper soon proved his worth, racking up 11 junior Moto X championships ranging from 65cc to 125cc. In 1992, he travelled to the US and won the prestigious 125 Loretta Lynn’s Title. Anderson went pro at age 16 and in that first year, 1994, was placed third in the Australian 125 Championship (now the Pro Lite Championship). He went straight into the open class the following year.
It didn’t take long for the young man from the Hunter Valley to mark his territory in the open class – in 1996 he raced to second place in the Moto X, Super X and four-stroke championships, and went on to win all three championships in both 1997 and 1998.
The comeback kid
By this stage, 14 years on the bike was starting to take its toll on Anderson’s body. “I’ve had a ruptured spleen, a couple of broken arms, a separated shoulder and a broken scaphoid in my wrist. But the injury that was the toughest to come back from – mentally as well as physically – was the knee reconstruction," said Anderson.
Call Anderson the comeback kid – after glandular fever added insult to injury in 2000, he was back in the swing of things, taking the 2001 Super X championship. He topped that in 2002, again winning the clean sweep of the four-stroke, Moto X and Super X championships and then,in 2006 he gained his 12th title in the Moto X Championship.
Craig Anderson