Mike Lafferty
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Mike Lafferty (born October 25th, 1975, hometown of Port Elizabeth, NJ) is a multiple time http://http://www.amadirectlink.com/amrace/amasports.asp AMA National Enduro Champion] from Southern New Jersey, USA. He has been racing a championship level since 1993, when he won his AMA Regional Championship, and as of the middle of the 2006 season, Mike Lafferty had won 7 AMA National Enduro Championships and was in the points lead for an 8th title.
As a result of his extraordinary success, particularly from such a young age, he has been factory sponsored by manufacturer's such as KTM USA, which is part of KTM (motorcycle manufacturer), an international manufacturer of high-end, performance oriented on and off-road sporting motorcycles. Their main website is http://www.ktm.co.at.
Mike Lafferty's official website, http://www.mlafferty.com, has plenty of pictures and details about Mike, his equipment and sponsors, the series in which he competes, his competitive history, and many details regarding his personal life and his racing career. His father, Jack Lafferty, is also well known within the sport as a very competitive senior class rider, and for being largely responsible for Mike's success since a young age. At regional enduro events, Jack is widely recognized and admired for his amazing physical longevity and riding skill, both of which he has managed to maintain in spite of his advanced age and with which he consistently outpaces many younger, healthy riders.
In the US Enduro community, the Lafferty name has become synonomous with the sport, and Mike Lafferty in particular is a well known figure with celebrity status and is viewed and treated with tremendous respect by all of the community's constituents. In addition to his factory sponsorships, he receives various product sponsorships from various motorcycle product manufacturers (primarily in an off-road context, but often from manufacturer's who make products for both on and off-road riders, such as tire or clothing manufacturers, or from manufacturers's whose products are use-independent, such as race-fuels and other fluids).
In a sport that does not receive any real press coverage and that does not really have a fan following outside of the participants themselves and their families and friends, but that does have all of the complexity, challenge, and competition of sports that do receive a high level of popular attention, there is not really much in the way of prize money or advertising (spokesperson) contracts. Even factory sponsorship does not come with contracts that are even close to those received by factory riders in sports like Supercross. Regardless, a few select riders who have attained the very pinnacle of success in the sport of Enduro on a repeated basis have managed to actually make a good living out of racing in the sport. Mike Lafferty is one of those few, and if Enduro was as well known and widely followed and covered in the US as Supercross, for example, then people like Mike Lafferty would be as well known and as well compensated financially as people like Ricky Carmichael or Jeremy McGrath.
As things are, though, Mike Lafferty and a very few others have reached the pinnacle of their chosen sport and, national recogniztion aside, they deserve to be held at the same level of esteem as their counterparts in the more popularly followed off-road racing series.
