Boy wins short track bike series

Colbert’s Wyatt Anderson appears to be go-karting’s loss and flat-track racing’s gain.

When as a 4-year-old, Anderson sought to race go-karts and was turned away for being too young – he had to be 7 – noted local flat-tracker Joe Kopp stepped in.

Anderson, who will turn 11 in May, has been on a tear ever since with a string of accomplishments that fills a page on an already notable – and growing – resume. Anderson just returned from a week in Daytona Beach, Fla., where he added a Winter National Short Track series title.

While there may be bigger wins to come in a career that began at the Fairgrounds Indoor Series in 2001, the Florida win will remain memorable – but perhaps more for what happened off the track.

Anderson and his dad, Mark, awoke on the second day of the five-day Winter Series to find their truck – and those of a handful of other competitors – had been broken into and three of their four bikes had been stolen.

Anderson said he’s not sure what he’d like to do to the people who stole his bike, but perhaps riding over them with the knobby tires on his new bike might work as payback.

Wyatt Anderson said he had won on one of those bikes the day before. “I was kind of mad. That was a national No. 1 bike,” he said.

The Andersons could have packed it in and gone home, but they counted on the camaraderie that so often exists in racing, scrounged up backup equipment and went on to score a very unlikely victory.

Wyatt Anderson was careful with his words when he described his ride, but in the end, he admitted it was “kind of an old bike, a piece of junk.” The win came against some of the best young riders in the nation.

“Everything was wrong” with the bike, according to Wyatt. “The back tire was crooked and stuff. My dad fixed all that up.”

Anderson still rode to a third place one day and was second the next in a series of events that crisscrossed Florida. He won the title by four points.

The monetary loss due to the theft will be covered by insurance only partially, Mark Anderson said. But winning “the No. 1 plate takes the sting out of it,” he added.

With the Florida title, Wyatt Anderson picked up where he left off last year when he had an impressive string of wins and honors.

Anderson first won the 65cc Indoor Series. He followed with two wins at the American Motorcyclist Association Amateur West Coast Nationals in Lodi, Calif.

Anderson then won a pair of Spokane Dirt Track Series championships in the 60 and 80 cc class and finished off the campaign with three AMA district titles.

Anderson’s first career win came in 2002 when he was only 5. He followed with a string of four straight AMA District 27 titles in a variety of classes.

Anderson seems to be making fast tracks as he chases in the tire tracks of his idol and mentor, 2000 AMA Grand National champ and current competitor Kopp.

“I was going to race go-karts when I was 4, but you had to be like 7,” Anderson said. “Joe got us into racing on my fourth birthday.”

In his first race against kids more than twice his age, Anderson finished third in a heat race.

Anderson’s best strength as a rider is his patience. His dad has engrained in him that you never win the race on the first lap. Strategy says you take your time and pick off your competitors one at a time.

After taking time off to get a new bike set up, Anderson plans to ride in a major regional race over Memorial Day weekend in Castle Rock, Wash. That race will involve riders from up and down the West Coast.

A week later, he’ll be nearly 1,000 miles away in Gillette, Wyo., chasing after points in another regional race. Another major race comes July 4 at DuQuion, Ill.

Math is the favorite subject of the fifth-grader at Colbert Elementary School. Anderson also is a member of the school band, playing the snare drum.

Away from school, he is like boys his age and enjoys riding bicycles.

“I basically do everything athletic,” said Anderson, who once played hockey and would like to play football, “but I only have one kidney.”

Anderson was born with what doctors found out was one kidney, double the normal size, and he has been warned to avoid contact sports.