A Name to Remember: Casey Cochran

Some kids look naturally comfortable on motorcycles. At 10 years old, Casey Cochran looks as if he was born on one … and while that sounds like an exaggeration, it’s a very small one. “When I say he’s been on a bike his whole life, I’m not kidding,” says Matt Cochran, Casey’s dad. “He was born six weeks early, so he was a little bitty baby. The day we came home from the hospital, before we even went into the house, my father-in-law picked him up out of the car seat and took him for a ride around the block on his motorcycle.”

At age 2, Casey had his first motorbike, complete with training wheels. At 3, he competed in a race staged by the very same grandfather who’d first introduced him to two-wheeled life. At 4, he was racing as often as possible.  These days, much of the boy’s time is spent at ex-racer Matt Walker’s Moto X compound in Georgia, honing skills that must have been in his genes. His mom, Amy, comes from a Mississippi motorcycle-dealership family that also had a deep racing lineage; Casey is named for his late uncle, Amy’s brother Casey, a promising racer whose life was cut short by leukemia.

Casey is part of a program set up by Cobra Moto, a leading manufacturer of competition mini cycles, to aid in the development of what it calls “elite youth riders.” Bel-Ray is among the program’s sponsors.  It helps that Casey’s parents, both military veterans, are flexible by nature. Doug, from eastern Tennessee, is a freight pilot for FedEx, while mom is retired from a 23-year Navy stint. Doug says, “For the last four years we’ve been living in an RV, chasing Casey around. I can’t think of a better setup than what we have to be able to focus on his racing.”

Photo Cred:Photo: Maine Event PhotographyMX

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