Local BMX racer qualifies for nationals, attracts season
sponsorship from Hyper Hot Wheels team
GILROY – Thirteen-year old BMX-er Brittany Dayao is serious about her riding. So serious that she rode 19 miles from San Jose to Los Gatos on Sunday as part of her intensified training for the National Grands in Louisville, Kentucky at the end of the month.
And that’s only the half of it.
After only a three-year BMX career, the garlic pedaler is not only off to her first national competition – but also has already secured a full sponsorship for next racing season from the Hyper Hot Wheels racing factory team.
“This year, I really want it more than the last couple of years,” said Dayao before heading off to place second in Friday’s ABA Trials in Santa Clara.
Dayao continues to train daily for the nationals. She does push-ups and sprints along with doing practice runs up and down the block by her Gilroy home and at the BMX dirt track in Prunedale. During the season, she practices Tuesdays and Thursdays, while racing on the weekends.
“I’m hoping to just make top-10 and make it to all my mains. I’m working extra, extra hard,” said Dayao, who will have all her state races and equipment paid for next year by her new sponsor. “I was really excited, really pumped up. I’m really trying to work harder to get better and impress the team.”
She impressed the race scouts at Mattel’s Hot Wheels team so much that after seeing her race Dayao’s mother was approached and given the surprise news that they wanted to sponsor her next year.
“This year she is really doing well. Right now, she’s No. 1 in the state with four races to go. Her and another girl have been going back and forth,” said Melissa Dayao, a proud mother of three. “She gets really focused and just does it. She’s always been a good rider, but she really wants it this year more than any other year.”
Dayao is the top female racer in the state and also ranked sixth in the region as well as 12th in the nation.
“This last year she really took it serious. I just care for her safety,” said Ben Dayao of his daughter, who cut her chin wide open during one race and flipped over the handle-bars on her head in another but got right back up. “She’s nervous (for the nationals), but I think when she gets there she’ll be OK.”
Brittany already has a strong support group with her parents by her side and her biggest fan in Aunt Liz Soares – who makes it to every race and will go down with her niece to Kentucky for the National Grands.
“(I come to her races) because she’s so happy doing it,” Soares said. “She says she feels so free on the track.”
The Brownell Academy eighth grader also has received hands-on training from some of the area’s top racing families – including Gil Ramos, of Prunedale, whose son Bo is a three-time national competitor.
“At this point, she’s capable of making her main. There are other girls just as strong, just as fast. She’s been learning in leaps and bounds,” said Ramos, who’s taken Brittany under his wing this summer. “She’s been our project this year and she’s done really well.”
Ramos – who lived in Gilroy for eight years – takes Brittany to the races her parents cannot attend. The BMX circuit takes her to races in Patterson, Livermore, Reedley, Santa Barbara for state finals, and Las Vegas, Nev. for the regionals. Ramos even built Brittany a new bike to ride on.
“(Bo) is 13, too, so he’s been explaining to her how the ropes go there,” Ramos said. “It’s a big race, a huge race.”
Last Wednesday, Dayao was hard at work in Prunedale – participating in a special racing clinic put on by Jerry Bradford, whose son, Joey, is a national rider. Also in attendance was two-time champion Deion Campbell. The NorCal riders will fly out on August 27 and race over the weekend. Brittany will be bringing her newest bike – put together on Sunday – with her to the nationals along with team manager Al Roybal, a world champion BMX rider out of Gilroy.
At the clinic, Brittany wore her new lavender and white Fox Racing Gear suit that her parents bought for her along with new gloves and shoes. But next season, Hyper Hot Wheels will be taking care of the cost.
“She wants it really bad so I’m willing to do it,” said Melissa Dayao, of finding ways to finance her daughter’s blossoming BMX career that includes a $45 season fee, $25 state race entry fee per day, $45 national race entry fee per day, and $5 to practice each day in Prunedale. Not to mention the gas.
“She wants to be in the Olympics. She’ll be 18. She’s got to step up and really practice,” said Melissa Dayao, knowing the 2008 Games will have BMX for the first time ever. “She picked up a good sport though, because she’s 13 and she’s barely four-foot-nine. She’s not going to be tall.”
Brittany doesn’t have to be the tallest racer on the track. She just has to be the fastest. Even that, however, was something that took some time from when she started at age 10.
“It was kinda hard in the beginning,” Brittany said. “I started talking to other people (within BMX racing.) My friend Gil took me to races, built my bike – him, his wife and his son. Bill and Deion Campbell and the Bradfords, they all helped me out.”
Dayao got into the sport one year after her younger brother Makaio started racing at age three. Makaio still races locally but is also a wrestler for the Gilroy Hawks club team and a tee-ball player in the local little league. Brittany also has a younger sister, Erinique, 11, who plays little league softball. They were both on hand to watch their sister at last Wednesday’s clinic before she heads off to the biggest challenge of her racing career.
Brittany kept with the sport – improving with each season – and she currently competes in the ABA and NBL circuits.
“It’s my life,” said Dayao, who recently took up boxing at the Gilroy Youth Community Center to stay in shape for riding. “The competition, the sport itself, and all the support you get when your out there from all your friends (is what has kept me racing.)”
