Wales On Sunday

30
WALES on SUNDAY
WALES on SUNDAY
What’s 11ft tall, 12ft wide, and
capable of speeds of up to
100mph and jumps of 115ft?
A monster truck, of course,
and our man Matt Thomas
went to Las Vegas to drive
one of the beasts...
SCARY MONSTER: Matt gets some tips
My ride of a
lifetime on
2,000 horses
JAM-AZING: Monster Mutt takes
off (main picture), with
(clockwise from top left)
Digger, After Burner, Batman
and King Krunch
WHATEVER your opinion of
the desert-set hotpot of
bizarreness that is Las Vegas,
you’ve got to admire its
commitment to a theme.
trucking, being a noisy, dangerous
and...well, you get the drift.
Even more weirdly, some of them are
congenital monster truckers, having been
born into families dedicated to trucks and
inculcated into the noisy, dangerous,
lower-back-pummelling sport at a very
Very few people, having conjured a giant
early age. The driver of Grave Digger,
steel and plastic wonky wonderland from
Dennis Anderson, has recruited two of his
nothing more than bare sand and Mafia
sons as equally bonkers truck wranglers.
money, would look at it and think: “Gosh,
magnificently mad machines come across
extravagant unless the drivers were all
They even tried to stage a three-way,
we could do with this being a bit more
as a pretty straightforward bunch
wearing suits made out of $50 bills. Oh,
cross generational truck smash at the
weird and noisy and dangerous.”
although, as you might expect from people Monster Jam world finals earlier this year,
But someone obviously did think exactly and it’s coming to Cardiff’s Millennium
who spend their time hurtling around dirt a plan that went somewhat awry after one
Stadium next Saturday.
that as, for the past few years, it’s been
These days the trucks are as far removed tracks in giant, super-hero-themed 4x4s,
of the Andersons Jr rolled his truck over,
home to the Monster Jam World Finals –
some of them have pretty interesting
from their humble roots as bulked-up
20 yards out of the starting gate.
the climactic hoedown of the monster
backstories.
utility vehicles as the show is from its
The unifying trend among them is that
truck calendar.
A lot of them have come to the trucks
down-home origins.
they tend to be incredibly polite. This
For a sport that has its roots in the
via motocross racing, which shares a lot of might have something to do with the fact
Now they’re custom-built, tube-framed
distinctly unglamorous pursuit of mud
speed machines that spend as much time its component elements with monster
that it’s quite hard to practise monster
bogging, the monster jam has had a
in the air as they do on the ground and as trucking, also being a noisy, dangerous and trucking in the middle of a city, so a lot of
distinctly Vegas sheen applied to it.
very entertaining way to really hurt your
much time upside down and on fire as
them come from quite rural bits of
From the speedboats towed around the
lower back. More than a few have arrived America – places where manners are still
they do in the air.
arena carrying bikini girls firing T-shirts
at their chosen sport through professional highly prized. Manners and the ability to
into the crowd to the seismically enormous It’s not a very sensible sport.
wrestling, which shares a lot of its
fly through the air in a burning truck
fireworks display, its production values are Interestingly enough, however, the guys
component elements with monster
and gals behind the wheels of those
without losing your composure, of course.
phenomenal. It couldn’t get much more
As Cardiff gears up to host the latest
leg of the Monster Jam World Series,
MATT THOMAS meets
the men and women behind the
wheels of the giant machines...
So this
is why the
day before
the Monster Jam
World final, you would have found drivers
like Cam McQueen, pilot of Nitro Circus
and owner of a very fine cowboy hat,
standing in a Las Vegas parking lot,
patiently answering questions.
When I joined him, he was in the middle
of a particularly searching interview with
two blokes from a Dutch website.
“So Cam,” he was being asked. “How
did you get into this game? Did you wake
up one morning and decide to go to crazy
school?”
“No, well,” he replied. “We don’t actually
have crazy school here, but I did start
quite young on the motorbikes.”
While we were talking the driver of
Superman, Chad Fortune, arrived on his
personalised Superman mini-bike, wearing
a nifty Superman-themed shirt and shorts
combo. Given that Fortune is a 6ft 5in,
240lb, beef-fed, prime cut of Georgiaraised former wrestler and pro-football
player, this made quite an
impact.
“Yeah, we do get bounced around
a bit up there,” he says. “But we’re
strapped in pretty well and there’s always
a lot of physio available to us, The trucks
are built from the ground up around us,
they’re designed so that we’ll be able to
get out there and do what we do.
“They make sure we’re safe.”
Safety is of course a prime concern for
the organisers and drivers alike.
The competition segment of the evening
is divided into two separate rounds, racing
and the freestyle. Both take place at high
speed but there the resemblance ends.
The racing involves two trucks charging
round a J-shaped track, competing to be
the first to hit the jump that will send
them through the air over the finish line.
If they make it through that without
rolling over, catching fire or exploding they
then get to show off their stunt credentials
in the freestyle round. This is largely to
ensure that any truck that escaped the
racing unscathed gets a good going over as
they smash athletically
into big piles of dirt, old
school buses and so on and
so forth. It’s worrying
enough to watch from the
sidelines, so it’s hard to imagine exactly
what it’s like out in the thick of it.
“Pretty noisy, as you’ve probably
guessed. You end up pretty deaf after a
while,” vouchsafes George Balhan, the
Illinois driver found behind the wheel of
the Mohawk Warrior truck.
Another former motocross rider, Balhan
and his vehicle share a similar tonsorial
quirk although his crest of hair, while still
impressive, lacks the bounce-back-ability
of the 4ft-tall plastic fronds that sit on top
of his truck.
Balhan offers an insight into what
persuades the truckers that being rattled
around like a pinball is a good idea.
“It’s all about the fans for me,” he says,
“I look out there and I see the kids with
their mohawks and I know that they’re all
behind me. I know they’ve come out for
me and I know that I can’t let them down.
“They’ve come to see me go big and
that’s what I’m going to do.”
Each truck has its own body of fans who
collectively purchase enough merchandise
to sink a battleship or two over the course
of a rally.
One of the most desirable items, at least
to any right-thinking person, is the
Monster Mutt baseball cap. This is a
dalmatian-spotted, tongue-wagging,
floppy-eared object of wonderment, linked
to the truck driven by Candice Jolly, one
of the few female drivers on the tour.
“I’m a mom, I like to ride horses, I do
charity work and I drive monster trucks,”
she laughs. “This has been my life since I
was eight or so, I grew up in Florida racing
go-karts and I guess I kind of knew I was
always going to end up doing something
like this.
“Do I ever get lonely on the tour? Well,
yeah, as a woman I’m a bit of a rarity but I
can always turn to Madusa [another
former wrestler turned glamazon truck
driver and qualified children’s nurse who
runs her own dog grooming business – I’m
not making this up] if I’m feeling down.
But really the whole tour has such a family
feel to it. All these guys are my friends.”
Indeed, a good-natured chumminess
pervades monster trucking, from the fans
to the drivers and their crews. It’s a world
unto itself, escapist and entertaining and
removed from everyday concerns.
“Why did I get into this?” says Becky
McDonough, the young Nitro Circus crew
chief. “Let’s put it this way, the town
where I come from, the biggest thing they
do is the monthly gun raffle.
“This is something else. We’re doing
something that a lot of people love and
that we love doing.”
■ Monster Jam comes to Cardiff on
Saturday. Call 08442 777888 to book
tickets
31