By Sean Bice

If you’re a fan of the Classic Rock genre and, in particular, early-1980s rock ballads, then you’ve certainly enjoyed the sometimes-dulcet, sometimes-raucous musical creations of Michael Lee Aday, otherwise known professionally by his ground-round stage name, Meat Loaf.

One of the Loaf-man’s biggest hits was “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad,” a homage to unrequited, adolescent romance.

Well, “two out of three” is fine for affairs of the heart, but when it comes to motorcycle road racing success, “one out of two” is absolutely the stuff of legends.

Legends like Joshua Kurt Hayes, in fact.

This past Sunday, 51-year-old Hayes started his 377th AMA-sanctioned professional road race in Supersport race two at New Jersey Motorsports Park. Also, in Saturday’s Supersport race one, the “Mississippi Madman,” or “Hurricane Hayes” if you prefer, won the penultimate race of the 2026 MotoAmerica season.

It was Hayes’s 91st AMA-sanctioned race win and his 191st podium result. If you do the math, he currently has an AMA podium-finishing percentage of 50.66%.

Think about that for a moment. What if someone told you that, in half of the AMA- sanctioned professional road races you started in your career, you’d stand on the podium, and receive a trophy and all the accolades that go with it? You’d take it, wouldn’t you? And you’d be considered a legend for it.

What if you’d be able to maintain that 50% podium-finishing rate for more than three decades? You’d be pretty happy, wouldn’t you? It would be a life well-lived, wouldn’t you say?

One of the very best things about the success that Josh Hayes has accomplished in motorcycle road racing is how much he appreciates it. There is no motorcycle road racer on this planet who appreciates his chosen craft and profession more than Hayes. And hand in hand with that appreciation is the absolute LOVE he has for racing motorcycles.

It’s a love that probably should have been the subject of a song by Meat Loaf. “I would do anything for (racing),” perhaps? But he won’t do that? Oh, he would probably do that. Even if it’s outside the realm of the AMA.

Endurance racing? Hayes has endurance-raced at tracks from Summit Point, West Virginia, to the pièce de resistance itself, the 24 Heures Motos in Le Mans, France. In fact,  endurance racing, and the requisite seat time, helped make him such a great rider.

World Championship racing? Hayes competed as a member of the Parkalgar Honda team in the FIM Supersport World Championship. Not only that, but in 2011, he was a fill-in rider for Colin Edwards on the Tech 3 Yamaha MotoGP team and led the Sunday morning warmup session in Valencia, Spain, and then finished seventh in the feature MotoGP race later that day.

International vintage racing? How about race wins for two years in a row (2020 and 2021) at the International Island Classic Challenge at Phillip Island in Australia?

Josh Hayes’s AMA race starts now stand at 377, but that number will still continue to grow since he’s expected to be back with BPR Racing again in 2027, most likely aboard his #4 Yamaha YZF-R9 in the MotoAmerica Supersport Championship.

Let’s face it, Hayes has started a lot more races in the U.S. and around the world than “just” the 377 he has amassed in AMA-sanctioned competition. Along with the aforementioned endurance racing–including co-riding to multiple WERA National Endurance Championships–World Supersport rounds, and the MotoGP stint, there was the three-round Superbike Shootout Championship he won in 2014, plus all the club racing, all the WERA-sanctioned sprint races, and the Suzuki Cup competition that formed part of his early career.

All told, Hayes has probably actually started well over 500 races, and he’s certainly notched way more than the 91 race wins he’s amassed in his AMA/MotoAmerica career when you include every event in every country in which he’s competed.

Right now, his AMA-sanction race-winning percentage is 24.13%. But Hayes himself doesn’t even know how many actual motorcycle road races he’s started and won.

How about if we also count the off-road racing he’s done? Motocross? Flat track? Dirt track? Dirt track car racing, even?

Let’s not go there. Let’s just be satisfied by the undeniable fact that Joshua Kurt Hayes appreciates it all because of how much he loves it.

He said so himself right after winning his 90th AMA-sanctioned road race in August at VIRginia International Raceway: “I don’t know what to say except how thankful I am…It’s easy to go fight when people give you the opportunity that you’re so appreciative of, and the fans are so kind to me…. I love the racing, anyway. I love getting on the grid…”

To quote Meat Loaf just one more time, “Dreams they come and go, but thoughts like love will always grow.” And that’s Josh Hayes’s love of motorcycle racing. Still growing.