Will Posey: The day I raced X Games was one year and one day after my accident. I had just gotten my bike from Chad Sanner at Eleven-10 Mods. We were doing some testing and I wanted to do some motos. I went straight over the bars in the whoops. I don’t remember anything because I was knocked out, but they said I landed on my head and folded like a taco. I broke my upper back, T3. I had feeling and movement, but it was laggy, like my legs were asleep. At first they were transferring me from a smaller hospital to a bigger one so I could get surgery to stabilize, but then they told me with a back brace I’d be good. So I went home, and after a while I noticed when I was laying in bed it was kind of hard to move my toes. I tried to get off the bed and collapsed—my legs wouldn’t work. So I was back to the hospital, and sure enough I was straight to the surgery room, and there it went.
Yeah, I broke the front of my T3 off. They gave me the brace and said I don’t have any restrictions, but I knew something was wrong, so I wasn’t exactly running around the neighborhood. I had broken it in half, and the front of the T3 shifted down, and then there was another break in the back they had missed, and that piece was basically pushing into my spinal cord. At first, they thought I would be a [quadriplegic] because there’s a part of my spinal cord in my neck that was squashed flat, but I was lucky—that didn’t do it. But with the back, I lost feeling from, like, the top of my abs down. I’ve gradually gotten better; now I can move down to the belly button. I have a small tear in my cord, but it’s still an incomplete [tear], so there’s a chance I could walk again. The spinal cord is a tricky situation.
I sure was. I first stopped racing back in 2009. Money started running out, so I picked up a camera. I’d bug Wes Williams and tell him I wanted to film with him. I did the Racer X Amateur Film Festival back in 2012 and I didn’t win, but then I got a call from Cliff Nobles at GoPro. He wanted me to come to Freestone and try some videos. It led to a full-time job at GoPro. I was kind of leading the two-wheeled motorsports division by the time I left. We did a lot of series with James Stewart and fun stuff like that. All they had done was watched the video I had done with my buddy Jeffrey Lewis. Before long I was going to all the supercrosses, all the nationals, some MXGPs—I took in so much stuff and it happened so fast. The camera made such an impact in the world, and the company grew so quickly. Riding the ship was crazy.
You moved on?
You know, I guess I wasn’t agreeing with everything that was going on, and I missed being at home in Georgia. My dad was a single father that raised me, and we’re best friends. I came back and started racing again and hanging out with my dad. I left [GoPro] in 2016 and hooked up with Wes Williams, and we’ve been wide open on projects ever since. It’s funny, when Wes found out I left GoPro, he called me and said we should work together. I joke all the time that way back he was like, “I got this stupid kid that won’t leave me alone!” It’s cool how it all worked out.
Let’s talk about X Games.
It came together so quick. Around late September I hopped on a KLX110. I had a really bad doctor’s appointment. Things weren’t getting better. I had this brand-new pit bike I had never ridden, so I just wanted to do it. At first it was funky—my balance was super bad and I needed to bungee-cord my feet to the pegs. We took a video and posted on Instagram, and next thing you know it’s just blowing up. It kind of went viral. Joe Duncan, who kind of runs the whole X Games Snow BikeCross thing, he called and asked if I could ride a 450. I was like, “Yeah, no problem.” At the time, I hadn’t ridden a 450! So I bought a 450, built a cage with Jim and Brandon Pewitt from Japco Machinery. I just started riding moto tracks. First day was sketchy, second day went well, and then I decided to race. I even won my first moto! It was fun, and it came together so fast.
So then I got a sled from Kody Kamm, and we went to ERX Motorsports Park in Minnesota. I had never really been in snow before. First practice, I was like, “What did I get myself into?” I was so weirded out by the snow—it’s not smooth like a moto jump. It started to come together, and I won the X Games qualifier.
I remember winning a title in 2015, and that was the first race where I wasn’t nervous going to the gate. I never had that experience again until X Games. My buddy Pablo, he was like, “Dude, look, we’re at X Games!” And I agreed, yeah, it was sick, but I was there to do one thing: to race and get a medal. It was awesome getting to meet guys like Doug Henry, Blair Morgan, Paul Thacker, Leighton Lillie . . . it was something else. Doug is Doug. He’s fast. To know I was a little bit of competition for him was cool. We were together the first few laps, but I started having bike problems. I ran my bike too lean to get every bit of power I could out of it. He got slowed by some lappers and I guess I closed up, then I got to the lappers and he pulled back away. I actually tipped over on that last lap. These bikes are 750 pounds with a rider on it, so once they picked me up and helped me get going, I just wanted to bring it across. I would have never thought, the day I rode that pit bike, that it would lead to this.
What’s next?
I want to do some more motocross races. I would love to win a title in an able-bodied class. I’ve gone to local pro races and gotten some third and fourths. I can do the jumps, and I can bang bars with them, so I want to see what else I can do. Of course, video is still my full-time job, but I love to ride. There’s nothing better after the stress of a long, hard work day. 
