Q & A Carey Hart
SI: Your tattoo shop at the Palms casino in Las Vegas, Hart & Huntington Tattoo Company, is the subject of the A&E show. Have you inked any athletes?
Hart: We've done a lot of Sacramento basketball players since the Maloofs [owners of the Palms] own the Kings. I've done motocross guys, and guys like Tony Hawk and Christian Fletcher, the pro surfer. And I can't remember the kid's name, and I know this is horrible: We tattooed the CHOSEN 1 across his back.
SI: Uh, LeBron James?
Hart: There you go [laughs].
SI: In general, what do you think of the tattoos on pro athletes?
Hart: They have the worst tattoos I have ever seen. Take Allen Iverson. He has some decent ones, but he also has some really bad ones. It's kind of shocking with the numbers these guys are making that they don't take tattooing more seriously.
SI: So how many tattoos do you have?
Hart: Basically I have one big tattoo: arms, ribs, stomach, back, neck and hands. I have different themes, such as family and Vegas. I have my wife's name a few times and my dad's and a commemorative for my grandfather who just passed away.
SI: In 2000 you became the first person to attempt a backflip on a 125-cc dirt bike. What makes a man want to do that?
Hart: You always want to do better, go faster, score more points. With motocross, a lot of our tricks were stolen from the BMX world in the early days of freestyle. It was just a matter of time before someone went upside down. I've always been a person who didn't care about the medals or that crap. I was about pushing the envelope.
SI: Your wife proposed to you by flashing a WILL YOU MARRY ME? sign at a race last June. Did you know it was coming?
Hart: No idea. I skidded off the track and nearly took a guy out that I had passed two turns earlier. I said, Are you serious? She said yes. Then she told me to get my ass back out there and finish because she wasn't marrying a loser.
SI: How did you finish?
Hart: About a half a lap later I got a flat tire.
• For more from Carey Hart, go to SI.com/scorecard.
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KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE.COM (HART AND PINK)
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STEW MILNE/AP (BIKE)
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MIKE VALDEZ/ZUMA/CORBIS (HART)