By Allison Kennedy

Blair Morgan's Team Canada helmet

Vince Goodeve finishes Doug DeHaan's lid.

I had the opportunity to watch award-winning custom painter Vince Goodeve put the finishing touches on Doug DeHaan’s Team Canada helmet Tuesday afternoon. Goodeve, who owns and operates Goodeve Studios in Owen Sound, Ontario, just down the road from Carl Bastedo’s MotoPark, donated the custom paint job to the Canadian MXDN team.

“We’ve been doing helmets for MotoPark for three or four years and we sponsor a kid with a helmet there every year,” said Goodeve. “They called and asked if we wanted to do it. I looked and saw the MXDN helmet from last year. It was pretty representative of Canada but it looked a bit like a letterhead you’d get in school. I thought, why would you send them to the U.S. to get painted? Why not get a Canadian artist to do it? I put a lot of extra effort into it, I want them to go out there and be noticed.”

While Goodeve is best known for his highly detailed mural work on custom bikes, he’s always looking to diversify. He paints the helmets for the Owen Sound Attack, the area’s OHL team, and has done work for both CASCAR and NASCAR drivers. He’s already earned the highest honours in the world of bike painting and has recently opened a tattoo shop at his home in Tara, Ontario.

The helmets are all hand-painted, with no vinyl used, no stickers or decals, just paint. Each one is hand pin-striped and they are all a little different. It was a challenge because Homans is wearing a Suomy helmet while Morgan and DeHaan both sport M2R lids.

While Goodeve was given a few rules by Bastedo (no skulls allowed) he made sure he the helmets reflected his style. Goodeve and his life-saving staffer Linda Turner turned the helmets around in a few short days to be ready for next week’s Des Nations event.

As for Goodeve’s foray into the MX world, it’s not his first. “I have a 1998 KX250, its full race ready, Pro Tech suspension, the whole nine yards. I once came up short on a double and broke my finger. First thing I did was modify my cast so I could paint. By the time I went back to the doctor, the cast was just hanging by a thread and my arm was tanned and everything. He knew it was off.”

To see more of Goodeve’s work, visit http://www.goodevestudio.com/