Ben ‘Grabbo’ Grabham is arguably the most accomplished off-road rider Australia has ever produced.

For those who aren’t familiar with the 30 year old from Bathurst, he first put the enduro world on notice at the age of 16 when he won the E1 (250cc four-stroke) class at the International Six Day Enduro, held in Victoria in 1998.

He was immediately snatched up and racing for the Factory Husqvarna team in Europe the following year.

Since then, he’s won countless NSW enduro and sprint titles, as well as becoming a multi-time Australian flat-track champion.

He was also the Australian four day Enduro Champion in 2002/2003 and even ventured into Supermoto to take a couple of Aussie titles there as well.

Over the last five years though, Grabbo has forged a name for himself in the high-speed world of desert racing and is often referred to as ‘The Desert King’.

In 2007 he took his first win at the Finke Desert race and has since won the race a total of four times, including winning the 2011 event after racing 240km of it with a broken hand!

A gnarly crash at the 190km mark while leading a 160km battle with Toby Price on the way down to Finke nearly cost Grabbo the race, but he remounted to pass his team mate Price who was stopped 10km later with an exploded engine.

Grabbo kept his injury quiet from the team and later that night fashioned a thumb brace by coating his glove in metal putty.

It hardened into a kind of crab claw to keep his hand from slipping off the bars, because he had no use of his thumb.

Doctors later revealed he’d completely torn the ligaments off his thumb as well as sustained multiple fractures through his hand and wrist.

The next day, Grabbo held off Jarrod Bewley (who started two and a half minutes after) for 240km.

Bewley was oblivious to Grabbo’s injury, hence the cunning plan by Grabbo to prevent his teammate from smelling blood. Grabbo won the race by 38 seconds.

I wasn’t overly surprised by that effort though, because I know how tough he is. I’ve seen him endure pain like no other.

In 2007 we both raced the Australasian Safari for our first time. By day eight, Grabbo had secured a strong lead in the event over Jacob Smith.

I’d worked my way up into the top five by that stage too, which was subsequently the reason I was within range to assist Grabbo after he’d clipped a kangaroo, crashed big and smashed his collarbone.

I’ll never forget it. It was during the leg between Kalgoorlie and York in Western Australia, I’d just finished the competitive stage but was unaware Grabbo had just had a big one.

He was dusty and acting a bit strange, then asked me to help him get out of his neckbrace, rally jacket, camelback etc, etc.

We were trying to keep it on the low down but then Jacob and the boys came to assist when they saw what was going on. The chopper was conveniently on ground with a medic, who immediately assessed that Grabbo’s collarbone was in three pieces.

Grabbo was worried because he had pins and needles all up his arm and for a second was contemplating pulling out of the race. Once we’d stripped him back to a jersey, the feeling came back in his arm.

With that, we basically brushed the medic aside and helped Grabbo get his camelbak and helmet back on. I had to clean all the dirt and dust out from the inside of his goggles, which was a clear indication he’d rag-dolled heavily across the ground.

At this point though, Grabbo hadn’t lost any race time. I watched him line up to start the next 140km competitive stage, two bikes ahead of me. He could barely lift his arm onto the handlebar, but he powered off through the gears until top and just charged out of sight.

A few minutes later I started the competitive and for every corner I’d turn, I was expecting to see Grabbo pulled over in submission from pain. After 140km of high-speed square-edge hits, rocky tracks, creek bed case-outs and hanging on for life in top-gear through the sand, I finished the stage and Grabbo was nowhere to be seen.

About 200km later I’d caught up with him at the final control of the day in York, Western Australia. We’d beaten all the support crews into the overnight bivouac, so all we could do was sit on a park railing and share a squashed choc-protein power bar that was stowed with the tools in my bum bag.

Grabbo peeled back his Jersey and showed me his collar bone, there was an area of purple skin about the size of his hand but it was raised in the middle with what looked like a piece of broken glass about to burst through the skin.

He is the toughest bastard I know. Without any painkillers, he rode the final leg [including two competitive stages] into Perth the next day and won the event by nine minutes.

Grabbo won the event again in 2008, finished third in 2009 after collapsing a wheel, then returned to take his third win in 2010, only to have his first DNF after exploding an engine in 2011.

For 2012, Grabbo has become Australia’s first ever full-time contracted professional Desert Racer.

While he’s still a member of the Motorex KTM Off-Road Team alongside Chris Hollis, Toby Price and Ben Burrel, Grabbo will only be racing alongside his teammates in Finke and Hattah but will ride one off events like the A4DE.

He’s finally channeled his career out of enduro and is now content to focus all his strengths on becoming a world class desert racer. In the process he’ll be raising the profile of some great Rallies and desert races that are starting to gather momentum all over Australia.

Here’s a look at Grabbo’s proposed 2012 Race Calendar:
31 March Forest Rally WA
6/8 April Condo 750 (3 x wins) NSW
4/6 May Yilgarn Rally WA
8/11 June Finke Desert Race (4 x wins). NT
7/9 July Hattah Desert Race. (2 x wins) VIC
14/15 July South Aus 24 Hour. SA
21/22 July Indee 500. WA
28/3 July/August ACP Rally. AUS
4/5 August Yellow Mountain. (1 x win) NSW
21/29 September Australasian Safari. (3 x wins) WA
20/21 October Gascoyne Dash. (1 x win) WA
27/28 October Australian Four Day Enduro. (2 x wins) VIC

I’m working on a few projects with Grabbo throughout the year, so I’ll keep you posted on his progress in the outback and beyond. And who knows, in time we may see him acquire the necessary means to get to Dakar.