Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

enough aptitude to handle car-park duties for the surgeons during the week. Being Sheene, the first twowheeled injury soon followed - he was just seven when he broke his arm after a front-end slide. He was on a bicycle and stationary at the time the front wheel turned sideways, and he fell onto a low wall. Iris recalled his comment: "I've always wanted to break my arm, Mum." And when he went on his first trip abroad soon afterward, to Spain, it was wearing a plaster cast. By the time he'd been swimming in it a few times, it was so soft that they snipped it off, setting a pattern for the future - get hurt, get better quick. And in line with that pattern, he promptly got onto a motorcycle... This was a significant event, not only because it was the first time Barry had changed gears, but also because the machine was a Bultaco and his tutor the factory owner Don Paco Bulto. Frank had combined the holiday with a motorcycle race - the 24-hour at Montuich Park in Barcelona, and the Spanish twostroke racers sparked his interest. would later recall how, when he was in trouble at school (as usual), he and his father were called in to see the headmaster. "Franko would hear the latest story, spilling fag [cigarette] ash everywhere, then he'd say: 'Boys will be boys, and that's all there is to it. ,n The other family trait was motorcycle racing. Until Barry was almost six, Frank was still racing, now specializing in 50cc Itoms after a mainly postwar career spanning classic tracks from Brooklands to the Isle of Man. Barry's uncle Arthur Sheene was a speedway professional, for the Coventry Bees. After retiring from riding in 1956, Frank remained heavily involved on the technical side. With the college workshop at his disposal, he soon built up a name as a tuner. Throughout Barry's early life, a stream of riders would troop into the Queens Road flat, usually walking straight through to the workshop out in the back. Sharp featured and cheeky, with light-colored hair, Barry was a sickly child, stricken with eczema as an infant, later developing asthma as well. "We hardly had a night of sleep for three years," said Iris. At Frank's final ride at the Isle of Man, at the Manx GP, five-year-old Barry suffered such severe asthma that he spent two nights in Nobles hospital in an oxygen tent. Surrounded, once again, by racers. Hyperactive, into everything, Barry was a constant presence in the (Above) Stylish throughout his career, Bany Sheene wheelies his Suzuki. (Right) Sheene cheers on his good friend Gary Nillon in the Venezuelan round of the Fonnula 750 World Championship. Nillon won the race but later had the win stripped away and with it the title. Queens Square workshops and the racing pits where Franko was preparing bikes for a number of high-level national riders. One of them was that earlier Cockney hero Bill Ivy. Barry hero-worshipped the talented in-yourface Ivy, and the years to come would prove they had a lot in common. Another subsequent multiple World Champion who rode Frank Sheene's bikes was Phil Read, whose final years of racing would be blighted by the upstart new British hero. Read recalled Barry at the Isle of Man in 1961. "Barry spent all his time with the bikes," Read said. "He was all over This was before the advent of the Japanese, and high performance twostrokes were rare machines. Frank struck up a friendship with Bulto and was adopted as a sort of British racing representative for the Spanish firm. Bultaco would supply Sheene with a couple of bikes each year, and it was on one of these that Barry first took to a racetrack proper. Before that, school had to be got out of the way. "It was like a bad dream. I hated being told what to do," Sheene would later say. Sheene showed an aptitude in metal-work and technical draWing. He taught himself Spanish (the first of four foreign languages he would mas- them ... like a rash. I still have a toolbox which had my name stenciled on to it - Philip Read. Barry painted over it to make it Phil." By that time, Barry had been riding for half his life. Frank built him his first motorcycle at the age of five. Sheene started out on a Ducati, or at least a 50cc four-stroke Ducati engine with a two-speed gearbox, fitted into a small frame. Barry would ride it round the Queens Square yard, stuck in first gear, engine revving. A couple of years later Frank bought an old Austin and put blocks on the pedal, and Barry was able to drive that around the yard as well. It is not surprising that he soon showed eye. e n ........ S • MARCH 26. 2003 31

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