Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128206
Barry Sheene Remembered A couple of weeks later, the season getting going now in March, he did so. And what happened in Barry Sheene's first race? He fell off - the 125 Bultaco seized and pitched him down the road. He came fourth in the 250 event, however, and beamed back in the pits to his father: "Why don't you enter me again? I can beat half these blokes." the stock. The cars were a handy magnet for the willing girls who always seemed to flock around Barry. He had lost his virginity, he would proudly boast, at 14 - on the pool table in the crypt of a local church, no less. And he had found the experience worth repeating. Whenever and wherever possible. Barry was having a good time as a late teenager in the swinging London of the late '60s. As well as driving a truck to deliver antiques, he was working for a pal at a swanky West Sheene and David Aldana laugh it up at the TransAtlantic Match Race Series in England. aster. He preferred sneaking off to smoke cigarettes (from the age of seven), while one of a long list of pranks was using cigarette paper to short-circuit the ignition of a hated teacher's car. He got caught, but it showed he knew his way round an engine. At the St. Martin school in the Fields, near Trafalgar Square, the headmaster (principal) recognized that Barry had the brain to go places. Then he spoiled it by adding: "You'll never make a living racing motorcycles." By then, it was too late. He was already hooked. Ever the opportunist, Sheene exploited his continuing asthma problems to wangle Wednesday afternoons off for a string of fictional doctors appointments. Wednesday was free practice day at Brands Hatch, and he'd be in the van with Franko to check out the action. At this time, Barry had no thoughts of racing on his own account. It was more the technical side that absorbed him, and he raced hard and played hard. Barry liked the feel of it. He left school the day he turned 15, a dismal failure academically, with the world at his feet. It would take time for him to find his ultimate direction. And to get his bike license. He failed the first time because his 75cc Derbi fell to bits during the test a neat lesson in the need for good preparation. His first job was in the parts warehouse of the local Ford dealer - for a few months. Then he signed on as a motorcycle courier for an advertising agency, honing his traffic skills on a BSA Bantam that he and Franko fiddled with to unleash rather more power than standard. Weekends were spent with the Sheene Bultacos at some racetrack or other, hands on and content to hang over the pit wall to watch the racers he admired so much. He didn't have a clue that he was a natural talent, better than any of them, nor any desire to find out. Not yet, anyway. showed a precocious skill to back up his in-your-face attitude. He was free with advice to the seasoned spanner- THE RACER Barry Sheene's rise from novice to champion was meteoric. "One minute he wasn't racing; the next he was winning everything," said more than one contemporary. His first outing on a racing bike was at Brands during a Wednesday afternoon practice day early in 1968 out with the thundering Norton and Matchless 500s on a weedy Derbi 50. men working in the pits, and this was not always welcomed. Even if he did have a knack of being right. At 13, Barry got one of those work experience breaks that a kid dreams about. One of the Sheene crowd was visiting American rider Tony Woodman, who invited Barry to be his mechanic for a continental GP foray. With leave from school, Sheene joined a Matchless G50 and an AJS 7R in Woodman's van to taste a side of GP racing in Austria and Germany that gave him something of a head start over his rivals. It was a time when almost every rider was a privateer, and the paddock was a camping ground for the better off, who slept in tents, the others in (or under) their vehicles. Gung-ho motorcyclists 32 MARCH 26, 2003' cue I It was terrifying. A week later, he went out again to run in Franko's new Bultacos, a 125 and a 250. Frank didn't bother to put a watch on him: he was only putting miles on the brand-new bikes. Others noticed that Barry wasn't only smooth, steady and consistent, but that he was also stylish and quick. "They told me later I should put him in a race - he was a natural. " e nevvs another GP adventure, of three months this time, as mechanic to Bultaco rider End used car business - Jags, Alvises, the occasional Rolls Royce. Some evenings Barry could take his pick of ter) on their trips abroad. His quick grasp of figures was to become legendary in his highly astute financial dealings. But at school he was a dis- Two weeks after his first race, back at Brands, he won both classes, and the Sheene machine was almost ready to roll. But first, there was Lewis Young. Girls, bikes and racing, across Europe. This was some sort of a life for a used car gofer. .. There were several remarkable things about Barry Sheene's Daytona crash in March, 1975. One was the speed - at some 175 mph, it was the fastest bike racing crash on record. Another was that he survived at all. The final tally was a broken left thigh and right arm, compression fractures to several vertebrae, broken ribs, and extensive road rash on his back. As he said later: "If I'd been a racehorse, I'd have been shot." Another was that he retained his sense of humor. Those present all remark on how Barry was joking again even before the operation the next day, while his televised remark to team manager Merv Wright was a key factor in endearing him to the British public. Merv asked how he was. Barry ran through a list of grievous injuries, then added impishly: "Apart from that, I'm fine." Very remarkable was how quickly Sheene recovered, He was walking on crutches barely a week after the operation, his thigh held by an 18-inch pin, and back on a GP bike after just seven, He was justifiably livid when he was ruled out of his return GP (in Austria) because he was unable to push·start his RG500 Suzuki. Perhaps the most remarkable thing - a perfect demonstration of what other envjous riders would see as Sheene's luck - was that a Thames TV crew was on hand making a documentary about this exciting rising star of British racing, They captured the whole crash, and what had been a straightforward personality profile now had a piece of classic life· and-death footage. It made for fantastic television. It gave Barry the opportunity to become a huge star. A win at Daytona, at the end of that week, would have been a boost to Sheene's career. Paradoxically, crashing made him much more famous still. Sheene and Gary Nixon were at private Suzuki tests a week before the big 200-miler when it happened. Sheene had gone out again late in the afternoon for some final tests and was swooping down off the banking onto the start-finish straight... the fastest part of the ultrafast course. Dunlop motorcycle tire technical manager Tony Mills, there for the test, was watching him closely. "Barry had run a number of laps, and I was monitoring the tire all the time." he said. "I remember stooping to look at it that time - it looked perfectly all right. Barry went out with the intention of doing three or four hot laps. "I was watching him pass a couple of laps later, then just as he was more or less cross· ing the finish line, all hell broke loose. The bike went into an almighty out-of· control situation. " The small party in the pits watched in horror as the bike snapped sideways. Barry fought it for a split second, then it spat him off. At barely diminished speed, the three· cylinder 750 Suzuki and its rider flew apart, to tumble and slide down the straight almost to the entry point of Turn One at the far end. Most assumed Barry must be dead. The first to reach the crumpled figure was U.S. Suzuki team manager Merv Wright. It was a shocking sight - his left leg broken above the knee, folded back undemeath his body; his leathers shredded. "My immedllate reaction was sheer horror," he told MeN in 2002. Sheene was conscious, barely. His first concern was for his leg. It seemed to be missing. Then he tried to open his visor, to discover his right arm was also broken. "I was completely compos mentis in every way," Sheene told MCN 27 years later. "I just wanted them to take my helmet off, give me a cigarette, and leave me alone to settle down. None of which they did. " Sheene was taken directly to the hospital and underwent surgery the next day. A week later, back in Britain, he was walking and determined to put the crash behind him. "I knew it wasn't my fault· .a mechanical failure that was out of my control," he explained. "I couldn't wait to get back on a bike, to convince myself I was still physically capable of doing the job again." Later that year he defeated Giacomo Agostini's Yamaha at Assen for his first 500 GP win. The rest is history. Crashing perversely brought out the best in Barry. It gave him the chance to show his true depth, with no room for pretence. Typically, he seized that chance with both hands. Jealous rivals would often denigrate his skill, point to his privileged racing background or better equipment, or criticize as unsporling his dedication to Winning on and off the track. Injuries like this ruied out any camouflage. It was the same again eight years later, in 1982, when Sheene struck a fallen bike during pre-race testing at Silverstone. Both legs were horrifically smashed, and he was lucky to escape amputation. And once again, with courage that few can imagine, he fought back to race again. This was the real Sheene - grinning in adversity, his cheerful charm unaffected. And behind the cheeky grin, fighting back through pain and who knows what psychological torments with a determination that defined his greatness. The stuff of which heroes are made.