Single Track Mind - Racing Athletes

You may have heard the much loved adage: “The older I get, the faster I was.” In my case, this never really applies since I was never much good as a young rider and, after a lifetime of effort, I still remain fairly mediocre. Viewed in this light, the current vogue for bike racers describing themselves as “athletes” is deeply concerning.

My Physical Education teacher at High School was once reduced, quite literally, to tears by my total inability to catch, throw, run, climb, vault or balance - although I did get the highest grades for tripping over, banging into large objects and misunderstanding even the most basic sporting instructions. Since I was rather good at English, and he was an ex-Navy Physical Training Instructor, I did once gain rather sweet revenge by asking him to explain his rugby tactics to the class in Iambic Pentameter - but this was a small victory in a war which I was always losing.

I was so bad at all forms of games that I suffered the supreme ignominy of having my dog chosen before me when the kids picked teams for in an impromptu game of neighborhood cricket. To be fair, he was a superb catcher of the ball, and an outstanding fielder, but he was rubbish with the bat and I feel very strongly that this should have been acknowledged. He also had to be bribed with dog biscuits whereas I would have been delighted to play for free.

I eventually found motorcycles and, for the first time in my life, discovered a physical activity that I could undertake with at least passing competence- and so began a lifelong love affair with bikes.

Fortunately, I started to get seriously sponsored just before the start of what might be called the modern era. To put this into context, in 1972 BSA works motocross rider Dave Nichol reached peak physical fitness by playing two consecutive rounds of golf - and was still fast enough to win a Grand Prix.

Six times World Motocross Champion Joel Robert was a heavy smoker, and very fond of a good slug of whisky before a race, whilst down at my end of the scale we never, ever, went near a gym and our diet was a carefully controlled mixture of fish and chips, cream cakes and milky coffee with three spoons of sugar.

In my last year of serious riding, Kawasaki arranged for everyone to go to a training camp in Wales where the idea was that we would run up and down mountains, get wet and cold and have a thoroughly miserable time while being shouted at by ex-military types with loud voices and commensurately small brains.

Sadly, I had a prior engagement and couldn’t attend but I knew that the writing was pretty much on the wall for amateurs who just happened to be rather good at riding motorcycles. The day of the athlete was nigh.

Compare our attitude with that of a young British racer I was speaking to last week. It’s freezing cold here and this young star-in-the-making is off to compete in a winter Triathlon to “build his condition.” If I had spent a day at his age running up down rain lashed mountains and swimming through freezing lakes I know what condition I would have been in: dead! He would be much better served studying an inspirational DVD like “On Any Sunday” and watching Steve McQueen have fun on a bike.

Young racing athletes also adhere to strict diets and a balanced intake of essential vitamins and goodness knows what all else. But it wasn’t always like this. I am privileged to know quite a number of the stars of yesteryear and their attitudes take my breath away. I once asked six times World Champion Jim Redman, who I am honored to be able to call a friend, about his diet at GPs in the 1960s. “Yes,” Jim opined with a straight face, “we all took our diets very seriously. The main thing was to scrounge enough free food not to starve to death - and we didn’t care what it was.”

I asked another World Champion, whose name I shall protect lest your opinion of him diminishes, about physical training. The years fell from his aging eyes as he remembered his GP days. “Fitness was really important when you were riding two or three classes a day so I made sure that I (&#%) as many hotel maids as possible to stay in trim. Waking up in bed with a lovely little thing, whose name you didn’t know, was always a great start to race day.”

But sometimes even this rigorous training regime had to be augmented. The following tale is probably true but to fully appreciate it, you have to remember that all road races in the late 1960s had dead engine starts with the riders pushing their bikes to start them when the flag dropped. Here we go in the words of our anonymous star.

“I wasn’t always the best starter in the world. Redman was fantastic and so I was always chasing him. East Germany was always a good party and I had been having a real good time with a gorgeous blond haired young lady who worked in the hotel where we were staying. Even by my standards she was keen!

“What I didn’t know was that she had a serious boyfriend who was an Officer in the East German Army. He came home that weekend unexpectedly and the word got around that his wife to be had been wandering.

“We all lined up for the 250 race and out of the corner of my eye I saw that he had got on to pit wall and there he was in his Army uniform - with his pistol out.

“I nearly wet myself and was I praying that he couldn’t push his way through the crowd before the flag dropped.

“The starter twitched the flag and I was off like a hare pushing like bloody hell and praying that the bike would fire before I got shot.

“After four laps, the bike seized and I came back in the rescue van hidden under some blankets until things cooled down.

“My mechanic said that we should have taken the German, and his pistol, to every GP and I would have been the best starter in the world but I was mainly concerned with crossing the border without being full of bullet holes.”

Truly, things ain’t what they used to be, but wouldn’t this make good TV for MotoGP coverage?