Rennie Scaysbrook | September 6, 2018
Cycle News Lowside
COLUMN
45 Minutes With a Hero
I’m lucky my job allows me to meet many famous people. Most of whom I am fairly indifferent to. After all, they are just people who have done something cool with their time on this planet—actors, designers, doctors, for example.
And I have met almost every great racer of the last 30 years at one point or another. I’ve been doing this job for 12 years but I’ve been around the paddocks since I could walk, thanks to a family that helped shaped what I wanted to be.
I love profession sports of all kinds but I still find motorcycle racers to be a special type of person. I’ve tried my best to become a racer throughout my life but never had the will or skill to make it happen. Professional motorcycle racers are some of the purest people in the world. They have a singular, all-encompassing goal, a laser-like focus to beat the other guy. And there have been many who have impressed me across my life, but none have a more revered place in my mind than three-time 500cc World Champion, Wayne Rainey.
The reason for this admiration started out innocently so. During the first Australian 500cc Grand Prix at Phillip Island in 1989, my dad gave 6-year-old me my first autograph book. On the Thursday night prior to first practice, I was walking with mom and dad to the gala event in a huge tent on the infield behind a blonde couple.
“That’s Wayne Rainey, off you go,” my dad said to me. I didn’t really know what to do, so I just ran up behind him and sort of nudged him in that awkward kid way. A minute later, my book had its first autograph, one that would be followed by Wayne Gardner, Kevin Magee, Daryl Beattie, Christian Sarron, Kevin Schwantz, and I was an instant fan of the guy on the number 3 Lucky Strike Yamaha.
The following year, 1990, was the worst of my life as I spent its entirety battling cancer, going through god knows how many rounds of chemotherapy and other fun stuff like monthly lumbar punctures. Aside from the obvious, endless love of my family, my fondest memory of that shit time was getting package after package of signed posters, shirts and hats from family friend and Australian racing legend, the late Warren Willing, who, at the time, was working with Wayne during his first 500cc World Championship-winning season for Kenny Roberts’ team.
My hospital room was lined with posters of the number 2 Marlboro Yamaha and the number 19 250 Yamaha of John Kocinski, each with a little message scribbled onto it. I know now that neither Rainey nor Kocinski knew who I was; it was Warren doing all the work, but it didn’t matter. My room looked better than the others.
The following year, while I was in remission, I met Wayne at the 1991 Australian Grand Prix at Eastern Creek. My mother was organizing a charity event to help children with cancer and Wayne kindly donated one of his Shoei helmets from the previous season. He and I were in the Sydney Morning Herald together (pictured below), holding the lid. World Champion and kid with cancer. It made a great story.
We didn’t win the auction for the helmet. But in a strange twist of events, the man who did win it decided to give it to my family when he was on his death bed, some 18 years later. It now sits on a bookshelf in my dad’s office in Sydney.
In 1993, just before Wayne was critically injured at the San Marino Grand Prix, dad and I were at Warren’s house during the summer break. I was an energetic little bugger by that stage, charging around Warren’s stately property and getting into areas I probably shouldn’t. Either wanting to slow me down or wanting to move some stuff, Warren called me to the garage and handed me a heavy blue bag. What was in there was mine, he said.
I unzipped it and pulled out Wayne’s Lucky Strike Yamaha leathers from the 1989 Brazilian Grand Prix. I was absolutely stunned. I’m still amazed Warren gave those to me. Those leathers are now on display at the Australian Motor Racing Museum in Bathurst, in a shoddy-looking cabinet I made for my Year 11 (17-years-old) woodworking high school class.
I crossed paths with Wayne just one more time until a couple of years ago, when I met him again at Eastern Creek. The year was 1996, and it marked the only time he won a race as a team owner, when Loris Capirossi picked up the pieces of the infamous Doohan/Criville collision.
And so, we come to the present day, at Sonoma’s recent round of the MotoAmerica Championship. I was there to compile a story on the MotoAmerica Junior Cup series and how difficult it has been for MotoAmerica to keep the racing fair and the invested parties happy, and I got to sit down with Wayne for a 45-minute chat in his motorhome. I don’t get nervous interviewing people. I’ve been doing it for years and, as I say, they are just people, although there can be exceptions.
But having Wayne’s full attention, some 29 years after I chased him down at Phillip Island as a 6-year-old, was a highlight of my journalistic life. What stands out the most is not the quotes he gave me on how the Junior Cup balancing was working out, or the friendly nature he gave off to just another guy with a voice recorder, it was the fact that behind this all was still the Wayne Rainey I admired as a kid. He may not have competed since that fateful day in 1993, but he’s still a hardcore racer at heart. He still has that glint in his eye only true champions have—you can tell he truly cares for the future of the sport and isn’t just doing this MotoAmerica thing to stay occupied. American racing is in good hands with Mr. Rainey, now we just need the next champion to please stand up on the world stage.
We have a feature in Cycle News on Wayne’s favorite racebikes. Some on the list may surprise you. CN
