My family helped put me on top of the world: Rea
HISTORY-MAKING, fast-riding, family man Jonathan Rea last night dedicated his record fourth successive World Superbike title win to watching wife Tatia, sons Jack and Tyler, mum Claire and dad Johnny.
“My family sacrifice a lot to be here, trailing after me, supporting my dream, but I’m really proud to have them with me. They ground me in such a great way. It means a lot,” declared the 31-year-old Ballyclare rider (left) who clinched the title on Saturday and followed up with a second race win of the weekend at Magny Cours in France yesterday, riding a gold liveried bike.
The Kawasaki ace is the first rider to win four World Superbike titles in a row, overtaking legend Carl Fogarty into pole position as the series all-time greatest. Fogarty also has four titles to his credit but they were secured over five years while Rea’s have been won consecutively.
And he immediately hailed the role of his family in his success story, recently moving them back to Templepatrick from the Isle of Man to provide a settled education for his children.
The weekend title-clinching races were another family affair and Rea added: “The few moments we can share together are magical. I did a championship photo with my two kids and I’m going to have that on my wall forever. That gives me great pride.
“I felt a bit choked when my dad was up beside me on the podium on Saturday — he’s with me at 90% of race meetings and stopped racing himself so that he could fully support my dream.
“Family are not a distraction — I find it easy to switch on and off as when I put my helmet on it’s work time. When I leave the pit lane, that’s my happy place. When I release the clutch and ride out and hit the track I feel like I can do my thing.”
Rea plans to go on winning title and breaking records, but he also accepted: “This is my era but someone’s eventually going to come in faster — a rider or a manufacturer — to take things to a different level, but at the moment we’re in the driving seat at Kawasaki and I feel really good with the bike.
“What’s happening to me at the moment feels magical and if I can retire and people look back and think I was the greatest Superbike rider of all time, an all round good guy and very professional at his job, that will be boxes ticked for me.”
THE greatest World Superbike rider in history … Ballyclare’s Jonathan Rea has no peers after clinching his fourth successive title in true champion style by comfortably winning Saturday’s opening race at Magny Cours in France and completing a double in Race Two yesterday.
“It’s going to take a while to sink in, I’m still living the dream,” beamed Rea as the champagne corks popped.
Rea (31) became champion again by virtue of his unassailable lead in the series with four races to go. He has equalled legend Carl Fogarty’s record four wins, but Rea surpasses the great Blackburn rider with his consecutive successes.
Now consider the fact that Rea, since he signed for Kawasaki in 2015, has won every championship since. There is no luck in that statistic. Jonathan has been in a class of his own over the last four years, overcoming every obstacle put in front of him by way of reversed grid positions, technical changes to restrict power in order to make for closer racing, and even the World Superbike sporting director, Gregorio Lavilla, incredibly claiming the four-time champion lacks charisma. A more personable character, devoted to his family and his sport, and a credit to his country, you could not meet.
Winners not only put themselves but their sports on the pantheon of greatness and Rea has consistently raised the profile of World Superbike racing, not least by finishing a close second to Mo Farah in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year poll last year.
And he will be back in the mix again this year, having declared himself “addicted to winning.”
Speaking after his latest success yesterday, Rea said: “I just don’t want to lose. When I finish second to me it’s a loss — you might as well finish last.
I enjoy riding motorbikes but you do it to win. I just feel really worried about losing now which motivates me. It does feel like an obsession at times. A podium at a world championship event in any sport is a great achievement but I want to keep on winning and hopefully I have a few more years of that left yet.
“I never get tired of winning and when it happens it’s incredible. I could recite all my race wins and they’re all special for a particular reason.”
Class is permanent and Rea has demonstrated his quality in abundance throughout his career. Having ridden his heart out on a Honda on which he scored 15 wins, his first at Misano in 2009, Rea did the
unthinkable and left the might of the Japanese manufacturer to sign for rivals Kawasaki in 2015. A risk or a well thought out plan?
That year, he jumped on a well-developed bike, on which Tom Sykes had won a world championship, scored14 race wins and his first world championship. 2016 was totally different, a new bike with lots of testing of new parts. Chas Davies won more races, but Jonathan was more consistent, the key to winning championship number two.
A year later, with the Kawasaki ZX-10RR sorted, the team had a terrific pace all season, recording 16 race wins. Jonathan reckoned: “It was like a snowball getting bigger and bigger as the season progressed starting with a double in Phillip Island that set us up for the record points year.”
Now the fourth consecutive championship has been won in style with four races remaining – the plan has worked better than he or anyone could have imagined.
It got even better in race two yesterday when Jonathan raced to his fourth consecutive double of the season, his longest winning streak and 14th win of the season.
Rea said: “The pressure was off and I could race a bit looser. Van Der Mark made it difficult for me to get past early on and then when I caught Chas (Davies) in the lead, I ran wide a few times and he could repass me on the inside before I could make a pass stick. Once ahead I was able to gain a race winning advantage.”
This was Rea’s 100th race for Kawasaki and his 53rd win for them.
His Australian born wife Tatia, always in support, said: “It’s been one of those journey’s again and I’m so overwhelmed. You can never take things for granted. Jonathan has worked so hard for this and I am so proud of him. He matures every year, knows what he wants. He knows his strengths and weaknesses and strives to stay at the top of his game as long as he can. Me and the boys support him all we can, it’s not easy, as any family knows, to be there all the time, but we make it work.”
The 31-year old has come a long way from his early days in youth motocross where he won the 1997 British Junior Youth championship also winning four Irish and two Ulster championships.
In 2003, he won the Red Bull Rookies Scholarship for the 125cc British Championship, alongside countryman and fellow WSB rider Eugene Laverty, and his tarmac exploits began at Silverstone.
The awards came thick and fast in his early career, lifting the Bertie Mann Award for best U21 Ulster Centre rider and the Donny Robinson Memorial Trophy in 2003, while in the same year he won the Odyssey Youth Supercross and scored his first tarmac wins during the Sunflower Trophy meeting at Bishopscourt when he did the double in the 125cc class.
He even travelled to Western Australia in 2009 and won all three races during the Kings of Wanneroo series at the Barbagallo Circuit.
Jonathan finished second in the 2007 British Superbike championship, taking double wins at Mondello Park and Knockhill along the way.
It wasn’t all plain sailing with a few major crashes along the way, the worst of those at Knockhill in 2004 when it was thought his racing career might be over, but he bounced back and then, at Nurburgring in 2013, he broke a femur after crashing on oil.
He is certainly now at the peak of his career with an overflowing trophy cabinet in his new home at Templepatrick. He has been Irish Racer, Enkalon and Cornmarket Irish Motorcyclist of the Year eight times and three times a Belfast Telegraph Awards winner — Young Player of the Year in 2006, Special Recognition Award in 2016 and the top Sports Star of the Year for 2017.
A record 67 WSB wins under his belt and four world titles, Jonathan now rates among the greats of Northern Ireland sport.
His friend and admirer, former Grand Prix winner, World and British Superbike competitor Jeremy McWilliams insisted: “Jonathan is head and shoulders above the rest of the competition, better than anyone else in the world and we are lucky he is one of our own.
“An unassuming, unaffected and down to earth man with outstanding ability. He has got where he is through hard work and dedication — you know, people do not realise what it takes to win one world championship let alone four.”