Speedway ‘the only thing he wanted to do’
Ivan Gerald Mauger, speedway champion: b Christchurch, October 4, 1939; m Raye; 3d; d Gold Coast, Australia, April 16, 2018, aged 78.
From his vantage point above the first bend at Christchurch’s Aranui Speedway, Ivan Mauger studied the riders as their bikes slid past, throwing up arcs of cinders in their wake.
The boy from Woolston was entranced by the noise and the smell and the speed and, inspired by his hometown hero Ronnie Moore, devoted himself to one day being world champion.
He was to accomplish that feat a record six times during the 1960s and 1970s, cementing his reputation as the greatest speedway rider the sport has ever known.
The speedway virtuoso won his first world championship in 1968 and his last in 1979. It was a golden era for the sport and Mauger was one of its biggest stars.
He rode in European stadiums thronging with tens of thousands of people, a rag always ready in the pits to clean the New Zealand flag he wore proudly on the front of his racing suit.
Mauger was a natural sportsman from a young age. He excelled at both hockey and rugby, but it was speedway and the Saturday night races at Aranui that captured his heart.
Childhood friend Sir Kerry Burke remembers the bicycle races they used to have on a track dug out in his backyard. Mauger, who Burke said had freakishly quick reflexes, never lost. But he wanted the real thing, and worked tirelessly to save up for his first motorcycle. At the age of 15 he fibbed about his age and raced for the first time at Aranui.
In 1957, Mauger, then just 17, and his 16-year-old bride, Raye, left for England to break into speedway. They were ‘‘little more than children’’, he later said, but had scrimped and saved to make the ambitious move possible.
The couple moved into a onebedroom flat in Wimbledon, near the home of the Wimbledon Dons speedway team where fellow Christchurch riders Ronnie Moore and Barry Briggs reigned supreme as the ‘‘kings of the cinders’’.
Mauger worked at Wimbledon Stadium, cleaning toilets and assisting the groundsman, but did not make much of an impression as a rider. The young couple left at the end of the season, but in 1963 he had headed back to Britain.
From that point on the results started coming in.
Mauger brought new levels of professionalism to the sport and rode with a clinical style and the benefit of meticulous preparation.
He raced for seven British club teams, including the Belle Vue Aces and the Newcastle Diamonds, and reached new heights in the world finals, winning three championships in a row from 1968.
Two Americans threw down a wager before the 1970 event, telling Mauger they would completely gold-plate his motorcycle if he managed to make it three.
The motorcycle, known as the ‘‘Triple Crown Special’’, now resides in Christchurch after his family, forgoing the much higher prices they could have received elsewhere, sold part of his collection to Canterbury Museum.
‘‘He was a very special New Zealander who was a whole lot more famous around the world than he was in the city of his birth,’’ former Christchurch mayor Garry Moore said.
At an event to celebrate Ronnie Moore, Briggs and Mauger – in recognition of Mauger agreeing to lend his gold bike to Christchurch – Garry Moore gave the three world champions freedom of the city.
Mauger called Moore the next morning to say ‘‘that freedom of the city doesn’t mean much’’. He had overparked and a city parking warden was unimpressed by his excuse.
Burke, a former Labour MP and speaker of the house, ran into Mauger at Wellington Airport in the 1970s at the peak of his fame. He agreed to promote New Zealand in any way he could, signing a blank agreement for Burke to fill in the terms.
Mauger was a proud Kiwi, a rugby fanatic who supported the Crusaders and flew an All Blacks flag outside his home whenever they played a match.
‘‘Speedway was the only thing he ever wanted to do. He went on to fulfil his dreams and is now rightly regarded by his peers and the sporting public as the greatest of all time,’’ Burke said.
As well as his individual world final wins, Mauger was also a three-time long track world champion. All up, he won 15 world titles across multiple formats.
He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1976 for services to speedway, an accolade that was upgraded to an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1989. He moved to Australia, after retiring from racing in 1985.