TAI WOFFINDEN
Tai speedway Woffinden legend – and bona fide British sporting hero – talks fear, riding bikes fast and why eating kebabs the night before a world championship race is a really bad idea. John Westlake listens…
Speedway ace Tai on fear, why fast bikes are ace and kebabs.
FORGET EVERYTHING ELSE – the championships, the sponsors, the money – if you were to strip it all back, I’d still love going out on that bike,’ says Tai Woffinden, pointing at his 500cc methanol-burning motorcycle. ‘78kg, 75bhp. They’re just fast. And I can really ride one.’ He’s not kidding. At 27 he’s already won two world championships, three British championships (consecutively), and is currently second in the world championship standings, just one point off top spot. But even those results don’t get over quite how good Tai is. Watch his races and it’s remarkable how many duff starts he gets – and in a four lap sprint with four riders lasting around 1 min 10secs in total, that’s a recipe for failure. Except that Tai usually finds a way to the front, sometimes diving to the inside through a gap only he can see, or – more dramatically – carrying way more corner speed into the turn, running wide and arcing round the outside. At this point it looks dramatic, but futile. His bike is on full lock, his body hanging off the inside, throttle pinned, fighting for control. But surely he’s too wide… and then you see his line tighten and the bike starting to gain speed as it hits grip, you hear the crowd roar – they know what’s coming – and he slingshots past the leader. Type ‘Tai Woffinden best races’ into Youtube. You won’t regret it. We’re sitting in the pits at the Speedway of Nations Race Off (the World Cup of speedway) in Manchester, where a few hours later Tai will lead the GB team against Italy, Sweden, Australia, France, Finland and the Czech Republic. It’s a crucial meeting – GB need to come top three to get through to the finals and they’re up against teams sprinkled with ex-world champions and GP stars like Tai. He doesn’t seem particularly worried though, slouched in his camping chair, occasionally fidgeting to try and stop his injured back hurting, and happily chatting about the extraordinary life of a modern speedway rider. In the old days, riders used to spend their lives criss-crossing Europe, racing in the evening, packing up, driving 500 miles, racing, packing up, driving… And nothing much seems to have changed. Tai rides for both a Polish and Swedish team, plus competes in GPS. It’s a set-up that has no obvious parallel in sport – a mixture of the individual ranking system of tennis combined with football’s team-based leagues, all going on at once. ‘I’ve been racing in Poland since 2006 when I turned 16, so I spend pretty much every weekend out there from March to October,’ he says. Poland has the world’s premier speedway league, and Tai is its biggest star, reportedly paid £404,000 by his club Wrocslaw last season. But it’s not just a case of riding for Wrocslaw. ‘For a GP I fly out Thursday night, practice Friday, race on Saturday. So, for example, the last GP was in Prague, so we drove from Prague to Poland on Saturday night, raced in
‘His bike is on full lock, his body hanging off the inside, throttle pinned, fighting for control’
Poland on Sunday, then flew to Sweden on Monday, raced in Sweden on Tuesday and flew home Wednesday.’ Then it starts again on Thursday. Plus, on top of that schedule, each rider is his own CEO, getting sponsors, hiring staff and booking hotels. It’s easy to see the tats, the backwards cap and the occasional run-ins with authority – more of this later – and assume Tai’s merely a wildly gifted yoof. But in speedway you can’t get to the top if all you’ve got is riding talent – the system won’t allow it. ‘I run the team,’ he explains. ‘It’s my team and I put my money into it. In road racing the team will employ the rider but in speedway it doesn’t work like that. I do all the sponsorship, the logistics, the travel, the hotels. I employ four people year round.’ But doesn’t that just pile on the stress and take your eye off the racing? ‘It’s how everyone does it, it’s normal. And at least I’m guaranteed a ride. Whether it’s a good one or not depends how many sponsors I get,’ he says, laughing while adjusting his Monster Energy cap. ‘Actually I’m past that point now – that was more when I was younger.’ And, as with most elite motorcycle racers, he’s a grafter. ‘I’d say hard work is one of my biggest strengths. In Poland I’ll be first on the track and last off it. I focus a lot on testing, and work hard on fitness pre-season in the gym with the boys,’ (he trains with Alex and Sam Lowes, and Leon Haslam). And because all his mechanics are Polish, he’s learned Polish. And because he races in Sweden, he’s learned Swedish too – ‘well, I try. I think if you go to a country you should have the respect to try and at least learn the basics.’ His tats make him look edgy, more gobby rock star than motorsport professional, but they’re deceiving. He comes across as friendly, down to earth and ferociously driven. And fearless. ‘I honestly can’t remember the last time I was scared. I thrive off the feeling of not being in control – I’ve done my skydive licence, I want to base jump – so there’s nothing like that that scares me.’ He walks on silently, trying to recall something frightening. Clearly this is not a man who hides behind the sofa during Dr Who. ‘I think the last time was when I was about 11 when I tried a bigger bike. You get to a speed when you’re not quite fast enough and you get a speed wobble, and I had a full day of having that speed wobble down the straight. Mentally, I couldn’t go that bit quicker, and Dad’s going “you need to go faster” but I couldn’t push through it. There’s generally a point on a bike when you’ve got some throttle and it gets a bit of a tanky on [Australian for tankslapper] and if you don’t gas out of it it gets worse.’ It was a combination of his lack of fear and his focus on preparation, training and professionalism that led to one of his most famous bust-ups. After leading Great Britain to second in the team championships in 2016, he refused to race for the team in 2017 because he disagreed with what he saw as a lack of professionalism and ambition in the management. He’s not talking about it today – ‘that’s history’ – but at the time he was clearly furious, telling reporters: ‘I want gold. Who gives a f**k about silver, you’re first loser. Let’s celebrate losing? F*** that.’ Building up to the race he’d offered his personal trainer to help improve the fitness of all the GB riders, but none turned up. It’s not clear if riders were even told of his offer by management. And at the time Tai questioned other aspects of the preparation, citing one of the qualification rounds: ‘We went to Vojens (Speedway Centre in Denmark) and we’re taken to a kebab shop. It’s a World Championship race off with Team GB and we’re eating in a f***ing kebab shop.’ This year it’s all changed. There’s been an overhaul of the team, a new manager, and here in Manchester it’s clear the Brits are taking preparation seriously: later on, while other nations’ riders are hanging about chatting before practice begins, the three GB racers are put through a rigorous 30 minute warm-up by new coaching staff. Meanwhile, it’s time for the track walk. Look closely and the shale is a confusing mixture of hard-packed dry bands, loose gravel, damp strips and churned up grot. Tai glances at it, only half interested – the track will change so much after its been graded, damped down and raced on that he’s not too bothered what it looks like now. He’s more interested in my question about what his strengths are: ‘After hard work, I think it’s the ability to make split second decisions without thinking about it. In our sport you’ve only got four laps so that’s important, and it’s linked with my on-track awareness of what everyone else is doing. I think you’re born with this – you can’t train yourself to have a fast natural instinct. ‘Before someone has made a move, I’ve already seen it, from where they’re looking, or how their handlebars have moved – minimal things that some riders don’t seem to pick up. We’ve got an ex-rider who works with us on Team GB and he admitted that his Plan A was to make a good start, and if he didn’t, then his race was done. I don’t care if I don’t make a good start, because I know I can pass them.’ Judging from his early results – he was British under 18 and under 21 champion in the same year – that talent has always been there. But he was partying hard in those early years, and for a while it looked like he might never reach his potential. The pivotal change came in 2010 when his father Rob died. A former speedway rider, Rob had taken the family to Australia when Tai was four, then, when he realised just how fast his boy was, moved back to the UK to get Tai’s speedway career going. He was father, mentor, rock and friend, and his loss hit Tai hard. ‘Prior to my dad passing away I was a party animal and used to go out and get pissed up and race the next day and all that. Then
‘I honestly cannot remember the last time I was scared. I thrive off the feeling of not being in control’
he died and it was like “you’ve got to become a man now” and make sure I was there for my mum. It was a big life change which matured me a lot and after that I had a few years of going at the racing and then 2013 was my year in the world championship and I won. Since then it’s just been top four [he won again in 2015]. I sometimes wonder if I would have won those World Championships if Dad was still here, because I would have still been a kid and doing silly shit. Everything happens for a reason eh? He would have been proud if I’d won it, but would I have done it? I don’t know…’ After practice Tai is lying on a bench in a changing room with a physio’s elbow leaning painfully into his thigh. How long can his body hold out in a sport where hitting a fence at 60mph happens with sickening regularity? ‘My team has a five year plan to be as successful as possible and then we’ll make a decision about what’s next. I might finish, or I might go another five or ten years. Greg Hancock won the championship the other year and he’s forty-something so I’ve easily got another 20 years in me if I wanted to. As long as I’m enjoying it I’ll keep riding.’ And with that Tai’s off to go and rest before the racing starts at 7pm. He gets three firsts, two seconds and a third and GB qualifies. Job done. Four days later Team GB competes in the finals in Poland. Alas, Team GB is pipped by Russia by one point. But consider this: Tai won 12 of his 13 races, amassing almost all of GB’S points. If he had entered the World Team Champs on his own, he’d have come third…