Schwantz: the life combative
You know him as the high-flyin’ Texan wildman of GP500. But behind the mythical status, Revvin’ Kevin’s story is much more complex.
Huge banners and home-made signs proclaiming good wishes and positivity towards fallen world champion and local homeboy Wayne Rainey were strewn about all over the Northern California race circuit. Kevin Schwantz, the new 500cc Grand Prix World Champion, was pensive and looking down at the ground before him as he slowly walked up the slanted hillside leading up to the press room at Laguna Seca Raceway.
After a bitterly fought civil war played out all over the world with fellow Yankee Wayne Rainey, the Texan had, finally, managed to get the better of the three-time world champion. Still, the overall mood reverberating out amongst the bleached-out Salinas hillsides was both sombre and stoic, as local hero Rainey was some 300 miles southward in an emergency ward in Los Angeles, paralysed and fighting for his life.
“Kevin! Kevin!” yelled fans gathered outside the fenced off press area. “Kevin! You’re the world champion!”
A decade in the making, it had all come right for the Lucky Strike Suzuki rider that summer – a titanic, bitterly fought title played out over 12 rounds between Schwantz and the Californian Rainey, decided seven days ahead of Laguna Seca when Rainey went down at the Misano circuit in Italy – his career over on the spot. For all intents and purposes, Kevin Schwantz was the new world champion.
“I was never really great at anything,” began Kevin Schwantz from his home outside of Austin, Texas. “I did dirt track and won some amateur national championships in the Astrodome. I got to a pro level in motocross and rode the Houston Supercross in 1983. I finished 1983 on my head and not knowing really where I was. I was running second in my heat race behind Mike Bell (the 1980 AMA Supercross Champion) and just went straight over the bars trying to do something like he did over one of the big jumps.”
As far as motorcycle racing goes, it all seemed meant to be for Schwantz, the family taking possession of a Yamaha franchise in 1964, the same year Kevin was born.
“I graduated from high school in Texas and my parents said to me, ‘This business is going to be yours one day, so you need to stay here and you need to be here and you need to be working and you’ll learn all the aspects of the business.’ I went and tried a summer semester at the University of Texas thinking I wanted to further my education, but really all I wanted to do was spend three months at the lake before I had to go into a real-life job.”
Then, and as fate would have it, a few of Kevin’s friends unceremoniously dropped by the dealership Schwantz was working in.
“Towards the end of 1983 some buddies of mine who used to come into the shop all of the time said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do a roadrace, why don’t you come ride with us?’ I thought about it and said, ‘Roadracing? Really? How can that be any fun? No berms, no jumps and no bumps. How much fun can that be?’ So I went and rode and I rode the bike for an hour in what was a four-hour endurance race. By the end of the four hours I was within the same second of my two buddies who had been racing 10 years! I thought, ‘Well, s**t! So I went home and put on my best, ‘Mom, dad, can I have a new motorcycle? I really want to go roadracing.’”
Schwantz’s masterplan worked, as within the year he was lining up in local and regional roadrace events. At age 20 he won his first major national race in the form of the 1985 Kerker 100 AMA Superbike Championship Series race at Willow Springs Raceway in Rosamond, California.
“It all started around 1984 and 1985 and happened quickly and I had a really steep learning curve,” said Schwantz, who raced a Yoshimura GS700 during the period. “Everything was totally new to me. I had no idea if I was going to be any good. I hear kids talk about going to Red Bull Rookie Cup try-outs and how nerve-racking it is. For me, in 1985, I was thinking, ‘You know, this has all happened pretty quickly. Whatever that next bike is or whatever opportunity is presented to me, I’m going to go with it and run.’”
And all along the way Kevin Schwantz, knees and elbows all over the place, was learning roadracing as he went.
“I was always struggling with tyre wear because I sat square on that frickin’ bike!” he exclaimed. “I think Wayne Gardner said I looked like a f***ing grasshopper. He’d say, ‘ You just go into a corner and just flick a leg out! My legs were long enough that I could always get my knee to the ground. Every lap that I’d follow somebody, I’d think, ‘Wow, that’s the way they do that?’ I’d just try to adapt my style of riding. I was always trying to figure out my body positioning in the seat – and out of the seat. There were times where I’d be so hung off the inside of that thing. That whole period was a transformation for me.”
In 1987 Schwantz found himself lighting the fuse on what would be a torrid, bitter relationship with American Superbike star Wayne Rainey. The two young racers went at it hammer and tongs throughout the entire AMA Superbike National Championship.
“The rivalry with Wayne stems back from 1987 in the US,” said Schwantz. “In 1986 I got so much press and so much media was focused on me and the Superbike title that I think Wayne got really fed up with hearing my name and reading about me. During our 1987 season we had some great battles…
“And everything Wayne did wound me up, and I think any time I ever said anything back, it just p****d him off even more,” continued Schwantz. “We took some pretty good punches at one another. I mean, they weren’t literally punches, but we took some pretty good stabs at each other on the track. I was just that kid that every time there was an opportunity, I rubbed him the wrong way. It’s funny to talk with Wayne about some of this stuff today because we still remember things way, way, way differently!” (Laughter).
During the month of March in 1988, Kevin Schwantz made himself, arguably, the biggest motorcycle racing personality on Planet Earth. First, on March 6, came a huge and unexpected win at the storied Daytona 200 in Florida. Three weeks later, this time at the Suzuka circuit in Japan, Kevin Schwantz won the opening round of the 1988 500cc World Championship.
“1988 really was my breakout year,” said Schwantz. “I went to Daytona and won and then took the next week off. Then we went to Japan and it rained there all weekend long. It rained in practice and in qualifying.
“And everything Wayne did wound me up, and I think any time I ever said anything back, it just p***** him off even more. We took some pretty good punches at one another. I mean, they weren’t literally punches but...”
Everything that happened there was in the wet. You know, up to that point I had only done three Grands Prix in 1986 and three in 1987. At Suzuka, I managed to win my seventh ever Grand Prix. After I crossed the finish line and won, I thought, ‘I wonder what they will make you do now. What’s this going to be like?’!”
Learning as he went, Schwantz continued to excel and develop into a serious world championship threat.
“I was just trying to learn every lap. It was probably 1992 before I believed, ‘You know what? I’m as good as I think I can be’. Even though I had ridden motorcycles since I was three or four years old, I still felt that throughout my entire motorcycle racing career I was still learning. You know what? It’s okay if you learn from your mistakes. You make the same mistake twice, you’re probably not learning from it.”
On the slightly underpowered and underfunded Lucky Strike Suzuki RGV-500 and up against the huge might and wherewithal of the Honda and Yamaha racing factories, Kevin Schwantz entered the 1993 racing season at full tilt, winning the opening round at Eastern Creek.
“At the first Grand Prix in Australia at Eastern Creek, I was dead last going into the first turn,” explained Schwantz. “I rode through the field and got to the front and rode away to the win. I left that race going, ‘This track has been a real thorn in our side. If we can win here, we should be able to win anywhere.’”
The winning continued as Schwantz, no doubt hitting critical mass, appeared to be marching towards his first Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme world title.
“I won four of the first six races that season. Assen, in the middle of the season, was the last race I won. From there, I just couldn’t get things going at Brno and the Czech Republic Grand Prix. From there, we then had to look to Misano two weeks later. Misano had been tough on me too, but the team and I went there knowing we’d make the most of it.”
On Sunday, September 5, 1993 at Misano in Italy, the 500cc world championship – which all along the way had been a sensational struggle between Rainey and Gardner – was sent spinning on its global axis when Rainey, while leading, crashed heavily.
“When I saw Wayne fall and got back to the pits after the race, some of the guys said, ‘Wayne’s hurt and isn’t going to ride again’. When I heard that I said, ‘You know, those Yamaha guys will try just about any f****** tactic – especially Kenny Roberts!’. When I actually heard from Dr Costa what the facts were, well, I was devastated.
“I finished up with the podium and went to my motorhome. It was almost dark and we were about to take off to go for dinner and I looked outside and there was a bunch of journalists waiting. Some of them said to me, ‘It’s official. Wayne is not going to race again this year, for sure’. I was like, ‘Wow’. When more of the facts started trickling in about Wayne, I thought, ‘Man, that’s the last thing that I want’.”
At Laguna Seca on September
12, 1993, Kevin Schwantz officially became a world champion.
“I tried not to let it distract me too much,” offered Schwantz of the long shadow the Rainey injury cast over the Laguna Seca race.
“Of course, not having my fiercest rival there definitely had an effect on me; it definitely had an impact on me. By the end of the race I had faded back to finish fourth. At that point I thought that was even better because I didn’t have to be on the podium and celebrate and I didn’t have to spray champagne and I didn’t really have to do anything because I didn’t really feel like it.”
Kevin Schwantz would continue on to race in both 1994 and 1995, but truth be told, he was more of a mere shadow of himself. Fed up with the travelling and the drama and the grind, during the summer of 1995 he basically called time on what had been a decade-long Grand Prix career.
“It only lasted 10 years, but it was good,” smiled Schwantz of his abbreviated, incandescent and beloved career. “Of course, there are races that I’d love to have back, but I think that’s what builds character and that’s what you learn from. Those things stick in your head and you don’t ever forget them. You know, if I had to do it all over again, I’d do it exactly the same.”