Doohan: Story of an end
Michael Scott tells the story of the final outings of the five-time 500cc world champion. At a time where mighty Mick ruled supreme, and nobody could get close, some even opined the end of the Premier Class – such was the impact of Doohan calling time.
It was another dodgy day at Jerez, the first day of practice for the first GP of the 1999 European season. Mick Doohan, titan of the 500 class, was having an indifferent start to the year. It was too early to start worrying about missing out on a sixth consecutive title, but it was time to stamp his authority.
The distinctive Repsol Honda had been fastest in the morning’s free practice. The afternoon counted for grid positions, but lunchtime rain had dampened proceedings. Now the first 500 qualifying session was almost half done, with the puddles drying and the lap times dropping. Doohan spent the first 23 minutes “just monitoring what the other guys were doing. No point just burning fuel. If the guys started to go a bit quicker, then I’d go out and see,” he told me from his Gold Coast home in Australia, recalling the incident in every detail. The five-times champion was getting up to speed as he started his third flying lap. Orange and blue big-bang Honda NSR growling, he flew past and disappeared out of sight into the first corner. About 30sec later, everyone in the pits heard a mighty thump against the barriers behind the start of the grandstands. It was the sound of the end of an era. Doohan ruled racing with a rod of iron. He’d fought back from a near-crippling leg injury at
Assen in 1992, suffered through 1993, and was still limping seven years later, in spite of repeated bouts of increasingly gruesome surgery and external fixatives. In 1994 – with main rivals Wayne Rainey and Kevin Schwantz absent – he started to pile up statistics in a usually lonely series of Sunday afternoons, winning almost every race and definitely every title up until 1998. His record for the most wins in a season – 12 in 1997 – remained unbroken until Marc Marquez’s 13 in 2014. But when Mick did it, in the year of Rossi’s first 125 title, there were only 15 rounds. Marquez had three more chances. Doohan’s was an austere reign. Fiercely concentrated, he sometimes seemed resentful that he didn’t face tougher opposition. But it was hardly his fault – he was so much faster and so much better at racing than the rest. That year he had arrived in Europe trailing on points to double race winner Kenny Roberts Jr on the Suzuki. It was not a position he particularly relished, but he laughed when asked if the pressure was a factor in the crash. “Not at all. Only two races in with 15 or 16 rounds... I don’t think we were too worried at that stage.” Back then, practice was timed on both Friday and Saturday afternoons, so if the weather didn’t improve the following day the session might decide the grid positions. In fact the forecast was good... but at that time of year Jerez was often unpredictable. Mick sat out the first 23min, then slipped on his helmet and gloves and did his lop-sided walk to the Honda NSR500. A quick shove from Jerry Burgess was enough to get it purring down the pit lane, and Mick opened it up for his last ride. “We, the team, were just monitoring what the other guys were doing... it was damp, and only the Friday. I went out in the morning in the wet. Wet and dry... we were just burning fuel. If the guys started to go a bit quicker then I’d go out and see. “At that point it was starting to dry out a little, so I went out and had a look. I think it was my second or third flying lap. “There were a lot of circuits that year and the year before they’d paint the white lines with house paint just before the GP. They were slick in the dry, let alone the wet. That weekend it was diabolical and I was the one who came off the worst.” The Jerez lines not only stood proud of the surface, but held water even as the track dried. They were known to be tricky. Both Niall Mackenzie and Jamie Whitham had narrow escapes that same day, as had Mick a couple of laps earlier, which makes his subsequent very small but hugely costly error somewhat surprising. The incident triggered a new specification for paint, but it came too late. The track turns right after the pit straight and runs uphill to a wide hairpin, then downhill again to flick left onto a short straight. Mick came out of the hairpin and pulled the bike across the track before pitching it to the left, the feisty two-stroke giving its warbling shriek, the front light and the rear squirming
THAT WEEKEND IT WAS DIABOLICAL AND I WAS THE ONE THAT CAME OFF THE WORST
at about 135mph. As Jerry Burgess, waiting with a stopwatch confirmed, he was doing ‘wide open, on absolutely full throttle’. “I was in the pits timing Mick, and I heard an almighty thump and saw this silencer flying through the air, and I went: ‘32 seconds. Mick would have been about there somewhere’.” In Mick’s own memory, “I don’t think the front wheel hit the white line, but the rear wheel spinning up did hit it, and that was it. “I used to like generally to go out and get up to speed fairly quick. I thought I was using as much track without touching the line, but with the back being out of line by two inches, or even an inch, I don’t know exactly, but I didn’t do it correctly and it flicked me off. “You normally feel the bike going and have a bit of a moment trying to save it, but the first I knew that I was off the bike in that instant was when I was upside down watching the bike from above. And the next thing they were going to cut my leathers off in the medical centre.” The bike flicked sideways, then threw itself and the rider high into the air. What happened next was down to luck. He might tumble to safety in the gravel, and walk away. But his trajectory was wrong, his speed too high, and the track-side barrier too close. Ironically at this point the tall fence was faced with a Michelin sign. He hit it first, upside down and two metres above ground level. A fixing screw gouged a deep flesh wound in his shoulder. His bike struck alongside within a millisecond. Then it was all dust and silence. His injuries were pretty comprehensive. His left wrist was broken and, it later transpired, there was nerve damage to the left arm. His right shoulder was fractured, along with the gouge wound. Most poignantly, that same right leg was broken again, above the site of the previous fracture. The first prognosis was something like two months out of racing. Doohan opted for a quick fix to the leg break, using a novel bone-bonding process and the usual internal metalwork. A return was targeted for Brno in late August, missing seven races. By the time that came around, though, he was still on crutches, and would be for some time. He revealed he could barely open a drinks can with his left arm, which was both weak and slow to respond. By then, both knees had required further surgery. In fact, Mick did ride the NSR again, running three fast and wildly acclaimed demo laps at the Australian GP, the final round of the year, in spite of difficulty operating the clutch. He was yet to make the final decision to retire. The trigger was physical; the announcement came in midDecember, seven months after the crash, but the decision had been made earlier. “It was when my leg started to collapse. Had I decided to put my hand up in the first place I wouldn’t have tried the bone glue, I don’t know the technical term for it, in the tibial plateau area of my knee. When the screws were breaking and my leg was collapsing again I needed that external fixator apparatus back on there again. “I was told that I wouldn’t be able to have another crack at the title until 2001, and I decided that I’d had a pretty good innings, and to walk away. Time wise, to myself, probably about August. And later, I think at the end of the season, I announced that I wasn’t going to continue any more.” How much did he regret that tiny slip? “That’s the way it folded for me. But there were a lot of highlights for me as it went along with my career. To say it came down to one inch that devastated the whole career, goes a bit beyond the reality. There comes a time when you have to stop. We as a team and me as an individual had achieved far more than I thought we could have achieved when we started out. To crash and retire through injury – it would have been nicer to park the bike. But at what point of time do you park the bike? “I crashed, but who doesn’t crash? And over my career I think I crashed less than most, so perhaps it wasn’t a bad way to leave the sport anyway.” After retirement Mick worked for a spell as Honda’s general manager of racing, mentoring Rossi and he did occasional commentary work and such like. But he proved himself bigger than the sport he had dominated, moving into aviation, and now he runs his own multi-million dollar buying, selling and leasing concern on Australia’s Gold Coast, “putting food on a few tables”. Having been the first rider to command an eight-figure annual fee, he has multiplied his wealth many times over. Flying, especially helicopters, substitutes for the loss of racing. “It’s completely different. I loved motorcycle racing even though you guys sometimes didn’t think that was the case. I just didn’t like some of the bullshit that went with it. I enjoyed every aspect of the racing. I think that showed. I was there for long enough and I was racing when I was a kid. “But flying helicopters is fun. I enjoy that, it’s a completely different feeling. You just forget about who you are and become Mick the pilot.” In his absence racing became closer and, you might argue, more exciting. There were six different winners in that year, and his team-mate Alex Criville stepped out from under his shadow to become Spain’s first premier-class champion. But as erstwhile rival Carlo Checa said: “It’s like playing in an orchestra without a conductor.”