MR MAGOO!
Kevin Magee was one of Australia’s brightest stars for GP glory – maybe even more so than Mick Doohan. In part one of his story, we find out how he started in racing.
Kevin ‘Magoo’ Magee is another laid-back Aussie that should have and certainly could have become an antipodean world champion. He was one of a select band that won races in both World Superbikes and 500cc GPS, but both titles eluded him. Here’s part one of his story...
There was a poster on the wall in the smoko (lunch) room at the bike shop I worked at during my apprenticeship,” says Kevin Magee. “It was a picture of Kenny Roberts on the black and yellowyamaha. I don’t reckon I ever walked past that poster without stopping to look at it. I was always checking out the tacho to try and work out how fast he was going. I was dreaming. But I knew that’s where I wanted to be…”
Kevin Magee was just an ordinary teenager who loved motorbikes, a dreamer from a small town, but one with plenty of guts and determination – nobody was ever going to stop the kid from Horsham in Western Victoria…
One of five boys and three girls in a family of 10, Magee spent his early years chasing his older brothers around the family property. A bit of a late starter in today’s motorcycling terms, Magee – like Daryl Beattie and Wayne Gardner – didn’t start mucking around with powered two-wheelers until aged 10 when he acquired a Honda Dax minibike; playing around with motors started earlier when brother
Damien (with Kevin’s help) stuck a two-stroke Villiers engine into a wheelbarrow… Only in Australia!
The Dax came from dad courtesy of the brothers’ interest in engines and wheels.
Soon, Magee’s other brother, Tim purchased a Honda CB125S road bike and things became competitive. Kevin grins: “Back then we even had a watch – one with an actual second hand on it. We’d time each other around the dam and the back paddock. It was a case of ‘I can do better’ and it was great fun.”tim would eventually go racing, but Kevin would wreck the little Honda and lose the tips of two of his fingers while trying to push-start the thing…
MAGEE WENT FROM A RAW KIT ON A DIRT BIKE, TO HANDING THE STARS THEIR OWN BACKSIDES WHILE RACING MACHINES WHICH WERE FAR FROM FACTORY. KEVIN WAS GOING PLACES!
Tim took his younger brother under his wing, took him to some races and encouraged him to get started. Kevin approached his parents and eventually a YZ80C was purchased. Kevin recalls: “My first race was at Edenhope Minibike Club. I won a few races and would have won the last race but, with a big lead, slowed on a berm and fell over because I was going too slow to go up high! Riding gear then included desert boots, jeans, jumper, helmet, no goggles, and my brother’s winter road gloves – the ones that reach your elbows with rabbit fur inside!”
Later that same year, just before Christmas, Magee’s father passed away. Kevin was only 16 at the time and he didn’t stop riding that YZ: before and after school every day. “Mum used to say I was never in the house unless I was asleep or had my head in the fridge,” admits Kevin. The little YZ never saw a new piston hence it blew up, and Magee’s mate Damien Albury rebuilt it.
The young Magee landed a job pumping petrol, cutting wood and mowing the lawns after school. This was to help him maintain his YZ and perhaps get another bike, but first he had to get transport. “I saved up $135 and bought a new pushy,” he recalls. “I needed that first so I could get to school, which was 12km away and work – which was eight km away!”
At around the same time Magee had his first ride on a 125: friend Russell ‘Jaggs’ Jagger had a
CR125 and gave Magee a ride at a Horsham club day. Magee smashed ‘em, and decided it was time to get a bigger bike… Work experience as a mechanic at a bike shop would help in the future, meanwhile brother Tim bought him a Honda CB360 but he had his sights set higher… Fate took a hand when he borrowed mate Kym’s Yamaha YZ125F, catching riders on 250s and passing them with ease. Flabbergasted, many onlookers persuaded him to go for it and buy a new bike – he already had a deposit down on an RM370 at the shop he worked at. Instead he borrowed some money from his mum and managed to get an RM125N at cost price… he’d never regret it, racing at weekends and working at a Yamaha dealership and farmer’s market. Success started to come…
“I raced that RM with success for a long time, then one day Phil Needham invited me out to Mac Park for a ride day,” he recalls. “I took the RM. We fitted some tyres to it and out I went. I had no gearing, so I was coming onto the straight in top gear on the rev limit! But it was great fun dicing to get second last, not last! Time to check out road racing, but first time to ride on the road on a bigger bike: “I soon got a loan from mum and bought myself an RD250F. I was on my L-plates, but I didn’t have a car as yet. So to get to work my toolbox was on my knees, I’d ride to work, flick the stand down and lift the toolbox off my knees so as to not scratch the tank!”