DAVID EVANS
“Just like you, Colin Mcrae was my hero too”
Last Sunday should have been a big day in Lanark. A very big day. Fifty years ago in the town’s William Smellie Maternity Hospital, a certain Colin Steele Mcrae arrived. From the very beginning, Colin was flat out. Mum Margaret recalls: “Colin just didn’t seem to need sleep… He was always up to something. One time we were with Jim’s parents, they had a boxer dog, a real softie. Somebody said: ‘What on earth’s he doing with the dog?’”
Turns out toddler Mcrae was trying to answer his own question. That question was whether a steel welding rod would pass in one of the dog’s ears and out of the other. At that age, a perfectly reasonable question and basis for research.
From the moment Mcrae clinched the West of Scotland Autotest title in 1985, his story has been well documented. It’s a story folk never tire of telling. Why would you? It was real Boy’s Own stuff from the start, right from clinching the most remarkable results in a Talbot Sunbeam and Vauxhall Nova to standing on top of the world as the most complete and naturally talented individual ever to grace the discipline.
It was his speed and bravery that made his name, but it was his all-round ability and global appeal that cemented his status as the world’s most famous rally driver. Ever.
But all the joy, wonder and happiness he brought to the world’s four corners came to an end on September 15, 2007. It’s a tragedy that Mcrae didn’t make 40, a tragedy that, like his legend, grows ever more powerful with the passing of another decade.
It wasn’t, of course, just Colin that we lost in that accident 11 years ago. His son Johnny and two family friends also died. Johnny would have been 17 this year and there can be little doubt that he would have been in a rally car and winning within days of passing his test.
The Mcrae family specialises in chips and blocks: Jimmy, Colin, Alister and Alister’s son Max who is now conquering allcomers in a kart in Western Australia. And will be doing the same in a rally car in Scotland… just as soon as gramps puts his hand in his pocket.
But this week, it’s Cmac specifically we’re missing. Anybody who thinks he’d have matured into a wise, slightly greying, elderstatesman of the sport offering sage comment and thoughtful insight into the ways and means of the modern-day sport is wrong. Don’t get me wrong… the insight would have been all there, but it would have been delivered with the kind of wit and mischief Mcrae had in abundance. That’s what we’ve missed for the last 11 years, a Colin able to look back, contextualise and entertain in a different way.
Like you, Colin was my hero and we owe it to him and his unflinching, hard-charging, flat-over-crest style to never forget him and keep talking about him.
Colin Mcrae… forever young. Forever the best.