Goodwood Festival of Speed
There is no other event in the world quite like the Festival of Speed. But, for motorcycle fans, this year was a very special Goodwood, as John Milton found out.
If you were born with even a sniff of octane in your blood, then you would love the Goodwood Festival of Speed. It combines the best elements of so many different shows and brings them together in one heady mix in the garden of the Duke of Richmond (probably still best known by his former title, Lord March).
There is always as much to delight the lover of two wheels as of four – who can forget Dougie Lampkin riding through and over Goodwood House in a promotional video or Peter Fonda taking (albeit a bit shakily) to the hill climb on a clone of his Harley-Davidson Panhead chopper from the film Easy Rider, not to mention old favourites like Sammy Miller and Giacomo Agostini who are part of Festival of Speed tradition? But this year, one man and one motorcycle completely and utterly stole the show.
I could go on about the whole event, about the McMurty Speirling electric super car which set a new record for the hill, breaking a record by a Formula 1 Grand Prix car that had stood for 23 years, about the usual array of classic and iconic race bikes, about the weather which (mainly) smiled upon us, the countless automotive gems on display, the traditional sky swooping sculpture in front of Goodwood House. But, for me there was only one jawdroppingly special moment and that was seeing Wayne Rainey on a MotoGP machine once more.
No doubt all of you out there will have your favourite time in motorcycle racing, whether it was Surtees, Hailwood and Agostini, Sheene and Roberts, but for me it’s the years that saw Wayne Rainey battling against Kevin Schwantz in the late 1980s and early 90s. Rainey seemed unstoppable, winning three 500cc world championships in 1990, 1991 and 1992. He was on course to add a fourth title when, while leading the Italian GP in 1993, his Yamaha YZR500 slid into a gravel trap at high speed. Commentating, Barry Sheene thought it might be a simple case of a broken collarbone. The reality was far worse than anyone could have imagined. The gravel trap had a raked surface designed as a safety feature for car racing. Flung against it, Wayne Rainey broke his spine and was paralysed from the chest down. He would never walk again.
It’s almost impossible to imagine what any of us would do in that situation. One could hardly have blamed Rainey for turning his back on motorcycles completely, but they had been his life and they continue to be his life. He became the team manager for Marlboro Yamaha and raced a hand-controlled Superkart in the World Superkart series in his home state of California and he now heads up MotoAmerica which promotes the AMA Superbike Series with six classes of road racing. He’s a frequent visitor to motorcycle events (our editor Blue reports seeing him at the Quail Motorcycle Gathering recently) but he has never ridden since. Until now.
Not only was Wayne Rainey reunited with his 1992 championship-winning Yamaha YZR500 at Goodwood, it had been specially adapted by engineers at Yamaha in Japan with a modified gear shift system so he could change up and down the gears from the left handlebar. He was lifted on to the YZR by his son Rex who was just 10 months old at the time of his father’s accident and, after a test session, he rode up the hill at Goodwood. Even better, he was accompanied by fellow Yamaha champion and his Marlboro Yamaha Team Roberts boss Kenny Roberts, as well as former 500cc rivals Mick Doohan and Kevin Schwantz (Schwantz retired in 1995, shaken by his rival’s accident and feeling that the heart had gone out of racing without that keen competition to spur him on). They would do half a dozen runs over the four days of the Festival of Speed and, on the last run, Rainey even popped a little wheelie.
It was the first wheelie he’d done in three decades.
Almost 30 years after the world last saw Wayne Rainey on his Yamaha YZR500, thousands packed the sides of the track to watch him pass. It was one of the most moving moments the Festival of Speed has ever seen and there were countless grown men in tears.
I am not ashamed to say that I was one.