THE GLORY & THE GORY
The bone-breaking, Brut-splashing tale of the nation’s loveable rogue, Barry Sheene
IT TOOK about eight seconds, 300 yards of falling, one TV film crew and broken bones in his back, arm and leg for Barry Sheene to make the journey from the track, to the operating theatre and to the nation’s sofa. ‘If I’d been a racehorse they would have shot me,’ he said later.
His 175mph crash in March 1975 at Daytona was a disaster that could easily have been the end of a life and career. Instead, the horror show pricked at Britain’s voyeurism and made him famous.
The six-week fightback, achieved with what seemed to the public like charismatic ambivalence, then his swift ascent to the top of the world, was a boy’s own war story.
Little wonder that Martyn Ogborne, his chief mechanic, recalled: ‘I said to Barry, “If you’d been in the Second World War, you’d have been a bloody Spitfire pilot”. I have never seen such determination. All we understood was we had to get Barry’s machine here in England ready in six weeks or less! People just laughed.’
It would be underselling Sheene’s appeal to hail him as a household name. He was also a sporting icon from palace to pub, a lovable rogue who mixed hair, flair and devil-may-care brilliance. In the Seventies, he was as much a part of Britain as glam rock and the three-day week and, when Barry flicked a playful V-sign to Kenny Roberts during an epic 1979 Grand Prix at Silverstone, it showed how this natural entertainer scarcely needed to lift a finger to forge his way into the public’s hearts.
To be a truly household name you need to live beyond the narrow confines of your sport. So as well as the two 500cc world titles, Barry was the maverick who drilled a hole in his helmet so he could sneak a pre-race smoke; the ‘bionic man’ who came back from two mindboggling and body-shaking, crashes; the Brut-splashing Jack the Lad who plundered life.
As time went on, people likened him to George Best, sometimes dubbed the fifth Beatle and a star who mixed sport with women and drink and designer clothes. The comparison worked in terms of their shared appeal, both to legions of women and marketing men, but where there was a whiff of tragedy about Best, Barry refused to let anything beat him.
The miracle of his consummate 1976 500cc world title was that it came a year after he emerged from the wreckage of his 175mph crash at Daytona, where he broke his leg, six ribs, his back, a wrist and his collarbone. When he came to in hospital, the first thing he did was ask the nurse for ‘a fag’.
As he fought back from his second crash in 1982, he put a teaspoon up his rear to help his damaged bowel and proposed to girlfriend Stephanie in a hospital toilet. It summed up the resilience and earthy romance of the man.
Barry was no saint and for every achievement, such as his 137mph record lap at the treacherous old Spa-Francorchamps circuit, there was a TV thrown from a hotel window. He was the almost-cockney rebel who drove a Rolls Royce but remained a blue-collar hero.
Yet he was the purest of competitors. Freddie Spencer, twice a 500cc world champion, still remembers fondly that it was Barry who hugged him after his first GP win. And Roberts once told me: ‘I could not have had a greater rival when we went to battle.’
The TV adverts and hospital dinners sometimes masked the breadth of a rare talent. Barry had substance as well as style and knew how to develop a bike after years spent taking them apart with his father. He was a hands-on, oilyfingered star who excelled in the wet and was jaw-droppingly brave.
He died too young but lived at least two lives and his legacy endures.
His son Freddie said: ‘Dad was a mix of everything you could ask for in a father. He was strict but fair, fun but serious. My sister Sidonie and I both had a cheeky streak — I wonder where that came from! — which quietly amused him.
‘At times he indulged our naughtiness, posting us cigarettes at school or letting us have the odd drink but, despite nurturing a sense of mischief, he also kept us in check. If mum told you he wanted a word in his office, you knew you were in trouble.
‘To bike-racing fans he was a superb rider, twice world champion and insightful TV commentator. His fellow riders appreciated having him around the paddock for his sense of humour and invaluable technical advice, while the public loved the charmer, the iconic playboy who had an innate sense of fun. To me he was all of these, but he was also my hero — and my dad.’
His natural successor as a champion showman, Valentino Rossi, had become good friends with Barry and the pair met two months before he passed away.
Rossi recalled: ‘I loved Barry. I think maybe he knew he was close to the end but he said, “Come and have some fun”.’ And this wonderful gallery of photographs shows Barry certainly knew how to.