Today marks the 30th anniversary of the death of the man that many believe was the greatest motorcycle racer ever, Stanley Michael Baker Hailwood. After cheating death on the unforgiving tracks of Europe and Britain for many years and surviving, Mike met his end on the road, in a car, at the hands of s stupid truck driver who did a U turn in front of him. He had his two children in the car with him and his daughter, who was sitting in the front seat, was also killed. David, his son, survived the accident and is presently leading a campaign to have his father knighted posthumously.
I had the pleasure and privilege of spending time with Mike when he came to Australia, both at the Six Hour in 1977 and then again at Bathurst in 1978 was he tuned up for his IoM return later that year. He was charming, unaffected, witty and kind and he stunned us by being able to quote, with all the correct accents, huge slabs of scripts from the “Goon Shows”. He was also fast, as his later exploits were to prove.
Here he is on a borrowed Manx Norton during the historic race. (my photograph)
The always entertaining and informative superbikeplanet web site has published two atricles about Mike and I’ll link them both here. They make great reading.
Article 2 This 2nd article was published 10 years ago on the 20th anniversary of Mike’s death.
Thanks to Dean Evans for both of these excellent tributes.
Oh, and just in case you don’t think MotoGp riders try hard enough…
Mind you, you have to try even harder than that to make that dog of a bike competitive.