Just lately there has been a lot of chatter on Facebook about Wayne Gardner. Being a local boy (to me) means that I am automatically interested in anything that concerns Wayne and it has been pretty amazing to read some of the comments that people have made. To clear the air, I have always believed that the most of people who are maing comments are people who have very little knowledge of the subject that they are discussing. So, let’s start from the beginning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Gardner
A pretty good layman’s summary showing just how broad Wayne’s motorsporting experience was. Now, let me make that a little more personal.
I first saw Wayne race at the Lester Edminster mini bike track just outside of Queanbeyan. That was 1975. He was just about to be “bumped” from mini bike racing as there was a 16 year old age limit in the ACT Mini Bike Club. Wayne had been racing there for a couple of seasons that I knew of and, along with another Wollongong tearaway called Randall Douglas , he was known as The Wild One. His lurid riding style took quite a while to calm down as we were to find out.
In November 1976 Wayne took his first shot at road racing at the annual Wollongong Motorcycle Club’s end-of-year club day at Oran Park. He rode his own YZ125 Yamaha motorcross bike, fitted with Dunlop K81 road tyres. In order to get better performance, he removed the airbox to get a few extra revs. This was to prove fatal as, by the middle of the day, the leaned-out mixture had provoked a seizure in the engine and Wayne was done for the day. Having been asked by the club to photograph the event for the, we endeavoured to catch every rider on the day and so I ended up with the two photos that you have seen many times.
It was apparent that Wayne had transferred his dirt riding skills to the tar as he looked very smooth indeed. Early in 1977 he entered his first open meeting, finishing 2nd in his first C Grade race on a TZ250 provided for him by local dealer, Kevin Cass. A couple of weeks later he rode the same bike in his first C Grade meeting and he won everything except the Feature Race where he crashed contesting the lead in BP Corner.
Not long after noted Wollongong motorcycle dealer, Karl Praml, took Wayne under his wing and his meteoric rise to the top of the local scene began.
From pure racing bikes, he branched out into Production racing, being hudely successful there, winning the prestigious Castrol Six Hour race in 1980 and 1982. In the mean timne, ACU of NSW President, the late Arthur Blizzared, had travelled to Britain and had loudly sung Wayne’s praises to many of the luminaries of the British racing scene. As you can read from the Wiki article, this led to him going to England eventually becoming a contracted “works” Honda rider.
The purpose of this article is not to try ad duplicate the Wiki article but rather give my personal perspective on Wayne, his early career and the person that became the 1987 World Champion. Unlike the majority of pundits who comment on Wayne on social media, I have the very privileged position of having known him since the beginning of his career, having watched his racing and become his friend. And my position on Wayne Gardner is very simple. Along with Mick Doohan, Gardner is the best motorcycle road racer that this country has produced. If you take the time to read the article you will see that he has achieved success on both two wheels and four, in Australia and in many countries overseas as well. And the one thing that has never changed with Wayne is that he is a “what you see is what you get” person. He’s never changed and he’s never forgotten the people who were his friends at the beginning of his career and who supported him when nobody else even knew his name.
His foray into V8 sedan racing here in Australia earned him a reputation that was wholly undeserved and which was based, not on his performances on the track but plain outright jealousy on the part of his fellow competitors. They could never get over the fact that Wayne attracted sponsorship from Coca-Cola, a deal which all of them would have given their right arms for. Wayne was involved in numerous scrapes and incidents on-track that were simply expressions by the other drivers of their jealousy of him. Of course, the stupidity of it was that most of the drivers concerned only had a fraction of Wayne’s talent and would never win ANY sort of championship, let alone a WORLD championship.
I’m proud and privileged to call Wayne Gardner a friend and have had several occasions throughout the years where Wayne has made it his business to pick me out of a crowd and invite me to sit down and chew the fat.
At the premiere of his movie in Wollongong, Wayne was more than happy to pose for a pic with the two of us and spent some time asking us how we were, what we were up to, etc, despite the fact that his attention was required elsewhere.
Wayne Gardner is a champion racer and a champion person. Take it from someone who actually knows him.