Latest / Rusty's Garage / Jason Crump (Part 1)

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Jason Crump (Part 1) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:19
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:35
  For this episode, I'm in the Gold Coast hinterland.
• 0:37
  You'll probably hear rain and some bird life outside as I chat to Jason Crump, one of the greats of Australian motorcycle racing.
• 0:46
  Now, purists will immediately know the Crump name, particularly if you enjoy Speedway.
• 0:51
  If you're not familiar with him, I hope our chat leaves you in no doubt about his incredible level of talent, immense commitment, and how mentally strong he is as a competitor.
• 1:02
  I'd love it if the general public thought of him in the same way we might for a Casey Stoner, Mick Doohan or Chad Reid, who are also in the Rusty's Garage Library.
• 1:11
  Crump is that good.
• 1:14
  His is a fast-paced stadium sport that is only for the brave.
• 1:19
  At the top level, the bikes are powered by 500cc engines with no brakes.
• 1:25
  To the untrained eye, they look quite simplistic, but there are some important subtleties you need to make it a winning package.
• 1:32
  And what the rider does in the heat of competition is an art form.
• 1:37
  sliding round an oval in stadiums typically packed with fans, using the throttle, body position and, let's be honest, big balls, sometimes just millimetres apart from rivals.
• 1:49
  As a young racer, Crump was pretty intense, all business.
• 1:53
  But what he achieved in Europe during a competitive era of speedway motorcycle racing was very special.
• 1:59
  Four individual world championships, including an under-21 crown, plus three team World Cup wins.
• 2:07
  Life nowadays has slowed down a little compared to the hectic weekly race schedule that was once the norm.
• 2:13
  As you'll hear, his son is now competing too, albeit a different discipline, and Jason is still throwing his leg over to get that competitive fix.
• 2:22
  We spoke just before the boys jetted out to England for the season.
• 2:26
  The Crump Racing Dynasty continues.
• 2:30
  Well, yeah, you're right.
• 2:32
  It's been in our family for years through my grandfather and my dad.
• 2:35
  So if I'm honest, I probably don't really remember a part of my life where it wasn't there, that there wasn't something to do with Speedway happening.
• 2:46
  Your dad, Phil, who you've just touched on, is a legend.
• 2:49
  If I've got the stats right here, you know, four-time Australian solo champion, more than a dozen Victorian titles, top three in the world championship in 76.
• 2:57
  You were very young then.
• 2:59
  I think you're only about one.
• 3:01
  What, you know, can you recall that earlier part of life when you were young and you realised that what dad was doing was pretty cool?
• 3:12
  Yeah, obviously not from 76 when I was one, but, you know, yeah, for sure later on in his career, I, you know, I was involved a little bit, you know, used to want to go to as many race meetings with him as I could.
• 3:27
  And, you know, the riders at that time were...
• 3:34
  say they were friends of mine, but I was fortunate because my dad was racing.
• 3:37
  Speedway is a very accessible sport.
• 3:39
  So the big names in the sport at the time, you know, Hans Nielsen, Eric Gunderson, Simon Wig, all the American guys that were around, they were people that I knew because, you know,
• 3:52
  You know, they were cool guys.
• 3:55
  And I was very, very fortunate to be able to mingle and mix with them.
• 3:59
  And it became a part of my life.
• 4:02
  It was a huge part of my life from when I was young.
• 4:04
  I can sense in it from this part of the conversation we're having now and even from excerpts from your book, you had great respect for some of those that came before you.
• 4:16
  I mean, you've rattled off a few of them there, but are there others that you kind of looked up to and went, in appreciating the history of the sport, those that really stood out?
• 4:24
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:26
  You know, as I said, it was a huge part of my life.
• 4:29
  So all of the big names, Major, Olsen, Briggs, they were all people that I knew.
• 4:35
  And, of course, when you know somebody, you want to know what they did and find out as much about them as you can.
• 4:43
  So, you know, from the generation that my dad raced in with those guys on to...
• 4:51
  younger guys that came through when he was coming to the end of his career.
• 4:54
  I mean, if I talk personally about people that influenced me a lot, obviously my father and grandfather were huge influencers, but there was a couple of Swedish guys that came to the UK to race when we were there.
• 5:07
  I was probably 10 or 11 years.
• 5:10
  years old and they were kind of almost closer to my age than what they were at my parents' age.
• 5:16
  So I spent a lot of time with them and that was Peer Johnson and Jimmy Nielsen.
• 5:20
  They were, you know, Peer was world champion.
• 5:22
  Unfortunately, he was badly injured in the mid nineties.
• 5:28
  And Jimmy went on to, you know, he was an absolutely top rider.
• 5:32
  And again, I was lucky.
• 5:34
  I knew these guys before I was racing against them.
• 5:38
  they were, they were huge influences on me and huge helps through my career.
• 5:42
  And I'm still in touch with pair, um, speak to him.
• 5:47
  Yeah.
• 5:47
  Three or four times a year.
• 5:48
  And, um,
• 5:51
  Jimmy moved to the United States, so we kind of lost contact a little bit.
• 5:55
  But, yeah, they were big influences on me.
• 5:59
  In addition to those people and the mark they make on you, being around the pits, being around the bikes, kicking up a bit of dirt, what were the kind of early bike lessons, the stuff you started to perhaps bank on the mechanical side?
• 6:16
  Well, believe it or not, I've never been that mechanically minded.
• 6:20
  I've never...
• 6:21
  I was always intrigued with my bikes because I wanted to know how I could make it, how I could get somebody to make it go faster or, um, uh, how I could ride better or how I could, or we could, how we could change the chassis to make it a little better.
• 6:38
  And, um, in that respect, I was lucky with the people, you know, mainly my dad and my grandfather, because they were very mechanical.
• 6:48
  Um, and, um,
• 6:50
  You know, we were always messing around with stuff.
• 6:54
  Personally, all I wanted to do was win races.
• 6:58
  So that side of things was not left just to them.
• 7:02
  But, you know, I would say I want the bike to do this or do that.
• 7:05
  And I have no idea.
• 7:07
  Even now, I probably couldn't do too much to get it done.
• 7:10
  Yeah.
• 7:12
  I could always kind of explain roughly how I wanted the bike to react and then I needed people around me to help with that.
• 7:17
  And they were pretty good at that.
• 7:19
  So that leads me to first bike.
• 7:21
  When, where, what and recollections of it?
• 7:25
  Well, I think it was around 1982.
• 7:31
  My parents actually owned a Honda shop in Mildura at the time.
• 7:33
  So I got a Z50 Honda, you know, little fat tires on it.
• 7:39
  And I rode that thing.
• 7:42
  I don't even know for how long, but every day or every opportunity I had.
• 7:48
  What are we talking, paddock bashing at first kind of thing?
• 7:51
  Yeah, for sure.
• 7:52
  I mean, my grandfather in Mildura, who's still with us, he's in his 90s now and he was a fruit farmer down there.
• 8:00
  He had grapes and so a lot of time was spent at their property.
• 8:05
  I'm sure I annoyed him a lot by tearing up and down the rows of grapes on my motorbike.
• 8:09
  But it's country life.
• 8:12
  You know, you kind of down that way, you rode your motorbike when the weather was cooler and you water skied when it was warmer.
• 8:18
  So that was it was a great place to grow up.
• 8:21
  I'm chuffed that you brought up Mildura and the family history or heritage there.
• 8:27
  As you pointed out before though, you were born from memory, I think the birth certificate probably says Bristol, UK, but it's clear you kind of identified very early on as proudly Aussie, is that right?
• 8:37
  Yeah, I mean, you know, yes, I was born in the UK and there was benefits of that when I became a Speedway rider.
• 8:46
  I could have quite easily been born in Australia.
• 8:49
  Myself and my middle sister, Justine, we were both born in the UK and our younger sister, Gabrielle, was born in Australia because Phil and Carol, my parents, were traveling a lot at that time.
• 9:02
  So it kind of depended where we were when it was time to come.
• 9:06
  Did you, you know, in your busy schedule in later life with racing, it's probably hard to stop at times and always take in some of the amazing places that you were in.
• 9:15
  I know you made a concerted effort to do that with your kids as you went.
• 9:19
  But as a young person travelling with mum and dad, following the circus a little bit, even coming back to Australia, there must have been some great days, were they?
• 9:25
  Yeah, they were, of course.
• 9:27
  Yeah.
• 9:28
  You know, we were fortunate, you know, travel, world travel in the 80s.
• 9:35
  It's not like it was... Unheard of for a lot of kids, wasn't it?
• 9:37
  Yeah, pre-COVID time.
• 9:38
  I mean, you know, people from Australia jump on a plane and go to America.
• 9:42
  It wasn't like that back then, was it?
• 9:45
  So, no, we were very fortunate and we, you know, we got to travel a bit.
• 9:51
  There was...
• 9:53
  quite a lot of difference in the way Speedway was in the 70s, 80s and early 90s compared to when I was at the height of my career.
• 10:02
  I mean, Speedway in the UK, my father used to, for example, he used to race in 110, 120 meetings a year.
• 10:11
  and probably 100 of them would have been in the UK.
• 10:15
  So he was fortunate in the fact that he was able to kind of go home every night.
• 10:21
  By the time my career was kicking off, I was, you know, from 17, 18 years of age, I was racing in Europe three or four days a week away from the UK.
• 10:31
  So the travel side of things with Poland opening up like it did and Speedway becoming a huge sport over there and then the Swedish League and Danish League and German Leagues all becoming a player in European Speedway.
• 10:46
  Man, there was days when, there was months when I was away from home more than I was at home.
• 10:53
  Common.
• 10:54
  It was the way it was.
• 10:56
  You know, for people that perhaps listen to the podcast that may not know Speedway Bike Racing in depth, it's a really good picture you kind of painted then because the scene is massive over there relative to here.
• 11:10
  And I think in the book you drew a parallel with...
• 11:13
  as you more or less just did, with almost American sports, where you're competing, you know, a number of times each week, backing it up and then flying to another country, back home to England, that was really common for you, wasn't it?
• 11:26
  It's the way Speedway worked.
• 11:27
  You know, each European country that was a Speedway, you know, that had Speedway, they...
• 11:34
  each one has their own league and there was no binding and there still is no binding European contract.
• 11:41
  You're contracted in a country to that club and you can race for three or four clubs if you want.
• 11:49
  And from the age of probably 18 until probably mid twenties, I would say I was racing five to six days a week.
• 12:01
  Almost a different country every day.
• 12:04
  for that whole period of time.
• 12:06
  And it's bloody tiring.
• 12:10
  We'll expand on this as we chat here, but let's first race.
• 12:15
  And when you cast your mind back to that, I mean, given the family's history, was there always a certainty that you would do this or were you just so in love with it, so hell bent on it, that that's what you wanted to do?
• 12:29
  My parents were...
• 12:32
  I would say not that keen on me becoming a speedway rider.
• 12:36
  Because of what they'd been through?
• 12:38
  Well, possibly, I don't really know.
• 12:42
  It's not that they didn't support me, don't get me wrong, I don't say that, but for example, the normal age to start racing junior speedway was nine.
• 12:49
  Well, I wasn't allowed to start until I was 11.
• 12:52
  you know, I had a bike and my dad made me practice on it.
• 12:56
  And, you know, I guess he didn't want me to make him look like a bloody fool.
• 12:59
  If I went and I was no good, but, um, you know, there was in, in my mind, I wanted to be a speedway rider in my mind.
• 13:08
  I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to do what Bruce Pennell did or Eric Gunderson or Hans Nielsen.
• 13:13
  I wanted to be one of them, you know, it was, it was what I wanted to do.
• 13:17
  So, um,
• 13:21
  the racing side of it, crazy as it sounds, it was nothing out of the ordinary.
• 13:27
  For me to go to the Speedway track, the only thing different was I got to race a couple hours before my dad did, you know, in the junior racing.
• 13:35
  So it was what I wanted to do.
• 13:38
  I loved the junior Speedway.
• 13:40
  It was tough.
• 13:41
  We had a, from a small town like Mildura, there was a lot of local rivalries there.
• 13:48
  still some of the hardest racing I've ever done has been in, you know, the junior Speedway days and the club, just club Speedway days at Mildura in the 90s with guys like Lee Adams and Jason Lyons and Mark Lemon and,
• 14:04
  you look back at it, you think, how did we survive all of that?
• 14:07
  You know, they were crazy nights.
• 14:09
  Great period and great names that you mentioned.
• 14:13
  In love with it, did it come easy to you?
• 14:16
  Did you feel at one with the motorcycle straight away with the demands of what Speedway racing was like?
• 14:24
  Kind of, because, you know, I'd been, we'd been to the salt lakes and, you know, I'd ridden, I'd done hundreds of hours on the bike before I ever got to race it.
• 14:34
  So, um, from that side, yeah, the racing was just, you know, it's what you did after your practice.
• 14:41
  So yeah, it was, say it was easy, but it was fun.
• 14:45
  you know, when it's what you want to do, it becomes easier.
• 14:48
  What was Jason Crump like as a youngster then?
• 14:50
  Before you got to, you know, 16 years of age, Peterborough with that team of Aussies overseas, were you studious at school?
• 14:58
  Were you a quiet guy?
• 15:00
  What were you like?
• 15:03
  I never really got into trouble.
• 15:06
  You know, I don't say I was a great student at school.
• 15:09
  I tried to stay away from there as much as I could, but
• 15:13
  You know, the only thing I can really say about that, Rusty, is that three or four of my good friends from school in Mildura, we're still all in touch.
• 15:21
  And we catch up as much as we possibly can.
• 15:24
  They're scattered around the country a little bit as well.
• 15:27
  But I actually speak to them.
• 15:30
  A few of the boys came to the races in Mildura this year when I was there, which is really cool.
• 15:34
  Yeah.
• 15:36
  So I probably wasn't too bad.
• 15:38
  That's good.
• 15:39
  I love that.
• 15:40
  I share a similar thing with some really tight high school mates from 30 years ago.
• 15:44
  Did you have kind of a part-time job or anything along those lines, or was it just that, you know, by the time you got to your mid-teens there, the whole notion of what you'd started in Australia and then moving to Europe was just a natural step?
• 15:59
  Well, I did have jobs.
• 16:01
  I worked in a bakery of all places.
• 16:03
  Are you a baker?
• 16:04
  Can you cook?
• 16:05
  Not a baker.
• 16:06
  I'm definitely not a baker, but an after-school job was working in the bakery, which was...
• 16:15
  What would I say?
• 16:16
  It definitely made me want to be a good speedway rider, that's for sure.
• 16:20
  And obviously the family connections with the fruit block.
• 16:26
  You know, every year when it was picking time, it was a family, the whole family converged on the fruit block.
• 16:33
  And, you know, like with many families in that part of the world, especially at that time, they may as well have not sent the kids back to school at the end of January.
• 16:41
  It should have been, school should have started in the middle of March down there
• 16:45
  As soon as you get to 12 years of age, you're involved in the picking and
• 16:50
  and everything with the fruit blocks.
• 16:52
  So I worked for my grandfather for a bit and that was hard work.
• 16:56
  And, you know, it shows me why both he and my dad are such tough buggers because they're, you know, the way they grew up and did things hard on the blocks.
• 17:05
  So definitely a job I was not keen on pursuing for long.
• 17:09
  Okay.
• 17:10
  Were the early years in England tough and was it a certainty, you know, in that early phase?
• 17:17
  There's no certainty in life.
• 17:19
  You know, I was, when I look back to 1992, I was 16.
• 17:24
  I had an opportunity to go and race, which other Aussie kids didn't get because I was born in the UK.
• 17:31
  So that's what I alluded to before.
• 17:33
  There was a benefit for that.
• 17:35
  And that meant that being a British passport holder, I could go back in and start to race when I was 16, not wait till I was 17.
• 17:44
  The guys that were in that team with me in 1992, Mick Poole and Stephen Davies, they're friends for life.
• 17:51
  Great crew.
• 17:53
  If I'm honest, probably my parents wouldn't have let me go to race without being in a team with a couple of Aussie guys.
• 18:04
  And as soon as it was kind of evident that it was Mick and Stephen, Rod Calhoun was there as well.
• 18:12
  as soon as it was evident, it was those two guys.
• 18:14
  And it was, it was a done deal.
• 18:16
  And, and like I said, friends for life, you know, they looked after me and, and they, they told me the older fellows that I had to be aware of.
• 18:26
  And, and I'm sure they have more than a few arguments that year because I, you know, I was a kid and I was going pretty good,
• 18:34
  Once the season got going after a couple of months, I kind of started to go pretty good and I definitely wasn't scared to let the others know I was there at that age, like you are.
• 18:46
  I loved that time.
• 18:47
  It was great.
• 18:48
  Couldn't have had a better team to be in in the first year racing there.
• 18:51
  Nice.
• 18:52
  You're a dad now and your own son is racing, which we'll touch on in the conversation.
• 18:56
  But you kind of alluded to the fact that, you know, mum and dad made you perhaps start a little later.
• 19:02
  And if it hadn't been for those group of guys, maybe the move to England and the Europe chapter may have been more difficult.
• 19:09
  Were there some tough conversations with dad about, you know, venturing down this path?
• 19:14
  Uh, I think by that stage, um, He was resigned to it.
• 19:18
  Well, you know, it, I had a, in, in the junior speedway, I'd had a couple of pretty decent years and I won the Australian championship in, I think 1990, 89 or 90, 90.
• 19:32
  And, uh, my dad was talking to me.
• 19:36
  He was still very active here racing at that stage as well.
• 19:39
  And, um,
• 19:41
  he said to me, you know, the 125cc junior bikes, he said, you know, you're probably too big to ride that now.
• 19:48
  And again, going back to the practice thing, he said to me, you can, before you start to race on the 500, you need to practice on it for a year.
• 19:58
  So I said, bloody hell, okay.
• 20:01
  So I said to him, so does that mean I have to,
• 20:04
  you know, wait, ride the junior speedway till I'm 16 and then wait for a year to start.
• 20:08
  And he said, well, you can do that if you want, or you can stop riding junior speedway now.
• 20:12
  You've won the Australian Championship.
• 20:14
  There's nothing more for you to play around in that for.
• 20:19
  You stop riding your junior speedway bike now and you can practice on a 500.
• 20:23
  And as soon as you turn 16, you can go and race it.
• 20:26
  So I said, that's it.
• 20:28
  That's what we're doing.
• 20:29
  So I actually had...
• 20:31
  Believe it or not, my first race on a 500 was not in Australia.
• 20:37
  It was in the UK.
• 20:39
  So I went, obviously my birthday's in August, so there's no racing on here.
• 20:43
  So I had a trip to the UK.
• 20:50
  and had my first meeting, I think it was about a week after my 16th birthday and did a few meetings in the UK that 91 season as a, almost as a freelance rider and came home, raced, raced the summer here in those hard old club meetings at Mildura and, you know,
• 21:11
  You know, it was just a matter of waiting for the contract to come from Europe, really, or from the UK at that stage.
• 21:17
  I want you, this is an audio experience, the way you lit up then about the notion of throwing your leg over a 500 and what that meant.
• 21:26
  Try, if you can, and tell the audience what is so special about these things.
• 21:33
  I mean, the way you have to use your body position, for example, I mean,
• 21:38
  probably need to let them know about the notion of forget, forget brakes.
• 21:41
  There's a lot of, a lot of bravery in it, isn't there?
• 21:44
  Well, there is, but you know, fortunately for me, I wasn't like it's somebody who'd never ridden a, a, a, ridden a speedway bike.
• 21:51
  I mean, we, the junior speedway program, first of all in Australia is fantastic and it's no surprise that we're still producing fantastic riders because the, the way the one to five bikes work and, and now with a two 50, um,
• 22:07
  you know, it's even better that the stepping stones to boys or kids getting onto 500s now is, is huge.
• 22:16
  125, 250 onto the 500.
• 22:19
  It's, it's fantastic.
• 22:21
  Um, back in our time, we didn't have two fifties.
• 22:23
  We had the one, two, five.
• 22:25
  So that's a pretty big step up.
• 22:27
  And yeah, I remember the first time I wrote a 500 because you can, you can, um,
• 22:34
  you never forget because the power of a speedway bike, it's so light.
• 22:38
  It's, you know, they weigh kind of 75 to 80 kilos.
• 22:44
  The power to weight ratio is pretty brutal.
• 22:47
  And they can kind of spin the wheel wherever they want and wherever you'll let them.
• 22:51
  So to get on the 500 and turn the throttle on, that's something that you don't forget.
• 22:57
  you know the the top speeds of speedway bikes and the horsepower now compared to what other multi-cylinder motorcycles can do it's not that impressive but you can put experienced motorcycle riders high level experienced motorcycle riders on the speedway bike and it will still get their attention amazing
• 23:19
  There is an intensity about you.
• 23:21
  I think with life, things ease, and that's clear with you with, I think, time.
• 23:28
  And I've had this sort of conversation with McDowen in some ways as well.
• 23:32
  I can recall seeing you very focused, almost putting that pressure on yourself, could I say.
• 23:40
  Did that come at a very young age, or is that more of an international thing?
• 23:43
  Have you always had that sort of drive?
• 23:47
  I'm pretty sure I've always had the drive.
• 23:50
  the pressure comes from expectation.
• 23:55
  And if you're not performing at the level that you think you should be, then it's very, very easy to beat up on yourself.
• 24:04
  And I think that for me personally, it took me a long time to get over the line to win the world championship.
• 24:12
  And I was...
• 24:14
  Clearly I was at the top of Speedway and I was one of the best riders and it was a bloody tough job to finish second in the World Championship for three years in a row.
• 24:25
  And the pressure that you end up putting on yourself to take one more step is immense.
• 24:32
  It's ridiculous.
• 24:33
  And I look back on it now and I think...
• 24:36
  gee, if I'd only have just been probably a bit easier on myself, it could have probably happened a bit sooner.
• 24:40
  But when you're in the moment, you know, I love Mick.
• 24:44
  I think, you know, what Mick achieved in racing, you know, is phenomenal.
• 24:51
  And obviously as a younger bloke, I looked up to Mick a lot.
• 24:58
  And the intent, I don't say I developed intensity by seeing what Mick did, but...
• 25:04
  he showed that when you're focused and when you're determined and when you put all your ducks in a row and you get everything sorted out that you can go and win.
• 25:13
  And I,
• 25:15
  Yeah, I mean, I looked up to Mick.
• 25:17
  I mean, when we talk about people you look up to, I mean, Wayne Gardner, you know, we hadn't had a motorcycling world champion from Australia for how many years?
• 25:27
  You know, a whole generation of riders, including my dad, grew up without having an Australian world champion.
• 25:34
  All of a sudden, you know, there's a whole group of us speedway riders who are, you know, 12, 14, 10, 12, 14 years old.
• 25:42
  we see Wayne Gardner go and win the world 500 CC championship.
• 25:46
  We all go, bloody hell, we can become a world champion, even though we're from Australia, you know?
• 25:52
  And I don't think Wayne, maybe now he understands what he did for a whole generation of Australia.
• 26:00
  Yeah, the impact that he made, um,
• 26:04
  from that world championship win is probably unmeasurable because he showed all of us kids with, you know, the starry eyes that wanna go and race that you can actually not just go and race, you can actually win.
• 26:19
  And obviously Mick and Wayne were rivals.
• 26:23
  So that was, you know, Mick saw it from a closer, a closer side of what went through and,
• 26:32
  I took a lot from seeing Wayne do that and then watching Mick go and dominate.
• 26:39
  And then we had, Troy came along on the super, Troy Bayless came along on the super bikes and Troy Corsa was a fantastic super bike rider.
• 26:46
  And we were blessed with the talent that we produced here.
• 26:52
  And we had Chad in the US doing what he was doing.
• 26:55
  And it was all of a sudden,
• 26:59
  All of us guys were setting an example for all the Aussie kids that you can actually become world champion.
• 27:06
  And I believe our generation, that all started with Wayne.
• 27:10
  I mean, I'm digressing here for one quick second.
• 27:12
  Speedway has absorbed you, has been your life.
• 27:15
  Your son has taken a circuit racing path, shall we say.
• 27:21
  Did that ever tempt you?
• 27:21
  Did you ever think about doing something?
• 27:23
  Yeah, I had a few goes on a road bike.
• 27:25
  I'm bloody useless, but... Why?
• 27:27
  Well, you know, you've got to stick with what you know you can do, I suppose.
• 27:31
  And Speedway was, for me, Speedway was what I wanted to do, and it was doable, you know.
• 27:38
  Seth's decided differently and he's having fun doing what he's doing.
• 27:54
  The early history of Speedway race meetings is a subject of much debate and controversy.
• 27:59
  There is evidence to show that on the 13th of November 1905, a motorcycle race was held at the Newcastle NSW Rugby Ground, a distance of approximately 440 yards.
• 28:13
  Before when you talked about the kind of frustrations of being so close and then finally cracking the world title,
• 28:21
  Was there one or two things in your mind that you felt that you did better, that you grew from, or whatever, that helped?
• 28:29
  Because it's worth sharing with the audience here.
• 28:31
  You came through and did some incredible things in an ultra-competitive period for the sport.
• 28:37
  Some of the guys that you raced regularly are still held in such immense regard.
• 28:42
  I mean, I think...
• 28:44
  someone in prepping for this drew a parallel for me.
• 28:47
  I mean, you've got to look at someone like Roger Federer, for example, in tennis terms.
• 28:53
  I mean, you were top three in the world for a decade plus.
• 28:57
  I mean, that's enormously difficult to do.
• 29:00
  Yeah, and I'm very proud of that.
• 29:04
  People looking from the outside don't understand the pressure and the...
• 29:10
  the commitment that you make in not only your racing life, but your private life, you know, um, as I said, my wife and kids could go for, you know, they could see me maybe four days a month.
• 29:23
  Um, you know, so the sacrifices from everybody, you know, my, my kids were like raised by a single parent for half their life and, um, probably lucky for them cause it turned out.
• 29:34
  Okay.
• 29:35
  Um,
• 29:36
  But yeah, I mean, that 10-year period of my life between 2001 and 2010, I mean, it was crazy.
• 29:47
  I was racing often.
• 29:49
  I was putting myself under a lot of pressure.
• 29:51
  And it was good times and bad times.
• 29:54
  But I look back on it now.
• 29:57
  I'd do it all again, mate.
• 29:58
  Absolutely do it all again and do it happily.
• 30:01
  And I'd definitely change some things because there were mistakes made.
• 30:04
  But what would you do differently?
• 30:08
  Probably, if I'm honest, I'd probably go a bit easier on myself, you know.
• 30:14
  That's just time, though, that you learn that, isn't it?
• 30:16
  Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 30:17
  I mean, look, what I learned in that period of time is you don't win a world championship on your good days.
• 30:25
  You win a world championship on your bad days when you finish, if you can finish fifth instead of eighth, that's when you start to win world championships because everybody who's at that high level, somewhere along the line, unless you're McDoen, somewhere along the line, you're gonna make a mess or something.
• 30:47
  you know, you've got to still maximise those days that you make a bit of a mess of.
• 30:52
  And if that is a fifth instead of an eighth, then those points are what win it for you.
• 30:57
  Great, great advice for youngsters that have ambition that are following this.
• 31:02
  You have alluded already in our discussion just how insane the schedule was for you at times.
• 31:10
  Just if you can, maybe describe a bit of that to people, a little snapshot perhaps, how you manage that.
• 31:18
  Maybe you had people that assisted with all of that so you could just focus on the racing.
• 31:22
  But, I mean, it wasn't uncommon for you to jump on a plane, go to Sweden.
• 31:27
  You talked about Poland before, then back in the UK.
• 31:30
  I mean, it...
• 31:31
  was incredibly busy.
• 31:33
  I'm sure you look back on it and also think, you know, wow, what a great opportunity to be doing that sort of stuff several times a week.
• 31:39
  But it was nuts.
• 31:41
  We're talking 100-odd races a year, aren't we?
• 31:43
  Yeah, there was, you know, there was 100, you know, you added up.
• 31:47
  You were doing 35 to 40 meetings in the British League in the UK, 20 to 25 in the Swedish League, and...
• 31:55
  You know, the Polish League, which is the biggest league in Speedway, that's 25 meetings a year, so you're kind of up around 75, 80 there.
• 32:04
  And then you throw in your 10 or 12 Speedway Grand Prix's, your Speedway World Cup.
• 32:11
  You know, you're up around 100 meetings.
• 32:15
  The travel and organization, we were pretty organized, as you have to be.
• 32:20
  Speedway riders have a lot of bikes.
• 32:22
  It's not like with MotoGP boys that have two bikes there.
• 32:26
  I mean, I could ride anything up to 10 bikes a week.
• 32:30
  We had a base in Poland.
• 32:32
  We had a base in Sweden.
• 32:34
  Mechanics in each place, a base in the UK.
• 32:38
  Basically, mate, I used to jump off a plane with a backpack and
• 32:42
  you know, turn up and somebody would pick me up and take me to a race meeting and I had everything there.
• 32:46
  Good to go.
• 32:47
  And it was like that for years.
• 32:50
  And, you know, the travel was, I mean, a week could be anything.
• 32:57
  If I started my week on a Sunday, Sunday would be the Polish League.
• 33:02
  My home team in England for the majority of that time was the Bellevue Aces, so they raced on a Monday night in Manchester.
• 33:09
  So I would fly, race in Poland Sunday, fly back to Manchester on Monday, race in Manchester Monday night.
• 33:19
  Swedish league runs on a Tuesday.
• 33:20
  So six o'clock Tuesday morning, I'd be flying to Copenhagen and then on to somewhere in Sweden, close by where I was racing.
• 33:30
  Back to the UK on a Wednesday, maybe have a race in the UK Wednesday or Thursday, depending on the schedule.
• 33:39
  out to a Grand Prix for Grand Prix practice Friday, race to Grand Prix Saturday, and then back to Poland for Sunday, and then Monday, Tuesday again, England and Sweden.
• 33:48
  Amazing.
• 33:49
  Just, I mean, so hard to stitch all that together and then to think that sometimes things can go wrong, planes delayed or something along those lines.
• 33:58
  You must have been constantly thinking ahead of the game.
• 34:02
  Well, you tried to be, you know, you had to give you, have to allow a little bit of time in there.
• 34:09
  I mean, there were tracks, for example, in Sweden, my home track over there for years and years was next to the airport.
• 34:18
  Yeah.
• 34:19
  So, you know, I was supposed to arrive in there at five o'clock on a Tuesday with the racing starting at seven o'clock.
• 34:25
  So, you know, they, if I was running late, the guys at the track didn't need to call me or try and figure out when I was turning up, they could see the plane coming in.
• 34:33
  So, um...
• 34:36
  Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty crazy life.
• 34:39
  And unless you really understand it, it's almost unbelievable.
• 34:43
  It is a great stadium sport.
• 34:46
  Each of those countries have different fans and different experiences or expectations.
• 34:52
  the race, the venue.
• 34:54
  Is there one that kind of you look back on now and kind of a little bit of hairs on your neck because it was an epic night or the venue and the fans?
• 35:03
  I mean, is there one that you cherish a little bit?
• 35:06
  Yeah, for sure.
• 35:07
  I mean, in 2009, I won the world championship at the end of the year, but we had a, one of our Grand Prix's was at Cardiff that year in the Millennium Stadium there.
• 35:17
  Um,
• 35:18
  It's, I think, the Principality Stadium now down there in Wales.
• 35:22
  And I'd always gone pretty good at Cardiff, and no one had ever gone through the card there before unbeaten.
• 35:30
  And in 2009, I had a day where, you know, seven races, seven wins.
• 35:34
  I think if I'd had 100 races that day, I probably would have won them all.
• 35:37
  But it was one of those nights where...
• 35:42
  You know, I'd prepared for it well.
• 35:44
  I had mechanically, I was very happy with what I was riding at the time.
• 35:48
  And to be honest, it's probably one of the best performances of my life.
• 35:53
  And fortunately for me, it was on the big stage at the biggest Speedway event of the year and I managed to do it.
• 36:00
  So yeah, I remember that meeting fondly.
• 36:03
  I think the helmet's hanging up just over there, mate, somewhere, so yeah.
• 36:09
  Yeah, that was a very special night.
• 36:12
  We had a lot of friends there with us that night.
• 36:14
  I mean, no Speedway Grand Prix in Australia at that time.
• 36:18
  So the British was like my home race.
• 36:22
  Yeah, so that definitely is a standout.
• 36:25
  You've achieved, you know, a unique place in the record books.
• 36:31
  You know, success at world level as an individual, in a team sense, in the manner that you talked about.
• 36:37
  It's probably very hard to identify, you know, is one more special than another because there are different reasons for them.
• 36:43
  But can we start with, I mean, firstly, too, you did it as an under 21, didn't you?
• 36:47
  Yeah, I did.
• 36:49
  Again, the under-21 championship took me a little while to win, but it was a huge stepping stone.
• 36:58
  And at that point in time, winning the under-21 world championship was a direct ticket into Speedway Grand Prix.
• 37:07
  Apart from becoming the junior world champion, you also got to play with the big boys.
• 37:11
  So, yeah, to win that in 95 was a huge thing for me.
• 37:18
  I was probably favourite for it the year before, but made a bit of a mess of that day.
• 37:23
  took me a year to, took me a year to get over it, mate, to be honest.
• 37:27
  But, um, I won that in 95, which put me directly into Speedway Grand Prix in 1996.
• 37:33
  And, you know, I was 20, 21 years old and, you know, racing against the big guns at that time, Rick Hardson, Hans Nielsen, Sam Malenko, Tommy Knudsen.
• 37:45
  It was tough.
• 37:47
  You know, it kicked me in the guts big time.
• 37:49
  And I had a pretty ordinary year.
• 37:52
  Um,
• 37:53
  in the Grand Prix's that year until we got to the British round and I surprised everybody, including myself and won it.
• 37:59
  But, um, you know, it was, it was a, it was a really, really funny year and it was a, it was a, I'd say difficult time in my life, but it was a time when I was growing, I just bought a house in the UK and I had started to understand what commitment was and, um,
• 38:17
  Yeah, it was a funny time.
• 38:19
  I missed the Grand Prix.
• 38:20
  I didn't stay in the series for 97.
• 38:21
  I had to qualify back in and then managed to stay in it for the rest of my career.
• 38:27
  So I was pretty proud of that.
• 38:28
  I'm always interested when I talk to racers and athletes generally about the crossover point.
• 38:33
  Earlier in the discussion, you talked about the uncertainty in your teenage years, never quite knowing about would it be full-time?
• 38:41
  Could I make the grade?
• 38:42
  Could I make the cut here?
• 38:43
  So what was it that moment when you had the GP breakthrough, all the under-21s?
• 38:47
  Was there a moment where you thought, right, I can do this.
• 38:52
  This is a place for me, a future for me.
• 38:54
  And while never taking it for granted and thinking you were cemented, but just that moment of belief where you've arrived?
• 39:03
  Well, I think the moment of belief would have come in 1996 when I won a Grand Prix.
• 39:10
  As I said, I hadn't had a great year.
• 39:13
  I could compete with the top guys in domestic racing.
• 39:17
  You know, I was learning that there was different levels.
• 39:21
  You know, say, for example...
• 39:24
  Tony Rickardson was difficult to beat in a Swedish league match on the Tuesday night.
• 39:29
  But if you raced against him at the Grand Prix on the Saturday, he was a different level.
• 39:35
  And I didn't have that.
• 39:39
  I didn't have that in my arsenal at that point.
• 39:41
  I didn't understand that when you race in Sweden on the Tuesday night, you give 100%.
• 39:48
  But when you go to the Grand Prix Saturday, you give 150%.
• 39:53
  Um, you know, the, excuse me, the risk of, the risk of riding Tuesday and Thursday before a Grand Prix has to be put in its place so that you're right to go on Saturday.
• 40:07
  And that's, that's something that I was learning at that stage.
• 40:11
  And, and I think when you get to the point, you understand that, then you realize that you can.
• 40:18
  play with the big boys and you've got a chance to be racing with them week in, week out in the world championship.
• 40:25
  And you find your level and you find your place in the standings very quickly.
• 40:32
  You've brought it up, which is great.
• 40:33
  Let's talk a few of those contemporaries, if we can.
• 40:36
  The guns that you raced against that perhaps made an impression on you.
• 40:39
  What you thought about going wheel to wheel with them.
• 40:43
  Let's start with Simon Wig.
• 40:45
  I think, what was he?
• 40:45
  Five-time world long track champion.
• 40:47
  And we sadly lost him in 2000, didn't we?
• 40:50
  Yeah, I mean, Si was one of the good guys at Speedway.
• 40:54
  I consider myself fortunate to have raced
• 40:58
  in an era where Si, Hans Nielsen, Tommy Knudsen, Sam O'Malenko, these sort of guys were not the force they were, maybe five years before, but I got to race with those guys and I learned
• 41:16
  I learnt a lot about racing, preparing.
• 41:20
  I was talking to somebody about it the other day.
• 41:23
  You know, you turn up in Germany at a grass track in July and it's, you know, it's 35, 40 degrees like it is here.
• 41:31
  And, you know, you learn about hydration very quickly and watch what those, what Si did and how he did it all and then speak to him afterwards.
• 41:42
  Um, yeah, he was, for me, I had a, I had a really good relationship with him.
• 41:49
  We lived maybe 15 minutes away from each other.
• 41:52
  Um, huge character, always trying to innovate, you know, raced in green that nobody wanted to race in.
• 41:59
  So it was a little different.
• 42:01
  But the other side to Simon was when, when I was buying my first house just up the road from him.
• 42:09
  He came and sat down with me and he said, right, you've got a house now, you've got commitments.
• 42:14
  What insurance have you got?
• 42:16
  How have you got this worked out?
• 42:17
  How have you got that worked out?
• 42:19
  And he sat down with me and gave me a list of everything that I had to do.
• 42:23
  And what are you going to do when you go back to Aussie?
• 42:25
  Who's paying for this?
• 42:26
  How are you paying?
• 42:27
  You know, all the rest of it.
• 42:30
  So...
• 42:31
  Um, my relationship with Simon was, we were pretty close and, you know, our workshops were, were nearby.
• 42:39
  His mechanic was an Aussie guy who I still see around here now, Brett.
• 42:43
  Um, my mechanic was an Aussie guy.
• 42:45
  So, uh, we used to spend a lot of time, um, away from the track as, as well.
• 42:51
  So it was, it was, I had a good relationship and, you know, it was so sad to see, you know, what happened to Si in the end.
• 43:00
  Open up a bit more on, if you can, Sam Emelenko, you brought him up.
• 43:03
  93 world champion.
• 43:04
  I mean, American, he was a popular figure when he came down under too, wasn't he?
• 43:08
  He was.
• 43:09
  And I had a bit of a problem with Sam on the racetrack.
• 43:12
  Away from the racetrack, we were good buddies and always were.
• 43:17
  The problem with Sam was he and my dad actually had problems on the racetrack.
• 43:24
  And I think he continued to look at the, missed the first name and just look at the last name.
• 43:29
  So he figured he was, he was just racing a crump.
• 43:31
  So again, you know, you look at the, you know, the early nineties, Sam was untouchable.
• 43:40
  You know, he was such a skillful motorcyclist and he mechanically, he was very good, um, um,
• 43:49
  racing wise, he was, the way he could do things on the bike was, he was almost at a different level than most.
• 43:57
  I think he probably undersold himself with winning one world championship, if I'm honest, but just, yeah, I don't know.
• 44:05
  We had a love-hate relationship.
• 44:08
  We spent so many nights together.
• 44:09
  We'd share hotel rooms, we'd travel together, get on the racetrack and one of us would be on our ass.
• 44:16
  But two hours later, mate, we were in the car going back to the same hotel room.
• 44:19
  I'd be threatening to put one on his chin or he'd be threatening to put one on my chin.
• 44:24
  And, you know, and then two hours later, it's like one of us had walk up kind of, you know, asking everything.
• 44:32
  Okay.
• 44:32
  Yeah, let's go.
• 44:34
  Awesome.
• 44:35
  Awesome.
• 44:35
  Two more if we can.
• 44:37
  Tony Rickardson, the Swede.
• 44:39
  What was it?
• 44:40
  Six world titles in 15 attempts.
• 44:42
  Epic.
• 44:43
  And at a period where you're trying to, you know, tick world championship boxes or world title boxes as well.
• 44:51
  Tony and I, this is how Tony and my relationship first started.
• 44:57
  Again, my dad's involved.
• 45:00
  So obviously Tony was over here racing in a Swedish team before I was old enough.
• 45:05
  So he's racing against my dad.
• 45:08
  and I was looking to earn a bit of money.
• 45:10
  So I'm friends with a few of the Swedish guys.
• 45:13
  So I decide, yeah, I'm gonna ask these guys if I should, you know, if I can wash their bikes cause they're here on holiday and don't wanna probably work on their bikes.
• 45:21
  How old are you this time?
• 45:23
  I was like 14, 15 at the time.
• 45:25
  So anyway, I lined myself up a job for the summer with all the Swedish boys.
• 45:29
  I was preparing their bikes.
• 45:30
  I was washing and preparing their bikes for them.
• 45:32
  So Tony was one of them.
• 45:34
  So before I ever raced Tony, I'd prepared his bike for a summer of racing when he came to Australia to race.
• 45:42
  Yeah.
• 45:44
  kind of crazy when you look back and think that, you know, six or seven years after I was washing his bikes, I'm out racing in world championships against him.
• 45:54
  It's crazy how life works, but Tony and I always got on.
• 45:59
  We were, um, fierce rivals, you know, um, I had a huge amount of respect for what he could do on a bike and, um,
• 46:14
  The thing with Tony was when you raced against him, he was the hardest bastard you raced against, but he was fair.
• 46:27
  I struggle to think of a time when I came in after a race and wanted to go and kind of have a bit of a blue with him about something he'd done on track.
• 46:36
  He was hard, but he didn't actually cut that many people off.
• 46:42
  And we...
• 46:44
  You know, we were...
• 46:46
  I say we were friends.
• 46:48
  We weren't friends because you're not friends with the guy that you're trying to beat and the guy that's setting the benchmark in Speedway.
• 46:54
  But I'm proud to...
• 46:57
  Very proud to say that I was a competitor to Tony.
• 47:00
  And for many years, I was probably the only one that could really give him any hassle.
• 47:04
  And I'll, you know, give him any hassle over the course of the season, of course.
• 47:09
  But I think...
• 47:13
  I probably bought the best out in him.
• 47:14
  I know he most definitely did with me.
• 47:17
  And I'm proud to have beaten him in the World Championship a few times.
• 47:22
  He beat me more, but I managed to beat him a few times.
• 47:25
  Respect, mate.
• 47:26
  That's a great memory or the way that you've recounted that.
• 47:32
  Last one, Greg Hancock, USA.
• 47:34
  What was it?
• 47:34
  Over 200 Speedway GPs, finalists for almost half of those.
• 47:38
  I think there's 67 podiums, 20 wins.
• 47:41
  I mean, incredible longevity.
• 47:43
  I mean, champion between 97 and 2016.
• 47:47
  Crazy.
• 47:48
  Um, I actually spoke to Greg not that long ago.
• 47:54
  Greg and I were, again, I knew Greg before I raced against him through being in America a few times and,
• 48:04
  We always got on well.
• 48:07
  Again, he was a hard guy on track, but always would leave you just enough to make sure that he was going to make his move, but he was going to leave you on the bike.
• 48:18
  So huge amount of respect for Greg on the racetrack.
• 48:23
  And, you know, again, he was one of the guys that you could beat him Monday to Friday,
• 48:32
  but he was also able to lift his game considerably for the Grand Prix for the big occasion.
• 48:38
  And he was, yeah, he's American and he's kind of, you know, Greg's got a good persona.
• 48:47
  He's a friendly, happy-go-lucky sort of guy.
• 48:50
  And I mean, he's racing his career from 97 to 2016, you know, unbelievable that he could race for that long.
• 49:06
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with Motorsport Hall of Famer Jason Crump.
• 49:11
  Jump back to the library and hit the gas on part two.
• 49:14
  Toll Racing Took, the next generation Crump racer, your questions.
• 49:19
  And why Mark Webber might have a future as a Spider-Man stunt double or cat burglar.
• 49:24
  It's all there right now for you to enjoy.
• 49:35
  Listener.