Latest / Rusty's Garage / Jason Crump (Part 2)

Transcript

Jason Crump (Part 2) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:20
  G'day, it's Rusty here, all set for part two of my podcast with Speedway great Jason Crump, who held it wide open for over 20 years and wowed the men's stadiums all over Europe on the way to several world titles.
• 0:33
  If you haven't already, jump back to the library and give part one a listen, from following in the family footsteps to taking on the world.
• 0:41
  Insights on some legendary rivals and what it was like sharing the track with them.
• 0:46
  We kick off part two by looking back at the title that meant so much to him and why.
• 0:54
  Yeah, I mean, the first world championship, Rusty, anybody, I believe anybody who wins a world championship, first of all, you've got to have some talent, got to have a bit of luck on your side because, you know, there's never an unlucky world champion.
• 1:12
  But when you can finally put it all together and you can pick the big trophy up at the end of the year, then you know you've done a pretty bloody good because the year before you may have done just one or two small mistakes and you maybe don't get to lift it.
• 1:30
  You know, anybody who can win the World Championship, I'm sure, says the first time they win it, it's a special...
• 1:38
  It's very special and you don't forget that one.
• 1:41
  Does it sort of fall into the same category then in a team's sense for you?
• 1:45
  Yeah, I mean, our team, the Australian team at that point in the Speedway World Cup, I mean, we won the old format of the World Team Cup in 99 in the Czech Republic and...
• 1:59
  You know, the feeling we got from that, there was a five of us in the team.
• 2:05
  Lee, Ryan, Brian Sullivan, Todd Wiltshire, Jason Lyons and myself.
• 2:12
  So Lee, Jason and myself were all grew up in Mildura.
• 2:16
  We're all from Mildura.
• 2:18
  So for the three of us to be there with Todd and Ryan and win the World Cup was a pretty, that was pretty special.
• 2:27
  But the Speedway World Cup as it got renamed in 2001, we went to Poland when Poland were a powerhouse team.
• 2:36
  We went to one of the most difficult tracks in Poland.
• 2:40
  And
• 2:41
  It came down to me in the last race against the pole in the last race.
• 2:47
  And there was five in the race at that point.
• 2:49
  It was a regular track.
• 2:51
  It wasn't an extra big track.
• 2:54
  And, man, I had Rickardson in the race as well.
• 2:57
  And it was a tight old first turn.
• 3:00
  And unfortunately for the pole on the outside, he ended up on his backside and he was excluded.
• 3:05
  So we won the World Cup.
• 3:07
  And I think that that...
• 3:11
  2001 Speedway World Cup, um, also is a huge, um, it was a huge moment in my career because again, the same bunch of riders with Craig Boyce in the team, um, um, um, um, um, um,
• 3:26
  We beat the Poles in Poland and it shouldn't have happened.
• 3:30
  It should not have happened.
• 3:32
  And it was, you know, Thomas Golub was at the peak of his career at that point.
• 3:38
  And, you know, after the race I beat Golub in.
• 3:42
  the stadium went completely crazy and I'm being pelted with rocks and bottles and cans and anything and everything that any of the Polish fans could get.
• 3:52
  You know, I'm riding back to the pits after the race and I'm being I'm just being hit with whatever could be found.
• 3:59
  So, yeah, it was it was a pretty wild.
• 4:03
  My wife and daughter at the time at the end of the meeting, we actually had to have.
• 4:12
  about 10 police cars to drive us out of the stadium.
• 4:15
  We were on the floor in the van.
• 4:17
  We had two armored police sitting in the front that were driving it.
• 4:22
  We had police cars and vans in front beside, take us straight to our hotel.
• 4:28
  The police got us out of the vehicle and took us into the hotel and actually had riot squad out the front of the hotel room for the whole night.
• 4:40
  They love it there, but they are crazy passionate in that sense.
• 4:43
  Well, they are.
• 4:45
  And like I said, there was no way we should have beaten Poland that night.
• 4:49
  But us five or six guys from Aussie, we pulled together and we got it done in Poland.
• 4:55
  And I think that's also, as I said, one of my biggest achievements.
• 4:59
  And to do it with a few of the other Aussie boys was pretty cool as well.
• 5:02
  Awesome.
• 5:03
  Let's bounce through a couple of other things.
• 5:04
  You said in Speedway terms, it's not uncommon for you to have bikes in different places.
• 5:10
  Mick has been able to keep, you know, a bike from each of his championship winning years.
• 5:14
  You've kept a few as well.
• 5:16
  You probably don't have to go through all of them if you don't want to.
• 5:17
  But is there one or two that you have a fond attachment to?
• 5:22
  And if so, which ones are they?
• 5:23
  Yeah, I'm very fortunate to have been able to keep stuff that I wanted.
• 5:29
  You know, it's...
• 5:31
  when you're a speedway rider, you're the team owner as well.
• 5:33
  So all the, all the bikes are your own.
• 5:35
  Um, there's not so much at this house, but my dad's got a lot of stuff at his house as well.
• 5:41
  So, you know, we, I've kept all of the bikes that, um, that I crossed the, the, you know, that I used in the race that I won the world championship in, of course.
• 5:51
  And, um, regretfully at the time, I wasn't financial enough to be able to keep the bike.
• 5:57
  I won the under 21 world championship on, but, um,
• 6:01
  I wish I could.
• 6:02
  And if anybody out there knows where it is or who has it, I'd definitely like to know.
• 6:08
  But, you know, there's different things.
• 6:10
  You keep your helmets.
• 6:11
  You know, I've got a whole room downstairs that's full of race suits.
• 6:15
  Some silverware trophies.
• 6:18
  Yeah, stuff like that.
• 6:19
  But the things I like are the FIM medals.
• 6:25
  Unfortunately, I have a few more silver than gold.
• 6:29
  it's an it's it's a brutal game most of the circuit races bike races I've spoken to have all got injury tails what about you over time some of the the crashes and and perhaps the you know the injuries that were tough to deal with yeah I mean it's you know touch wood for me in my main racing career Rusty I stayed away from injury and I think that was
• 6:55
  That was obviously in that 10-year period of being in the top three in the World Championship, that was a huge contributing factor to it, was to be able to stay out of trouble in the 80, 90 other meetings that you're doing every year and make sure that you're on the start line for every major meeting.
• 7:14
  So, yeah.
• 7:16
  You know, yeah, there's things, you know, I had one year I had to have knee surgery mid-season.
• 7:23
  You know, things like a shoulder dislocation or a broken collarbone, to be honest, they're more of a pain in the arse than a...
• 7:33
  you know, they're not a career ending problem, but they're a pain in the arse.
• 7:36
  You can run around them, don't you?
• 7:37
  Well, you can to an extent.
• 7:39
  I mean, the collarbone things, you know, if you get it pinned or plated, it's normally a week or 10 days and you're good to go.
• 7:46
  And, you know, just different knocks, but, you know, it's racing.
• 7:53
  You're racing a motorbike, you know, you can hurt yourself and sometimes you do, unfortunately.
• 7:59
  A couple of listener questions, which we'll get to shortly.
• 8:02
  But can we turn left for a minute and have a little bit of fun?
• 8:06
  Firstly, you spoke at the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame dinner a couple of years ago.
• 8:12
  in relation to Mark Webber.
• 8:15
  You two are good mates.
• 8:17
  He and Anne have loved coming to Speedway bike meetings in the UK, they really enjoy that.
• 8:23
  And I think you recount, or you told a story about, maybe you got home to his place one night and you'd forgotten his keys and you had to clamber up a pipe or something and break in.
• 8:32
  Just share that with us.
• 8:33
  Yeah, we'd actually flown, it was, we were, I was at his place to go to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix.
• 8:42
  And I can't, I think, yeah, that's right.
• 8:46
  We got up on the Sunday morning to go to the circuit and the weather was terrible.
• 8:51
  So we couldn't take the helicopter.
• 8:53
  So we, first thing in the morning, we've got a helsteer from Mark's house to the circuit.
• 8:59
  Luckily it's only about half an hour away.
• 9:01
  So we jump in the car and off we go.
• 9:04
  So that's all good.
• 9:05
  We have the day there.
• 9:07
  Great race.
• 9:08
  Great race for him because he strategically outplayed Ferrari and he ends up passing Alonso with six or eight laps to go and win the race.
• 9:17
  Well, the weather's cleared by that stage, so the helicopter's all on to go home now, so that's great.
• 9:25
  But, of course, the house keys are on the car key ring who one of the assistants is going to drive home.
• 9:32
  So off we go in the helicopter and land at the house.
• 9:37
  Where's the keys?
• 9:38
  So he says to me, oh...
• 9:44
  what are you doing now then?
• 9:45
  Yeah, he says something like that.
• 9:47
  And I said, well, my mechanics are here because I'm racing tomorrow.
• 9:50
  I'm at Kingsland tomorrow, Speedway World Cup qualifying round.
• 9:56
  So what are we gonna do?
• 9:58
  So I said, well, I need my passport because I've got a straight up- Which is in the house.
• 10:02
  Which is in the house, of course.
• 10:05
  So he clambers up on the, he says to me, oh, you can climb up and get in through that window.
• 10:09
  And I said, I'm not doing that.
• 10:10
  I've got a race tomorrow.
• 10:11
  You've got a couple of weeks off.
• 10:14
  So he's up and in and the alarm goes off and they've obviously got everything programmed because it's Formula One weekend, so everybody knows he's away.
• 10:23
  So yeah, the alarm and security guards turn up and everything.
• 10:27
  So yeah.
• 10:29
  I love it.
• 10:29
  It was quite a funny story.
• 10:31
  The British Grand Prix winner of the day, like a spider monkey, climbing up the pole and the pipe and breaking into the house.
• 10:38
  Yeah, that's right.
• 10:38
  Breaking into his own house.
• 10:40
  to get my bag with my passport in.
• 10:42
  I love it.
• 10:43
  I love it.
• 10:43
  One of my good friends, you and I talked about this before starting the record today, is Trevor Long, who I worked with in radio an eternity ago.
• 10:50
  For listeners, he is the tech guy now on the Today Show on Channel 9.
• 10:56
  call him Flipper.
• 10:57
  And this goes back to David Tapp's series, 500 Days and memories of the 90s and driving around Australia.
• 11:05
  But you actually gave him that nickname.
• 11:08
  Is that right?
• 11:08
  I did.
• 11:09
  I did give Trevor the nickname of Flipper because he was always flipping out at me because I'd done something wrong.
• 11:15
  And I'm guessing Trevor and I must be
• 11:18
  very similar ages because we were both kind of young men and he was very hard headed in doing what his boss Tappy was telling him to do.
• 11:25
  And I was doing what my boss myself was telling me to do.
• 11:28
  And it didn't always meet.
• 11:32
  How good is it?
• 11:33
  You know, I'm still in touch with Flippa now.
• 11:35
  And, you know, it's... Yeah, the memories that you get from motorsport are pretty amazing.
• 11:41
  Fantastic, mate.
• 11:42
  Have you paused in all of this in later, a little bit later life, and just thought about the mark you made at GP level?
• 11:50
  And I don't just mean in result terms, about the way that it kind of...
• 11:54
  The impact that you had in helping to shape that aspect of the sport.
• 11:59
  Well, I'm...
• 12:02
  I hope I did.
• 12:03
  You know, and a lot of the guys now I'm in communications with, you know, I have a bit of communication with Ty Wulfenden and Bartos Smarslik and a few of the other guys.
• 12:16
  You know, and they do ask me a lot of questions, you know, especially about the consistency I had for that period of time.
• 12:24
  you know, like I said to them, there's no secret.
• 12:27
  It's just about planning and being prepared for it all.
• 12:30
  And, you know, the way the guys ride now is they, you know, I don't know if it's the way that the improvements in TV cameras and lighting, if it looks faster and closer now or whether they actually are riding crazier than we ever rode.
• 12:49
  I'm not sure on that one, but...
• 12:52
  I watch these guys now and the moves they pull and, you know, some of the things you see Jason Doyle do in Grand Prix, I'm like, you know, I couldn't do, I could never have done that.
• 13:04
  But, you know, I guess maybe I did.
• 13:08
  You've dabbled in a bit of commentary.
• 13:10
  Do you enjoy that side of it and imparting, sharing some of the knowledge that you bring to the table?
• 13:15
  Yeah, it's great.
• 13:15
  I love it.
• 13:17
  You know, it's...
• 13:18
  It's interesting for me to watch because I can, you know, from a commentating point of view, you know when you see a certain driver get himself into a position, you know what he's thinking and what his plan is and you've got to convey that to the listener at home and, you know, it's…
• 13:37
  Watching a speedway race for me, depending on who was in it, I could almost predict what was going to happen before it started.
• 13:42
  But you can.
• 13:45
  A lot of times you can.
• 13:46
  But, no, I loved doing it.
• 13:48
  It was great fun.
• 13:49
  And to work with Tappy on a few of those speedway Grand Prixs was really great.
• 13:52
  And, you know, I'd love to see a speedway Grand Prix come back to Aussie again.
• 13:57
  It was a great event in what was Etihad Stadium then.
• 14:03
  Unfortunately, we just didn't get enough people in.
• 14:05
  Yeah, it was indeed very good.
• 14:07
  We'll go kindly on you.
• 14:08
  We'll be nice to you, but we've got some ripper questions from a few people from the industry and fans as well that have come through on social media, if you're okay.
• 14:15
  First one from Alex Cudlin, who says, if you could introduce and maybe mould one youngster from Australia, perhaps from dirt track, into the Speedway world, is there anyone that you've got your eye on?
• 14:26
  Who would that be?
• 14:28
  Damn, that's a good question, Alex.
• 14:31
  Fine motorcycle rider himself, Alex, yeah, and his brother Damien.
• 14:35
  Do you know, I haven't been to a dirt track meeting for a long time, but as I said before, our junior speedway program in Australia alongside dirt track, junior dirt tracking and kids racing motorcycles.
• 14:49
  It's not a surprise that we continually produce good high-level motorcyclists because of our junior program.
• 14:55
  And every time I do go to a dirt track meeting or a junior speedway meeting, I look at kids and I go, yep, that kid can, you know, he can do it.
• 15:05
  But to give you a name would be unfair.
• 15:08
  Okay, fair enough.
• 15:09
  Some have asked about whether you contemplated a move to four wheels.
• 15:13
  And there's one here from Scott Withers who says, why didn't the sprint car deal happen?
• 15:17
  Well, I was very keen on sprint cars for a long time, but, um, as with everything, you've got to know, you know, you've got to know where your limits are.
• 15:26
  And, um, as much as sprint car racing would have been great fun to do at, at the time I was coming from a...
• 15:35
  25 year speedway career and couldn't actually face the thought of having to go and wash a sprint car or prepare a sprint car week in week out so it was probably more down to me than anything else at that point.
• 15:49
  Cool one from Mark Drury who's a pond but now lives on the Sunshine Coast fond memories he says he's got fond memories of Millennium Stadium he says you were always a
• 16:01
  Who of your rivals did you look forward to the most in terms of going wheel to wheel, maybe having that on-track scrap with them?
• 16:09
  Yeah, Ricardton, obviously.
• 16:14
  had some fantastic battles with Tony over the years.
• 16:17
  You get to race with a lot of different riders and you learn very quickly which ones you can trust with not metres or centimetres, but millimetres.
• 16:27
  And there was a few I definitely didn't want to be engaged in proper combat, if you like, with.
• 16:34
  But then, you know, guys like Tony and Thomas Golub, Lee Adams, you know,
• 16:40
  Guys with fantastic motorcycle control, Greg Hancock, you can race, you know, you can be touching each other and race with.
• 16:48
  So any of those top bunch of guys was no problem.
• 16:52
  Mark Lorem, English world champion.
• 16:55
  You could race with Mark.
• 16:58
  you know, all day and all night and be rubbing, running into each other, touching each other.
• 17:04
  And it was all fine.
• 17:07
  Carl Phillips, did you ever consider sidecars?
• 17:11
  Never.
• 17:12
  Never.
• 17:14
  Journalist, Will Dale.
• 17:17
  Casting your memory back here, what did you say to Chris Holder in 2012 to kind of calm him down after that tangle with Nicky Pedersen in the first start at that world title deciding semi-final?
• 17:28
  Can you remember that?
• 17:29
  Yeah, clearly.
• 17:32
  Gate One was working exceptionally well that night.
• 17:36
  Chris had Gate One in that race and it's the biggest race of his life.
• 17:39
  Obviously, he's racing for the World Championship
• 17:44
  I could see what was happening and I could see the mind games.
• 17:47
  Nikki was starting to put into motion around what was going on.
• 17:51
  They were parked next to each other in the pits and I could see everything that was happening.
• 17:56
  And my uncle and I, we were talking about, you know, this is this is not a done deal yet for Chris.
• 18:05
  And somehow or another, Chris made a bit of a mess at the start off the inside gate, which was working very, very well.
• 18:12
  And Nicky got himself into a position.
• 18:14
  Chris, in my opinion, was quite fortunate to get away with not being disqualified in that race.
• 18:21
  So when it all came back to normal and they'd had their pushing and shoving and everything was kind of settled down a little bit, I grabbed hold of Chris and just took him away from that charged up moment there that happened at the gate on the track.
• 18:38
  And he said to me, what do I do?
• 18:41
  And I said, you drop the clutch when the tapes go up.
• 18:44
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but where do I line up at the start?
• 18:47
  I said, mate, wherever you would normally line up.
• 18:50
  You race here week in, week out.
• 18:51
  You know where the good spots are to line up.
• 18:53
  You know the reaction of your bike when you drop the clutch.
• 18:57
  Look at the dirt.
• 18:58
  Think about it for 20 seconds.
• 19:00
  You know exactly what your bike's going to do, where you line up.
• 19:04
  But when the tapes go, drop the clutch.
• 19:08
  And he looked at me like it was...
• 19:11
  In that moment, when you're under that much stress and you're hyped up and you want to win the world championship, you only have to go back to the basics.
• 19:19
  Drop the clutch when the tapes go up.
• 19:22
  And he went out and did that and won the race and won the world championship.
• 19:25
  So it was really no secret.
• 19:28
  There's nothing special about what I said to him.
• 19:30
  I said just...
• 19:32
  Do that.
• 19:33
  But when you wound up like that sometimes, breaking it down and reminding just to keep it simple.
• 19:38
  Yeah, for sure.
• 19:40
  And I could see exactly what had been going on for the previous 15 minutes before that race.
• 19:46
  And we, you know, like I said, my uncle and I, we knew exactly what, pretty much exactly what was going to happen because Nicky was a master of that.
• 19:55
  And I think that's why Nicky and I had a bit of, you know, we had a bit of needle there for a while because he knew that his...
• 20:02
  his mind games weren't going to affect me.
• 20:04
  And he nearly, he very nearly stolen himself a world championship off Chris Holder by playing those mind games.
• 20:10
  And, um, you know, uh, I, I was, I was very proud to see Chris win that night because, um, you know, he was a kid that we helped out a bit when he came to Europe and
• 20:24
  hugely hugely talented rider and um you know my theory was it's better to have an australian world champion than a dane again so you know but yeah you're right rusty you in in that moment the basics are what you forget but they're what you need to remember the most
• 20:53
  Did you know you can pick up second-hand Speedway bikes for about five grand?
• 20:58
  Imagine trying to get that thing registered without brakes.
• 21:03
  Troy Byron, any involvement with the Speedway of Nations team if it runs this year?
• 21:11
  Possibly not.
• 21:13
  I've never really been involved in the Australian Speedway of Nations team apart from when I rode in it.
• 21:20
  I actually work, I work in, I'm involved with Speedway Great Britain, actually, in their coaching and youth development program.
• 21:30
  So the chance to work for the Australian team may be a bit difficult.
• 21:36
  Okay.
• 21:37
  Any truth to a rumour floating around that you might enter the Australian Championship later this year?
• 21:43
  I wouldn't even, I haven't even thought about it, but I would say it's very, very unlikely for me to do that.
• 21:51
  You have to remember that the Australian Championship is the first stage for riders to qualify to get into the Grand Prix.
• 21:57
  I've got no Grand Prix ambition.
• 21:59
  And, you know, to put yourself in a meeting like that when guys are going for the next stage of the World Championship, it's probably not a place for a 45, 46-year-old.
• 22:10
  A colleague, Michael Heaton, who's one of my TV producers, been around motorsport for some time, he wondered, and so did I, and we both hope that you're okay to talk about this, he pondered the impact of Lee Adams' crash and how that may have affected you.
• 22:26
  He was a fellow Aussie rider, as you've detailed in our chat here.
• 22:29
  He crashed while training for the Fink Desert Race in the Northern Territory in 2011, and very sadly that was life-changing for him.
• 22:37
  Yeah.
• 22:37
  Look that, you know, the only, the only thing I can really say about that is that for probably the last two or three years that we were racing with each other in Europe, every time I saw Lee, he's talking about Fink, you know, you know, I knew he was going to do it.
• 22:56
  We all knew he was going to do it.
• 22:57
  He'd been planning it.
• 22:58
  That was, that was what he wanted to do when he finished racing.
• 23:01
  And, you know, um,
• 23:05
  Yeah, I mean, obviously,
• 23:08
  It was a shock and it was, you know, obviously for him and his family an absolutely terrible outcome for it.
• 23:15
  But all you can say about it is that he was doing exactly what he wanted to do and he was doing something that he'd planned on doing, you know, as soon as he stopped racing.
• 23:27
  If it would have been in January instead of June or July, whenever it is, if it was in January, he probably would have been doing it every year anyway.
• 23:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:35
  You know, it's just the fact that it's in the middle of his work season in Europe.
• 23:41
  You know, and honestly, if I would have heard one year that Lee had flown back to Aussie for a week to do Fink mid-season, I wouldn't have been surprised.
• 23:49
  He loves that stuff, you know.
• 23:52
  So, yeah, it was a huge shock.
• 23:56
  And, you know, I...
• 23:58
  Obviously, he's down south and we're up here, so I don't see him very often, but it's always good to catch up.
• 24:04
  We did a lot of stuff together, and obviously, we were fierce rivals, a fantastic rider, and I say this with the utmost respect.
• 24:15
  When I look back at my rivals, Lee was a rival...
• 24:19
  Monday to Friday.
• 24:20
  And of course he won Speedway Grand Prix, but honestly never felt that he was going to challenge me all season to be world champion.
• 24:28
  And I don't say that with anything other than respect.
• 24:32
  He could beat me whenever he wanted.
• 24:37
  but I always felt that I had a bit of an edge on him when it came to the World Championship, to the Grand Prix especially.
• 24:42
  Nice, nice the way that you've covered that.
• 24:45
  In 2012, you called time.
• 24:48
  I think, if memory serves, a back injury was a part of that.
• 24:52
  How difficult was that experience?
• 24:55
  decision and give me a sense of maybe some of the emotions you grappled with in coming to terms with that yeah well it actually wasn't a back injury for a start um it was a culmination of three or four other injuries um and I guess I if I look back at it now I guess that I probably
• 25:18
  possibly made a bit of an error in judgment of what my recovery was going to be.
• 25:24
  I came home and I got fixed up and I was, you know, in my mid thirties then that the injury side of things wasn't really, I guess it wasn't probably as bad as what I thought, but I had to go in and had, had surgery.
• 25:39
  Mick helped me out with his mate up here in Brisbane and got a few things fixed up.
• 25:44
  But
• 25:45
  The bottom line of it was that I probably lost my desire to be world champion.
• 25:52
  And I didn't understand at that point that I could race without having that desire to be world champion because it's all I'd ever race for.
• 26:02
  So yeah, looking back, I probably could have, you know, had the surgeries I needed, had the recovery I needed and gone back and ridden in Europe without actually having to ride in the Grand Prix.
• 26:14
  Um, the other thing was our, our kids, our daughters, uh, she's 21 now.
• 26:20
  So she, you know, she was starting to go to high school.
• 26:23
  Um, so we, so I figured it's probably easier if I just knock it on the head for a while and, and let the kids go to school.
• 26:32
  They've both finished now, both done, both finished year 12, um,
• 26:37
  They're pretty much doing what they want.
• 26:39
  And yeah, I go back and have a ride.
• 26:42
  Well, let's talk about that.
• 26:44
  How much did you miss it?
• 26:46
  And you are back...
• 26:48
  You've thrown your leg over again.
• 26:49
  Well, yeah, and I'm having a huge amount of fun.
• 26:54
  In 2012, I was worn out.
• 26:57
  Physically, I was worn out with the injuries that I had, and they weren't bad.
• 27:02
  They were just a couple of problems that were not allowing me to race at 100%.
• 27:09
  To be world champion, 100% is not good enough.
• 27:11
  You've got to be way above that.
• 27:13
  So I...
• 27:17
  I don't know.
• 27:18
  It just, more mentally.
• 27:20
  You know, those 10 years from 2001 were hard.
• 27:26
  You know, I put a lot of pressure on my mind, on my body, on everything.
• 27:32
  So by the end of 2012, I actually wanted to have a sleep for a year.
• 27:37
  And then all of a sudden the year turns into two, three, four.
• 27:41
  And I'd still done a few meetings here.
• 27:43
  You know, I'd still ridden a little bit here and there and still go okay some days.
• 27:48
  Put a bit of weight on.
• 27:50
  But then I went back and had a ride in Perth last year on Australia Day weekend.
• 27:54
  And, you know, there was a few guys over from the UK, you know, that kind of go okay and I managed to burn a few of them off.
• 28:01
  And next thing you know, I've got a contract and I thought, you know, maybe I should have a look at this.
• 28:10
  I started in the gym with my mate Phil Young up here on the Gold Coast.
• 28:13
  He works with a number of supercars drivers and is very good.
• 28:16
  Yeah, yeah.
• 28:17
  So I've known Phil for many years through MW and, you know, it's, yeah, one thing led to another and next thing you know I'm on a plane going back to England and then this COVID rubbish kicks off and I'm on a plane back home and didn't really get to race.
• 28:32
  But I've done...
• 28:33
  I think I've done eight meetings in Australia this year and had a ball at all of them.
• 28:37
  Got my wrist fixed up again a couple of weeks ago.
• 28:39
  And yeah, I'm heading back to England in the next couple of weeks.
• 28:44
  So yeah, why not?
• 28:46
  Why not?
• 28:47
  I'm 45.
• 28:48
  I still want to win races that I go in, but I also get a lot of pleasure out of it because...
• 28:55
  I don't have to win.
• 28:56
  I want to win, but I don't have to win.
• 28:58
  And that's the difference.
• 29:00
  15 years ago, I had to win.
• 29:01
  Anything less than a win was a bad day.
• 29:04
  So now it's completely different.
• 29:08
  You know, I turn up at the meetings here.
• 29:09
  I actually talk to people through the meeting.
• 29:13
  And it's kind of fun.
• 29:14
  Seth normally mechanics for me.
• 29:16
  And you know, yeah, it's fun, mate.
• 29:19
  It's good.
• 29:20
  Compartmentalized, terrific.
• 29:21
  You've brought up Seth, which is perfectly timed.
• 29:25
  So a fourth generation is going to go racing, which is, well, he's racing, I should say, which is incredible, but he's gone the circuit racing path.
• 29:34
  Tell us about firstly, the conversation you had with him when he, you know, thought about doing that, how you felt about that and getting on board and trying to help him on this mission.
• 29:46
  Yeah, it was really funny.
• 29:48
  You know, a couple of his mates were road racing a bit.
• 29:52
  Obviously, Ollie was having a ride and Troy said, you know, just bring him up and we'll put him on something.
• 29:58
  And I thought, yeah, no, you know, no.
• 30:03
  Anyway, as it all works out, we ended up, we bought a bike off another friend of ours and he ended up going up to a little track up here, just up the road where at the time you were able to ride
• 30:17
  The first day he's jumped on the bike, he didn't have leathers, he borrowed a set of Troy's leathers and just kind of thrown together like it is.
• 30:24
  And on the way home, he said, oh, we gotta get a better bike than this.
• 30:28
  You know, I wanna go, I wanna do a race.
• 30:31
  I wanna do some racing and it's how it starts.
• 30:35
  And it was,
• 30:37
  Mate, it's really good because he's obviously under no pressure from us.
• 30:43
  He's wanted to do this himself.
• 30:45
  He had to go in the go-karts for a while and didn't really, you know, thought that's what he wanted to do, but kind of turned out that he didn't.
• 30:53
  If I'm honest, I thought that with the motorbikes, he'll ride for a year and then that'll be it, but...
• 30:58
  He's pretty keen and, you know, he rides okay.
• 31:02
  And in the UK too now for him.
• 31:04
  Yeah, we took him last year to race in the junior super sport category over there in BSB and he loved it and he did okay.
• 31:14
  He didn't manage a race win, but...
• 31:17
  Very similar to me.
• 31:17
  He got a lot of seconds and ended up second in the championship.
• 31:20
  So he did pretty decent and goes up to the stock 600s this year in the team run by Leon Haslam, actually.
• 31:30
  The Kawasaki junior team run by Leon.
• 31:33
  And, yeah, mate, the future's in his hand.
• 31:37
  As any parent knows,
• 31:41
  When you're on the bike and the light goes green, then it doesn't matter who you are, what you are, who your dad is, who your mum is, who your uncle is.
• 31:50
  It's down to that person.
• 31:52
  And Seth deals with that quite well.
• 31:56
  Obviously, he gets spoken to by a lot of people at the races about his dad or his granddad or his great-grandfather even.
• 32:03
  But he seems to...
• 32:06
  deal with it in his own way and, you know, where he ends up, who knows, time will tell.
• 32:13
  Good stuff.
• 32:13
  Family time as well in that part of the journey for you in the early years.
• 32:17
  That's really cool.
• 32:19
  Although, you know, there is cachet around the name, it's never easy going, you know, helping him in that journey, finding sponsorship, making the break and, you know,
• 32:31
  As the sport has evolved, I'm sure there's some learnings for you even now in that regard.
• 32:36
  Oh, mate, you know, as I said earlier on in the talk, I'm not the most mechanical person in the world.
• 32:44
  So for me, stupid as it sounds, learning how to bleed a set of brakes, I've, you know, never had to do that in my life, you know.
• 32:51
  So I've learned...
• 32:55
  I'm learning, um, a lot more about that, but obviously the, the connections that we have in, in different forms of racing help.
• 33:03
  Um, so yeah, I mean, he, there's no gimmies in racing.
• 33:10
  So, um, it all comes down to what you put in and, and what level of talent you got as to where you're going to end up and, and, and,
• 33:18
  Yeah, we'll see where he goes.
• 33:20
  He loves it.
• 33:20
  You know, he loves his racing.
• 33:21
  And at the moment, he's just itching to get back to the UK and get tested.
• 33:27
  And yeah, it's exciting.
• 33:30
  It's, you know, as a parent, you're obviously, you have concerns for safety and you know motorbikes can bite.
• 33:35
  But at the end of it all.
• 33:38
  You know, 30 years ago when I decided I was racing and I was going to Europe, short of my parents shackling me to a post somewhere out the back of the fruit block, I was going.
• 33:49
  So it's what he wants to do and good luck to him with that.
• 33:55
  The sport does, you know, you and I love it.
• 33:59
  We're still immensely passionate about it.
• 34:00
  And the fact that Seth has embraced it and is keen on it as well, that's important.
• 34:06
  But globally, it does face a few challenges.
• 34:09
  Do you think about that in ways that we can ensure that young kids come through and love it as much as you did when you were a little tacker?
• 34:17
  Yeah, I think that...
• 34:20
  Obviously the racing scene in Australia is very different to the racing scene in Europe.
• 34:25
  Um, you know, Australia is a great, it's a great place to grow up in the fact that, you know, there's bush, pretty much bush everywhere you go, unless you live in living right in the middle of one of our major cities.
• 34:37
  But, um, the.
• 34:41
  The thing with the racing here is you have people like Daryl, Daryl Beattie, you know, Gary McCoy.
• 34:48
  You can go out to Morgan Park on a race weekend and you can bump into Gary McCoy, Chris Vermeulen, Troy Bayless.
• 34:55
  These are all guys that have raced at the highest level.
• 34:57
  It can't be forgotten that, you know, that these guys are –
• 35:01
  Superbike world champions, Superbike race winners, MotoGP race winners.
• 35:06
  These guys have raced at the highest level of motorcycling.
• 35:11
  So it's very, Australia is very accessible for kids to be put in front of
• 35:20
  people that can make things happen you know like chris with with barry yes you know barry watches chris and goes buddy hell i'm like we've got help this kid you know yeah for sure and and you know it's um australia is very much like that um europe it's a little bit tougher unless you're spanish or italian but um it's it's great place to be here
• 35:44
  Let's round it out.
• 35:45
  In the garage, are there any little toys that you treat yourself to from an escape point of view?
• 35:50
  You talked about road bikes before, but is there anything along those lines that's a Jason Crump escape machine?
• 35:56
  Nothing.
• 35:56
  Absolutely, I'm the most boring person ever, Rusty.
• 36:00
  No, I'll give you a laugh.
• 36:04
  I've never, ever had a license to ride a motorbike on the road.
• 36:07
  No way.
• 36:08
  So I had this conversation with a good friend of mine, Paul Feeney, the other day.
• 36:14
  He's just bought himself a new bike.
• 36:15
  He said, oh, come on, Crumpy.
• 36:16
  We've got to go and get a bike and we'll start doing some riding.
• 36:20
  And I said, before I get a bike, Feeney, I've got to get a license.
• 36:26
  So, um, that would be all time watching you turn up to get the learner's permit or the, yeah, I've, I've done it.
• 36:32
  I've done a bit of rider.
• 36:34
  I've done a bit of rider coaching with the Queensland police up at Norwell with Paul Morris.
• 36:38
  And, um, obviously we had to do it all on the closed circuit because I don't have a license to ride in the road.
• 36:44
  Awesome story to finish with.
• 36:46
  Congratulations, not just on the achievements, Jason.
• 36:49
  What you have done at world level, I really wish more broadly Australians knew that and perhaps appreciated that.
• 37:00
  But the other thing that stands out for me, mate, immense integrity.
• 37:03
  If you said yes, you were in.
• 37:04
  If you said no, you were a man of your word.
• 37:06
  Incredible commitment when you're on the bike.
• 37:09
  But I love the fact as well that you're still out there roaring around, having a bit of fun and doing it for the right reasons.
• 37:15
  Enjoy it.
• 37:16
  Yeah, thanks, mate.
• 37:17
  It's, you know, I'm fortunate because I get to live a life that I want to live.
• 37:24
  You know, I'm not held back by not being able to walk into Pacific Fair or Robina Town Centre and being mobbed by a thousand people.
• 37:33
  So that's a good thing.
• 37:36
  I look at that as a positive.
• 37:37
  Yeah.
• 37:39
  You know, as far as the racing goes now, I've had more fun in the last 12 months of the few meetings I've done than I had in many, many years of racing at the highest level.
• 37:50
  So I'm really thankful that I have the opportunity to do that and to be able to do it with the support of my family is really cool.
• 38:01
  to be able to be in the UK racing with Seth, like, you know, both of us racing.
• 38:06
  I think the person who suffers the most is my wife, Melody.
• 38:11
  She's, you know, got a son and a husband racing as well.
• 38:14
  So she's probably going to have no fingernails left.
• 38:18
  But it's all good.
• 38:19
  Life's good.
• 38:21
  You know, wouldn't really want to change anything too much.
• 38:24
  Great stuff.
• 38:25
  Enjoy.
• 38:25
  Thanks.
• 38:32
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 38:36
  Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
• 38:40
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 38:49
  Listener.