Latest / Rusty's Garage / Peter Doyle Part 1 | BBQ’s with legends & conquering WSBK

Transcript

Peter Doyle Part 1 | BBQ’s with legends & conquering WSBK · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:19
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:24
  For this episode, I'm at the Listener Studios in Melbourne and the CEO of Motorcycling Australia has kindly come in for a chat.
• 0:31
  We don't often do administrators.
• 0:33
  There's a few in our library and this latest edition is in.
• 0:37
  on Merit.
• 0:38
  Peter Doyle has been with the two-wheel governing body in Australia for over a decade, initially as the gamekeeper of the technical aspects of the sport, and then in the big chair, helping it through some significant challenges, not just COVID.
• 0:53
  He opens up on that later, but you'll enjoy his story for lots of reasons beyond this latest chapter of his career.
• 1:00
  That's because he came from a family with a proper love of bikes and racing.
• 1:06
  Some legends would call the Doyle family kind of their home away from home.
• 1:11
  And Peter went on to work with some gun riders enjoying success in world super bikes and later in the United States.
• 1:19
  For a time, he rode and he openly admits that if he didn't knuckle down in life, it might have steered him along the wrong path.
• 1:27
  A conscious decision to work with riders, understand how to get the best out of them and the motorcycle and how to lead teams by example, saw him gain worldwide respect and share in countless wins and some memorable championships.
• 1:43
  He's a straight shooter who I get to work with a little on the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame board.
• 1:49
  We spoke nearing the end of a busy month that had taken him from Darwin to the United States and back to base in Melbourne for MotoGP at Phillip Island.
• 1:58
  I learned a lot more about him in this conversation than I ever knew before.
• 2:03
  I hope you enjoy getting to know Peter Doyle.
• 2:06
  Hello, Peter Doyle.
• 2:07
  How are you?
• 2:08
  Good, Rusty.
• 2:08
  Yourself?
• 2:09
  Listen, you have a bright smile, and that is for a reason.
• 2:12
  You've just returned from the United States as we record this.
• 2:15
  What a performance by the Australians at Motocross the Nations.
• 2:19
  Yeah, it was a great trip.
• 2:21
  We were riding a bit high on last year with the first ever donations win and then we all ended up over there at Indiana, Crawfordsville, Indiana.
• 2:30
  And you go in there and it's a country remote area and you just couldn't believe the amount of people and fans and such that turned up.
• 2:38
  And, yeah, and the boys...
• 2:40
  They did it the hard way, but they came out on top again, which is great.
• 2:43
  Amazing.
• 2:44
  When you say that then, I mean, the motorcycle industry has been through, you know, peaks and troughs, obviously, but to see it, I guess, in that part of the world so healthy, is that what you're reflecting on?
• 2:53
  Yeah, they did a parade on the Friday afternoon in this little town, Crawfordsville, and incredible.
• 3:01
  The amount of people, literally thousands and thousands, and they're all dressed up in their country colours.
• 3:07
  Love that.
• 3:08
  alcohol and screaming and chanting and, you know, this parade went through and fans were jumping on the back of the trucks with the riders and it was great.
• 3:16
  Yeah.
• 3:17
  I mean, we have lots of reasons to be proud of, and you cover so many different categories in your role now at Motorcycling Australia, but if we focus on that just for a moment, what Jed and his brother are doing stateside there is off the scale, mate, isn't it?
• 3:31
  It's so impressive.
• 3:32
  Yeah.
• 3:33
  They're, what do you call them, once in an era, once in a lifetime riders.
• 3:37
  You know, they come along.
• 3:39
  You know, we've seen the Casey Stoners and we've had Jeff Lease before and Chad Reid.
• 3:45
  These guys come along.
• 3:46
  But, you know, to have two brothers go into Europe, then heading off to the US and now at the top of their game, and both of them are just, when you watch it live, just so good.
• 3:59
  What is it – I mean, sometimes that is an innate thing.
• 4:02
  You've worked with lots of riders over time.
• 4:05
  Maybe it's in their DNA or whatever.
• 4:08
  Yes, it's also heavily about their commitment, their determination and drive and so on.
• 4:15
  What is it about those two that makes them special?
• 4:17
  Well, it's hard to nut that out, but watching them ride, incredible how smooth they are.
• 4:24
  You know, you watch motocross riders over the years and, you know, we would watch back in our day, Rusty.
• 4:29
  We'd watch a guy like Trevor Williams who never looked like he was going fast.
• 4:36
  but so smooth and extremely quick.
• 4:39
  Whereas you'd watch an Anthony Gunter, you know, rough and ready and always look like, well, if it goes wrong, it's going to be a big crash.
• 4:48
  These guys are just so smooth.
• 4:50
  Yeah, they have their moments, but the things that they can do on the bike, how smooth they look doing it, it's just amazing.
• 4:55
  Unbelievable.
• 4:56
  We're talking about Jet and Hunter Lawrence, incidentally, too.
• 4:58
  So most fans of this podcast will be acutely aware of who they are.
• 5:03
  Let's come to more of your story.
• 5:04
  I feel like we'll come full circle in this conversation, right?
• 5:07
  Born in 1962, Bairnsdale, and into a racing family, weren't you?
• 5:12
  Yeah, my father raced back in the day when you took your motocross bike and then put some street tyres on it and went to the road racetrack.
• 5:22
  He finished second in the Australian 500 Championship one year in motocross, competent road racer.
• 5:30
  But he was working with a few old legends of the sport, which are now in our Hall of Fame, Ken Rumble and Ray Fisher and Kenny Blake.
• 5:39
  And I grew up thinking that those guys were my uncle, you know, Uncle Ken and Uncle Ken and Uncle Ray and barbecues.
• 5:46
  And, you know, we were in a country town born in Bansdale but lived in Lindeneau.
• 5:51
  And Lindeneau's about – I don't know.
• 5:54
  15K from Bansdale and the Mitchell River there, 90 people.
• 5:58
  So a really small town and Neville, my father's, had his workshop there.
• 6:03
  And he was also the guy who did Southern Cross pumps and windmills and water tanks and looked after the water reservoir and the town and motorbikes was the passion.
• 6:13
  So had sidecars, we had motocross bikes, we had road race bikes and we had paddocks on either side and, you know, riding bikes at sort of three and four years old and, you
• 6:23
  In the country, you can ride them down the street, you can do whatever you like.
• 6:26
  So you grow into that racing family, so it becomes part of it.
• 6:30
  That clearly had a profound effect on you, mate, didn't it?
• 6:32
  Not just the people you've rattled off, but just the experiential nature of riding bikes.
• 6:38
  Yeah, it moved on from there and you're coming out of the 60s into the early 70s and that's when the Japanese started to get heavily involved in Australia.
• 6:48
  And I remember the, I think it was 1972, I was 10 years old, but this H2R turned up from Japan and it was their new works.
• 6:58
  750 triple Grand Prix bike and Ron Toombs was hired to ride it, a bit of a Bathurst legend back in the day and he went out and dominated on that and that just went from Toombs to Murray Sale to Greg Hansford and at that time I'd sort of become old enough to – I was racing –
• 7:18
  dirt bikes myself, but become old enough to decide that, you know, you wanted to be part of racing.
• 7:24
  You're at a racetrack every weekend, different disciplines and those people.
• 7:28
  And that just, yeah, my inspiration was to stay.
• 7:32
  But it was probably around the Greg Hansford era that you really started to work out, you know, Jesus, this is something I want to be part of.
• 7:38
  Yeah.
• 7:38
  So a couple of things come to mind there.
• 7:40
  Firstly, the arrival of those Japanese bikes.
• 7:43
  It's a little bit like kids today with something on social media that has a bit of a cult following.
• 7:48
  Everyone sort of went, wow, mate, what are these things, didn't they?
• 7:52
  And special bikes.
• 7:53
  Yeah, special bikes, yeah.
• 7:54
  They were factory bikes, a lot of handmade parts, a lot of magnesium.
• 7:59
  And back in those days, the Japanese just –
• 8:02
  The trial and error that they went through with getting the lightest, fastest bikes was incredible.
• 8:07
  Hansford, I love that you have brought him up.
• 8:09
  And, you know, very sadly, because he's gone to God now, we can't have him on the podcast.
• 8:13
  I crossed paths with him a little bit in later life around super touring on the four-wheel side.
• 8:17
  I mean, he was brilliant with what he did with Larry Perkins and so on.
• 8:20
  But probably at times, I think in our motor racing community, we do recognize it.
• 8:25
  Maybe more broadly in Australia, we probably don't.
• 8:27
  But, I mean, he was an incredible rider, mate, wasn't he?
• 8:29
  Yeah, you know, still...
• 8:31
  arguably the best rider never to win a world championship.
• 8:36
  The geographical challenges we have in Australia, they're still with us today, but they were profound back in the day.
• 8:44
  I mean, to jump up and say, well, we're going to go to Europe and do the Grand Prix, and really, even though you had work spikes, they were private teams.
• 8:53
  Even Kenny Roberts' crew was, you know, Kel Carruthers and Nobby Clark and Trevor Tilbury, these guys,
• 8:59
  they were just a small group of people with a small truck and you drove around doing races and they got start money and that was the world championship.
• 9:06
  Yeah.
• 9:07
  And, you know, he won 10, 11 world championship Grand Prixs, he led the series, but you do it the hard way from Australia.
• 9:14
  Yeah.
• 9:15
  You really do.
• 9:16
  There's a story of legend with Baz, and I have no idea whether this is true or not, right?
• 9:20
  So I need to sort of question mark that.
• 9:22
  But in that era where it was becoming the incredible spectacle that MotoGP is today and so on in the 70s when all those battles were going on, I think he talked about just doing it on a shoestring.
• 9:35
  And the story of legend, again, I don't know if this is true, was at a beautiful, might have been a Ford Transit, I think, that he had van back in those days to get around Europe.
• 9:44
  The body work looked amazing.
• 9:46
  Typical Baz, the presentation was ace, but the running gear was rubbish.
• 9:49
  And I think the story of legend goes that a couple of vans, one a rental car and one his, went into a garage and the bodies went... Oh, yes.
• 10:01
  There were so many stories back in the day, you know, and nobody had one of these phones that are a camera recorder.
• 10:09
  You know, I think Barry Sheen had so many stories there.
• 10:13
  But one of the ones I stuck in my head was Steve Parrish.
• 10:17
  And Steve's a great guy.
• 10:18
  They were like brothers, those two.
• 10:20
  Cheeky brothers.
• 10:21
  Comedian.
• 10:22
  He's...
• 10:23
  I don't know how they let him have a pilot's licence, but the practical jokes that we got up to when he was running the Yamaha team in World Superbike.
• 10:31
  Yeah.
• 10:32
  But he told me the story of, you know, Barry was the first of the utmost professional riders, you know, Fabergé and behind him, the man of Brute 33, world champion.
• 10:43
  Yeah.
• 10:44
  All this money and, you know, Stavros was his teammate.
• 10:47
  Barry had a Rolls Royce that he drove around in, so Stavros had to get one.
• 10:51
  And when Stavros sold his Rolls Royce, he got in there to wind the speedo back and there was a note in there that said, oh, no, not again.
• 10:59
  I love that.
• 11:01
  I love that.
• 11:01
  He still drives around, I think, on the Isle of Man.
• 11:04
  One of his dailies is a hearse and he's got a prosthetic limb that hangs out the back of it.
• 11:08
  Like, just typical Stavros.
• 11:10
  Yeah.
• 11:11
  Let's come back to your story.
• 11:12
  Your first bike.
• 11:13
  What became of that?
• 11:14
  It was a 50-step through a Honda, wasn't it?
• 11:15
  What became of that?
• 11:17
  Can you remember?
• 11:17
  I don't know, but I went from a 50-step through Honda to this, it's called a GA90 Kawasaki motocross bike and had a four-speed rotary gearbox.
• 11:28
  So you could go from fourth to first.
• 11:31
  It was a big problem when you forgot what gear you were in and you went for fifth.
• 11:35
  And, you know, I went back to first.
• 11:37
  Yeah, I really don't know what become of it, but it was the one with the fuel tank under the seat.
• 11:41
  Oh, I love it.
• 11:42
  So, you know, you'd put your mate on the back and you'd go over a jump, which they weren't designed for, and you'd stand on the pegs in the seat and lift up and dump your mate off the back.
• 11:49
  On any Sunday.
• 11:50
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:51
  On any Sunday.
• 11:52
  You moved, I think, at about age 11 to Broadmeadows.
• 11:57
  What was that like back then?
• 11:57
  Was it a bit of a tough environment?
• 11:59
  What was the kind of... Oh, yeah.
• 12:00
  Yeah?
• 12:01
  Yeah, yeah.
• 12:01
  Broadmeadows, I think it still is a bit today,
• 12:05
  it was a rough and ready part of Melbourne.
• 12:08
  You know, a lot of gangs.
• 12:09
  You know, I grew up in the skinhead era in Melbourne as well, so you had Sharpies and skinheads and all those street gangs.
• 12:16
  And, you know, you had to be able to look after yourself and survive on the streets and...
• 12:24
  My parents were overseas, so I grew up, they were overseas from in and out from 1975.
• 12:30
  So I was sort of, I moved out of home at 13 and in with some people who were working at Kawasaki, who later became my people that I worked with.
• 12:38
  You worked with, yeah.
• 12:38
  John Maynard and Victor Colcott, they were, Victor worked for Honda for years.
• 12:43
  And I lived with those guys probably from when I was 13 because the parents were away in Europe.
• 12:47
  Were you good at school or you were just better with your hands?
• 12:49
  Yes.
• 12:51
  I didn't really like school that much.
• 12:53
  I got out of there as soon as I could.
• 12:56
  I went okay at school, but I wanted to get out and I love working on bikes.
• 13:00
  Yeah.
• 13:01
  Just wanted to work on bikes and ride bikes.
• 13:03
  So you've ended up in a really significant management role for the sport in this country and even in our region, if you will.
• 13:10
  Did kind of just life prepare you for that rather than university or schooling?
• 13:15
  And how did it shape you for that, do you reckon?
• 13:17
  What is it that's helped you from your upbringing and your career for this point?
• 13:22
  Look, I think the experience in sport has been the biggest benefit to me in this.
• 13:27
  Being around competitive people and in that environment, you mean?
• 13:30
  Understanding, you know, the competitive side, the team side of the sport, the engineering side, the technical side.
• 13:36
  We are a technical sport.
• 13:37
  A lot of people forget that.
• 13:39
  You know, you go and buy a bike, but it's all about the technical side of the bike that really makes it work.
• 13:45
  No different to any form of motorsport now.
• 13:47
  It's really technically based.
• 13:49
  And so I think having that background and that was the foundation to be able to
• 13:55
  to step up in this role is really just a long-term experience in the sport.
• 14:00
  So at age 13, when you were with these people and so on, did you make a conscious decision to kind of fundamentally park the riding and focus on something else?
• 14:07
  Or was there a crossover point here?
• 14:08
  Or what happened?
• 14:09
  Funnily enough, Orfini and Len Willing, it was about mid-80s.
• 14:13
  I was still doing a lot of the test riding.
• 14:15
  I'd still go and race.
• 14:16
  I mean, I remember grabbing a bike from Kawasaki and going up and doing the drags at
• 14:20
  colder one weekend without asking.
• 14:23
  And I took a 750 turbo up and I actually beat Jimmy Richards in the final.
• 14:28
  Did you really?
• 14:29
  He was on his CB1100R and I knocked him off in the final.
• 14:34
  And so I was into that.
• 14:37
  But it was Paul Feeney and Len Willing.
• 14:40
  I were riding a three-hour race in Adelaide on a GPZ900 and a couple of weeks before that I'd crashed my bike and broke
• 14:50
  both my wrists and hands there, and I was the wheelchains guy with a rattle gun and some stuff.
• 14:56
  We broke the wrist.
• 14:57
  And I went there, and I still did it.
• 15:00
  I did suffer through the pain, and we got through it.
• 15:03
  And my old man just said to me, he said, listen...
• 15:06
  He said, you're going to have to make a decision.
• 15:07
  You've either got to ride them or work on them because you're all getting hired to work on them, you need to work on them.
• 15:13
  And, you know, so that was that conscious decision was, you know, I probably should stop racing and focus on what I'm better at, which was, you know, engine, chassis, work on the bikes.
• 15:24
  I'm a believer that you're your own man, but invariably –
• 15:28
  your parents and your upbringing does shape you.
• 15:31
  I sense, based on what you just said a moment ago, that you have a little bit of your dad's style about you in that straight talking approach.
• 15:37
  Is that a fair assessment?
• 15:39
  Yeah, I think so.
• 15:39
  I think that's definitely come from him.
• 15:41
  And I'm definitely not a politician when it comes to some things that might seem a bit straightforward to me.
• 15:49
  You've got to play with a straight bat and
• 15:51
  sport is so political now.
• 15:53
  Yes.
• 15:54
  Too much politics, I believe, but it's so political that, you know, and I'm not good at the political side, but I think I managed to get through based on my experience and you play with a straight bat and...
• 16:09
  I think people actually still appreciate that.
• 16:12
  I think you're to be congratulated because we exhaust so much bloody energy with politics.
• 16:16
  If we could channel that into something, the good we could do would be remarkable.
• 16:20
  You're not always going to keep every constituent happy.
• 16:24
  You try, I reckon you try your level best to go down a path that you feel is right financially for the sport, for growth, for whatever it is, don't you?
• 16:33
  Yeah.
• 16:34
  Yeah, and we inherited myself and the MA board.
• 16:39
  I mean, where we are now, we inherited a basket case.
• 16:42
  It was upside down, broke, insolvent, had been neglected, political infighting, federated sporting model, which is probably, in Keren Perkins' words, when he became chair of the Australian Sports Commission, the worst thing ever invented for sport was the federated sporting structure.
• 17:01
  Wow.
• 17:01
  Yeah, we had...
• 17:03
  I think last year with the seven states and MA, 71 different directors went through the organisation.
• 17:10
  And no sport can survive that long term.
• 17:15
  All sports need to streamline.
• 17:17
  You need to become efficient.
• 17:18
  You need to be a bit agile.
• 17:20
  you really can't just educate 71 people that come into the sport and all want to pull in different directions.
• 17:25
  Directions, yeah, yeah.
• 17:27
  I mean, I feel like this is going to become a part of our conversation a little bit later, but, I mean, you're looking after different categories, different types of two-wheel motorsport.
• 17:36
  We're in a risk-averse society now.
• 17:37
  I mean, all of these things are huge factors you have to deal with on a daily basis, aren't they?
• 17:42
  Yeah, and the risk side of our sport is that –
• 17:47
  And insurance becomes the main player in that game.
• 17:50
  You know, insurance companies are there to make money and insurance companies don't want to pay out.
• 17:57
  So they look at the sport and if they think, well, there's high risk here, then you get charged a lot higher premium.
• 18:06
  But we still want these kids to have what you talked about as a youngster on that step-through, mate, that visceral experience, that chance to go and be a Chad Reed and so on.
• 18:14
  Absolutely.
• 18:15
  So, you know, we're constantly trying to tick boxes and trying to, you don't bring rules in for the sake of having rules.
• 18:23
  A lot of it is to appease the insurance side of it.
• 18:25
  And if you can tick a lot of boxes for them and say, look, no, we've done this, this and this, and he still got hurt, well...
• 18:32
  So be it.
• 18:32
  Yeah.
• 18:33
  But, you know, the Australian society, I think, after living in the US for 15 years, I think we are the most litigious society in the world now.
• 18:42
  That's crazy to think you would say that, you know, when most people think America is so, you know.
• 18:48
  No, I think it's us here and I think it's the...
• 18:51
  We have higher public liability requirements for sport here.
• 18:55
  They run a MotoGP on about $7 or $8 million US dollar public liability policy, and we've got to have 20 here to run a domestic race.
• 19:03
  Crazy.
• 19:04
  You know, no win, no fee lawyers.
• 19:06
  They jump on and promise families a fortune, and rarely do they get it.
• 19:11
  But, you know, the cost of defending issues in the sport is huge, and it's across motorsport.
• 19:17
  Yeah, it's generally.
• 19:18
  It's generally across motorsport, but...
• 19:20
  motorcycles, freestyle, supercross, they're quite high-end risk.
• 19:27
  Yeah, gotcha.
• 19:27
  And so they scrutinise us around those disciplines.
• 19:31
  We'll come back to your time now a little bit later in the conversation.
• 19:34
  I want to focus on the positives of our game rather than just some of the tricky stuff that you deal with.
• 19:38
  So you have that moment of realisation.
• 19:40
  Dad talks to you about broken wrists and making a choice.
• 19:44
  Do you go away and make a conscious choice?
• 19:45
  Was it pretty much made up your mind straight away?
• 19:47
  What happens?
• 19:48
  It did, and the biggest thing for me, I'm very grateful, I think, for me, having to work with all those people, I'm the luckiest person in sport.
• 19:59
  Working with, whether it goes from Hansford to the Wheeling, to the Feeney, and the people you meet, the McFarlans, the Gunters, the Williams, the Gauls, all these people you work and meet with throughout their careers, and a lot of them you still know today and still involved in the sport, I mean...
• 20:16
  I'm the luckiest person in sport, I believe.
• 20:18
  One of them in my library, which Roland Dane quite enjoyed, is Graeme Crosby.
• 20:23
  Yep.
• 20:23
  So tell me a little bit about Cros.
• 20:26
  Every time I've ever dealt with him in New Zealand, it is a little Barry Sheen or Stavros-esque.
• 20:31
  There was always a lot of fun with him, wasn't there?
• 20:33
  Anything you did with Crosby, there was some fun attached to it.
• 20:36
  Yeah.
• 20:39
  I guess the Crosby story was we were at Sandown for one year, raced at Sandown.
• 20:44
  It was end of the year series, so Pan Pacific Swan, that sort of era.
• 20:49
  And I was quite young, but I think we'd had a few beers and Crosby was driving me back home to my father's place out at Gladstone Park in Tullamarine.
• 20:59
  And –
• 21:00
  were there and I was in the back and I think Frizz and Brendan, his wife, were all there and Cos drove and he drove straight up the front yard and pulled the handbrake on and straight across the yard and it was after midnight, of course.
• 21:16
  And it's beautiful grass or whatever.
• 21:19
  And his bedroom was at the front and clearly he heard what was going on and he came out, you know, in his jocks and he's yelling at Cos for you.
• 21:26
  And Cos was like, I'm sorry, Neville, just dropping your son off.
• 21:29
  Yeah.
• 21:30
  I'm going to sue you.
• 21:31
  Yeah, yeah.
• 21:32
  And then I took off.
• 21:33
  Off you go.
• 21:33
  Yeah, but, yeah, everywhere you went with Cross and, you know, and Japan and the way he worked and spoke and with the Japanese was just incredible.
• 21:43
  Amazing.
• 21:44
  So at some point here, international stuff must beckon.
• 21:47
  Before we move to that, you alluded there a moment ago, Swan Series, you know, bikes used to be at Bathurst and so on.
• 21:52
  There was a golden period for some of that stuff you were around, wasn't there?
• 21:55
  Six hour and so on.
• 21:56
  Yeah.
• 21:57
  Six hour, six hours, it was really, you had Bathurst and you had the Custrol six hour.
• 22:04
  So they had these two unique events that people just travelled to.
• 22:08
  They were bucket list events and... Internationals came and all sorts, didn't they?
• 22:11
  Internationals come and, you know, in the end, like a lot of racetracks, Bathurst sort of motorcycles outgrew Bathurst.
• 22:19
  Yes.
• 22:20
  The speeds, you know, that was back in the 80s, I think 80...
• 22:23
  We did one year with the chase and I think that was it.
• 22:27
  It was becoming basically the sport was becoming uninsurable.
• 22:31
  Gotcha.
• 22:31
  Because of a couple of events.
• 22:33
  Yeah.
• 22:33
  And then Amaru unfortunately closed down and they tried it at Oran Park and it really didn't.
• 22:39
  Have the same vibe.
• 22:40
  Didn't have the same vibe.
• 22:42
  A lot of those events, when they either go away or they relocate, they sort of lose that.
• 22:47
  That lustre, that aura thing, don't they?
• 22:49
  That aura they had.
• 22:50
  And so, you know, they unfortunately died out.
• 22:53
  The other thing that we had back then, well, we didn't have back then that we have now is we now have MotoGP and we have World Superbike and so these World Championship events are now in Australia and that has sort of knocked the domestic side around.
• 23:07
  That's right.
• 23:08
  Not saying that's negative against those events but when you've got such –
• 23:14
  Quality high-end motorsport events now, we spoke about it today.
• 23:17
  I mean, I think you go to a few.
• 23:19
  So the Bathurst 1000, you've got the Adelaide 500, you've got the Gold Coast event.
• 23:24
  They're all cars throwing Formula One.
• 23:26
  MotoGP this weekend.
• 23:27
  MotoGP this weekend.
• 23:28
  We've got World Superbike.
• 23:29
  We've got MXGP has come to Darwin.
• 23:32
  So there's seven or eight.
• 23:35
  big events to choose from.
• 23:36
  And, you know, geographically we've got a disadvantage to the rest of the world with the physical size of our country and low population.
• 23:46
  So, you know, people are going to pick and choose.
• 23:47
  Like if you lived in Spain, you could go to all of them.
• 23:50
  Yes.
• 23:51
  But, you know, that's how it is now.
• 23:53
  Now, are you kind of mid-teens and you think about heading overseas?
• 23:57
  What transpires there?
• 23:58
  Yeah.
• 23:59
  I got a bit wild and out of control there for a while in the 70s and they ended up basically, you know.
• 24:07
  Choose your words here.
• 24:08
  That's okay.
• 24:08
  I was doing a lot of work.
• 24:09
  I was doing a lot of work.
• 24:12
  I was testing police bikes for police.
• 24:13
  You know, Kawasaki were heavily involved in trying to get contracts for police bikes.
• 24:17
  And we used to test up and down the Tullamarine Freeway.
• 24:21
  And it was quite funny because I actually did a lot of tyre testing with the cops.
• 24:26
  So I'd ride, they'd ride, we'd ride different bikes and try tyres.
• 24:29
  And we're testing for speed wobbles at, you know, 240 kilometres an hour.
• 24:35
  Simulating a chase, basically.
• 24:36
  Yeah, simulating a chase.
• 24:38
  And one of the coppers said to me one day when we finished, he said, he goes, you ride pretty good for a young fella.
• 24:43
  He said, how long have you been riding?
• 24:45
  He said, how long have you had your licence for?
• 24:47
  And I go, I actually don't have one.
• 24:51
  And, you know, they just sort of had to turn a blind eye.
• 24:53
  Nothing to see here.
• 24:55
  Nothing to see here.
• 24:56
  And...
• 24:57
  I did ultimately get my licence, but I lost it for doing wheelies and such, and I had to go on back and get it again.
• 25:02
  But I did a lot of work with the police back in those days, and living in Broad Meadows, and in the end, Kawasaki, who I was working with at the time, and a few local coppers basically said, listen, you need to either get overseas or you'll be in jail soon if
• 25:20
  you don't slow down.
• 25:21
  Slow down.
• 25:22
  So I ended up in Europe with my father and mechanicing for Greg Hansford.
• 25:29
  Amazing.
• 25:29
  In the late 70s.
• 25:39
  Peter worked with a number of talented riders during his career, including Robbie Phyllis, who helped Kawasaki into the winner's circle in world superbikes and caused chaos when he crashed his remote-controlled plane into a top-secret division at the factory in Japan.
• 25:53
  And, Rob-son, please, you cannot fly your aeroplane here anymore.
• 26:00
  Security are about 10 minutes behind us.
• 26:03
  So everywhere we went, they followed you, but they couldn't catch us, you know.
• 26:07
  We didn't know they were chasing us.
• 26:09
  Robbie joined the garage library in 2025.
• 26:12
  The yarns on the bike are as gripping as his stories all fit.
• 26:16
  Check it out if you haven't already.
• 26:18
  Now back to Rusty and Peter Doyle.
• 26:20
  I want to put a bit of framework around what you just said, Rob, because we have moved on in eras, and that's an era where some of that stuff we might look upon now and frown, but the reality is...
• 26:31
  The police were very supportive of you then and sort of saying, look, hey, you need to go and do this to grow and to sort that stuff out.
• 26:37
  And I love how your learnings kind of now help in a safety sense and promoting the right sort of message about what we do, doesn't it?
• 26:44
  Absolutely.
• 26:45
  Absolutely.
• 26:45
  There's no doubt.
• 26:46
  And we grew up in different times.
• 26:49
  You know, people were much more...
• 26:52
  Their ability to have a look at, you know, the issues, whether they're in society, whether they're in our sport, and try and help people out.
• 26:59
  You know, nowadays, you know, as I said, everybody's a journalist with their telephone.
• 27:03
  Exactly.
• 27:04
  And a lot of stuff gets taken out of context.
• 27:06
  Text, 100%.
• 27:07
  And, you know, we don't...
• 27:10
  I think we were luckier back then and a lot more supportive.
• 27:14
  The community was a lot more supportive of people back then.
• 27:16
  Absolutely.
• 27:17
  You go from that apprenticeship with Kawasaki as a mechanic, and I think it's around 79 that you're talking about, that you get this opportunity in Europe with your dad, Greg Hansford's mechanic.
• 27:25
  There's stuff around here about 8-Hour with Eddie Lawson and Greg as well, isn't there?
• 27:29
  Kawasaki wanted to get some of the better riders into the 8-Hour.
• 27:34
  They were getting into that four-stroke era, developing these Formula 1 bikes and...
• 27:39
  Well, they were having the French run the Endurance World Championship when it came to going to the eight-hour race, when you've got the, you know, right through the year, you've got all the Grand Prix riders going there.
• 27:51
  I mean, look at Gardiner and Dewan and McGee and all those guys that went there.
• 27:55
  They had to start taking their top flight riders.
• 27:57
  So Hansford, Nettie Lawson, we teamed up and did the eight-hour race.
• 28:03
  It was also the year before...
• 28:05
  Kawasaki built their new 500.
• 28:08
  So part of that was to go there and test the bike and build the bike.
• 28:11
  So we went to the eight-hour race and funnily enough, we led the eight-hour for seven and a half hours with Greg and Eddie and we were taken out by one of the Yoshimura bikes with Mick Cole, who was an Australian rider, took out Eddie and we had to make some repairs and we ended up finishing second, but Crosby won.
• 28:33
  And funnily enough, and then I ended up working for Yoshimura years later.
• 28:36
  Later, exactly.
• 28:38
  In the midst of all this, you've talked mainly road racing there, there is still a motocross connection in this period.
• 28:42
  Is that right?
• 28:43
  Absolutely.
• 28:45
  Growing up in Bandsdale, out to the Bandsdale motocross track and a lot of stuff in Mafra Sale, you know, Newry in that era, and Trevor Williams.
• 28:53
  Yeah.
• 28:54
  was obviously a local rider, so had a lot to do growing up around Trevor.
• 29:00
  He was the local gun from Bansdale, Gippsland Centre, and went on to win multiple Australian championships and...
• 29:08
  as a factory rider for Kawasaki.
• 29:10
  Gunter was around then too, wasn't he?
• 29:11
  Anthony Gunter.
• 29:12
  Gunter came in, yeah.
• 29:14
  Gunter and Williams were Kawasaki's big return, let's say, or involvement or getting into motocross in Australia.
• 29:21
  And it continued from there and just grew, you know, to the, as you said, the McFarlans or the Eddie Warrens and all those guys for a long period.
• 29:30
  One name that we haven't spoken about, and he came on the podcast in August, it was very funny, I went up and sat down with him, it was Robbie Phyllis.
• 29:37
  So he tells me a story, and you might like to offer your side of it.
• 29:41
  He tells me a story because he was always a crazy innovator.
• 29:44
  He loved tinkering with things and making things, didn't he?
• 29:46
  He tells me a story about like a homemade spa with you all one night somewhere overseas.
• 29:53
  Yeah, well.
• 29:54
  You can do the condensed version if you want.
• 29:56
  Well, you're right.
• 29:57
  And Robbie, he just liked to tinker with stuff, didn't he?
• 30:00
  Working on bikes, inventing things, doing things.
• 30:02
  Yes.
• 30:03
  And when we were based in Germany, we were at the workshop, so Kawasaki, Germany, at the back.
• 30:09
  We were preparing the bikes and he'd get bored.
• 30:12
  Got to have something to do.
• 30:13
  I mean, he's the only guy I know who went to the supermarket one day to buy us some beers and some sausages and such and came back with a BMW and a caravan.
• 30:23
  That is so him.
• 30:24
  That is so him.
• 30:25
  And that's him.
• 30:27
  So Kawasaki, Germany, had some prototype jet skis that they were trialling over there because not a big market for jet skis in Germany in the day, but they got some in.
• 30:37
  Huge, big crates, probably a metre and a half wide and three metres long.
• 30:42
  So he decided the spa, going to make the spa bath.
• 30:45
  And he did such a good job of it, though.
• 30:49
  Big wooden crate.
• 30:50
  He lined it.
• 30:52
  He put foam in it.
• 30:53
  He put air hose around it.
• 30:55
  It's freezing cold, I think, too, is it not?
• 30:57
  Well, we're in winter and it's snowing in some cases.
• 31:00
  Anyway, he got this done and...
• 31:04
  He got it all set up and we had a fireplace around the caravan that we used to drink beers with at night and had the fire there and he got copper coil and wound it up so it went into the fire pit, pump off the caravan and was circulating the water.
• 31:17
  Warm it up.
• 31:18
  Hook it up to the compressor, blow the air out through the holes with the air hose.
• 31:22
  And he got this thing ready, so sure enough, we decided to try it.
• 31:26
  I think there was Radar was there.
• 31:28
  Yeah, Dave Cullum.
• 31:29
  Dave Cullum, yeah, and Mark Barnett, who's still in Grand Prix, I think, with KTM nowadays, and Reggie Rourke, who spent a lot of time within the States, all the mechanics, managers, Robbie, and we had some beers to trial this spa and we're actually next door to a recording studio.
• 31:48
  Yeah.
• 31:49
  So the beers turned into – I think some decent things happened in that recording studio too, didn't they?
• 31:54
  Yeah, Milli Vanilli.
• 31:55
  Exactly.
• 31:56
  Yeah, Milli Vanilli.
• 31:56
  That's what it was.
• 31:58
  Yeah.
• 31:58
  And you had to get the beers, but it was freezing cold.
• 32:01
  I mean, we're talking zero.
• 32:03
  Yeah.
• 32:03
  And we had to keep the fire going to keep the spa hot.
• 32:06
  So it became a shout.
• 32:07
  So, all right, you've got to get out.
• 32:09
  You've got to get half a dozen beers, bring them back, put the wood on the fire and get back in.
• 32:13
  As the night progressed, we started doing bombs off the caravan and this went on and on.
• 32:20
  Anyway, next day the manager of Kawasaki Germany called me into the office and said, look, we've had a bit of a complaint.
• 32:28
  And he was a very straight, typical German.
• 32:30
  Yes.
• 32:30
  And I thought, oh, we're in a bit of trouble here.
• 32:32
  Yes.
• 32:33
  And he was trying to keep a straight face.
• 32:36
  In the end, he couldn't help himself.
• 32:37
  He smiled.
• 32:38
  And he said, we have a complaint.
• 32:41
  From recording studio, they record in the evening.
• 32:44
  And apparently there were people running around naked, drinking beer, jumping off the caravan.
• 32:50
  And so, yeah, so we got caught.
• 32:52
  I love it.
• 32:54
  But, yeah, that was fellas.
• 32:55
  He...
• 32:56
  Any mischief you could get into, but a lot of it was good mischief.
• 32:59
  It was funny mischief.
• 33:00
  Funny mischief.
• 33:00
  It's funny to be around.
• 33:02
  You are, though, in that time around Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and people mightn't appreciate it.
• 33:08
  I mean, we just think of the green machines, bikes and so on, but, I mean, they were involved in all sorts of things, weren't they?
• 33:13
  I think there was maybe even space research and all kinds, weren't they?
• 33:17
  Shipping, space research, obviously aeroplanes, jet engines, everything.
• 33:23
  Believe it or not, Kawasaki back in those times, the bikes were part of what they called CP Group, consumer products, and we were less than 10% of Kawasaki of industries.
• 33:33
  Amazing.
• 33:34
  But you helped them get back into basically international racing, didn't you?
• 33:37
  I mean, we can talk well super bikes, I mean, Robbie was a rider for them and so on, wasn't he?
• 33:40
  So in...
• 33:41
  We got really going in the FIM Superbike in Australia in the like 87, 88 era.
• 33:48
  And we built a GPX 750, which was a touring bike.
• 33:52
  And Phyllis went out and won the Australian Superbike Championship on a bike that really didn't have great success anywhere in the world.
• 34:00
  And the Japanese couldn't believe that these are silly Australians running this touring bike round, but beating guys like Mick Doohan, Michael Dowson, you know, quality riders with bikes that were probably a bit better than ours.
• 34:15
  Okay.
• 34:16
  And the factory said...
• 34:18
  If you guys want to do it, we'll help you out.
• 34:20
  So they'd slip us a few parts here and there, and we've got this swing arm.
• 34:24
  Put this swing arm in your bike, a nice factory swing arm, and a set of forks.
• 34:28
  So they were giving us bits and pieces to help us.
• 34:31
  So they were energised by the thought of racing, were they there?
• 34:33
  Yeah, and then they...
• 34:36
  We were still going back and forth, still doing the eight-hour race with them and helping develop their bike over there.
• 34:42
  And at the end of 89, well, we'd hired Aaron Sleight by then.
• 34:47
  Yes.
• 34:47
  But at the end of 89, the Japanese guy, Mr. Noda,
• 34:52
  He flew out from Japan and Kawasaki Australia was wholly owned subsidiary of KHI and said, look, we want to get back into world championship racing.
• 35:02
  We've been out since Ballington and Hansford back in the early 80s.
• 35:06
  And we want to get back in with a factory team and small budget.
• 35:10
  We want a small team and we'd like you guys to do it.
• 35:13
  So...
• 35:14
  Myself and Phyllis, Robbie, and obviously that year it was Johnny Asher and Mark Wolfrey.
• 35:21
  We were all working for Kawasaki Australia.
• 35:23
  We packed up, built a couple of bikes and set up in Germany and it grew from Robbie in 1990 to we grew out to Robbie and Aaron Sleight up to 92 and then Scott Russell came in in 93 and
• 35:38
  We won the world championship that year and Aaron was third.
• 35:41
  Yep.
• 35:42
  And that's the team that's still running over there today.
• 35:45
  Unbelievable.
• 35:46
  What a great tip of the hat to you all.
• 35:48
  Can I come to a couple of things here?
• 35:49
  Aaron's been on the pod.
• 35:51
  He lives not far for a couple of hours south of where I am now.
• 35:54
  What was he like in that period of his career as a racer?
• 35:57
  His focus on riding was incredible.
• 36:00
  Robbie was a bit of a natural.
• 36:02
  And you'd sit there and Aaron's out training and he's doing what he needed to do.
• 36:06
  And he was one of the guys that you looked at was that new era of guys who were really putting in 100% off the track.
• 36:14
  Robbie was just...
• 36:16
  so experienced on a bike and, you know, he had a few injuries here and there and training wasn't his forte.
• 36:22
  Now, he wasn't a drinker or a smoke or anything.
• 36:24
  He just wasn't a- Natural was good.
• 36:26
  Natural was good, wasn't a big trainer.
• 36:28
  Aaron just put in, you know, 100%.
• 36:31
  I picked him up from Sugo.
• 36:33
  Went over there with Robbie to do the world championship race on the GPX and he was riding a Super Angel Yamaha, I think, there and-
• 36:40
  And I thought, I didn't know Aaron.
• 36:42
  He's just, you know, black leathers on this Japanese bike with Japanese mechanics.
• 36:46
  And I watched him.
• 36:48
  Geez, this kid's pretty good.
• 36:49
  And I invited him to come and do the Swan Tearies on Robbie's spare GPX.
• 36:55
  And he did a great job there.
• 36:56
  And we hired him.
• 36:57
  And...
• 36:58
  The way it went.
• 36:59
  The way it went.
• 36:59
  He basically lived with the Phyllises, didn't he, for a time there.
• 37:03
  Great yarn.
• 37:03
  What did it mean for you?
• 37:06
  Grew up in Bairnsdale, kind of tough stuff in Broadmeadows that helped shape you in some ways, and here you are helping to build what becomes a world championship winning team, mate.
• 37:17
  What was that like?
• 37:18
  It didn't sort of think about that side at the time because we just, all the people involved, just wanted to go racing.
• 37:25
  Okay.
• 37:26
  And...
• 37:27
  All of us were more focused on the fact that, well, it's great racing in Australia and it's great racing against all these names that you look back now and go, gee, what a great bunch of riders come out of Australia back in that era.
• 37:40
  But we want to beat better guys.
• 37:41
  We want to beat better teams.
• 37:44
  And we go over there and...
• 37:45
  Malcolm Campbell, Phyllis, we were all going over and picking these eyes out of races in Europe and then to get over there and work with them full time and compete against them.
• 37:55
  And we were like these people in the paddock, they go, wow, these Australians on the Kawasaki, they don't go too bad, do they?
• 38:02
  And we friended up, you know, Marco Lucanelli and the Ducati team really took us under their wing and they'd invite us in for lunch, you know, because they'd sit down...
• 38:11
  Typical Ducati and, you know, factory team, Italians.
• 38:14
  Big Italian spread, yeah.
• 38:15
  Big Italian spread and they're drinking the wine.
• 38:17
  So we're sitting there, very small team, and we're making bread rolls and we're buying lunch from the canine.
• 38:24
  So they come and eat and drink with us.
• 38:27
  That's fantastic.
• 38:28
  So, yeah, we had a really good relationship with the Ducati team, the Yamaha team, which was run by Stavros, Rob McElnay, Terry Reimer, and we all developed this really close relationship even amongst the teams.
• 38:40
  And it was really like being back in Australia.
• 38:43
  Okay.
• 38:43
  Where after the race is over, let's all go and have a beer and party up together and...
• 38:49
  And it was the same in Europe.
• 38:50
  But it's a world championship and we know it now for the cachet of what it is.
• 38:54
  But you are there in a, let's call it a really important or formative phase.
• 38:59
  What was it like seeing it grow like that?
• 39:01
  Oh, probably more, we were excited to see it grow.
• 39:06
  But as you grow and as sport become more professional and more money and more professional, you know, things start to change.
• 39:13
  Yep.
• 39:13
  The Americans came in because they supplied a lot of money for Scott Russell to be on the team, which unfortunately sort of led to Robbie being out and back in Australia.
• 39:24
  Robbie was also pushing towards the end of his career and Scott was the new person in town and so was Aaron.
• 39:29
  So, you know, Slight and Russell was a very, very strong team.
• 39:34
  But a lot of people don't know the setbacks of that year.
• 39:38
  We probably shouldn't have won the World Championship.
• 39:40
  Tell me why.
• 39:41
  So a lot of people don't know this, but we'd had works bikes out of Japan up until 92.
• 39:48
  For 93, with the American influence, the budget was, a lot of it was coming from the US.
• 39:55
  And the US said, no, well, we build our bikes out of street bikes.
• 39:58
  So we flew to the US, myself and Reg.
• 40:02
  We had Adrian Gors, who's still involved with BMW.
• 40:06
  And we spent three months in Bend, Oregon.
• 40:11
  in the Cascade Mountains there, I think it is, and in 3,000 feet, you know, minus 25 degrees every day, building these bikes and shitting them to Europe from production bikes and making the fuel tanks, making everything.
• 40:23
  Crazy.
• 40:24
  Are you talking about the challenge in that because what you already had in Europe was almost stepping back, so to speak, are you?
• 40:30
  So it was, you know, one bike had carbon brakes, one bike had steel brakes because the Americans wouldn't spend the money on all the components.
• 40:37
  They believed a lot of that wasn't necessary because,
• 40:40
  because they had been doing it in the US this way for so long.
• 40:44
  In the end, we won the battle.
• 40:45
  We got to halfway through the season and we were still very competitive.
• 40:50
  I think we were running second and third at that time and Fogarty might have been leading the championship.
• 40:55
  We got to Japan and we'd asked for some certain equipment in Japan and we got there and it wasn't there.
• 41:02
  and found out the Americans had cancelled it and it blew up in pit lane and Scott Russell and myself and Aaron Sleight and the Americans and the Japanese, we were all there.
• 41:13
  And in the end, the Japanese turned around and said to me, what do you need to do?
• 41:18
  get this championship over the line to give us the best opportunity to win it.
• 41:22
  Gave them the long list of stuff, got the bikes matched up, got carbon brakes all round, got all these extra works parched that the budget had already been provided.
• 41:31
  The money just wasn't being spent.
• 41:33
  And they said, and we'll send the bill to Kawasaki US.
• 41:37
  And we got it all and...
• 41:39
  We ended up winning the championship, so it was worthwhile.
• 41:42
  And I stepped back after that.
• 41:43
  Yeah, well, let's come to that.
• 41:45
  I think you actually came back to Australia, did you not?
• 41:47
  Tell me about that and the decision to do that.
• 41:49
  Why?
• 41:49
  I mean, you were National Technical Services Manager in 94 and so on, weren't you?
• 41:53
  Yep.
• 41:53
  So I came back to that.
• 41:55
  Kawasaki wanted to grow the motocross side again in Australia.
• 42:01
  And that's where we moved into the Peter Melton, you know, Andrew McFarlane era.
• 42:04
  Yep.
• 42:05
  But technical manager job was there and it was getting very difficult with a lot of the US influence at that time.
• 42:15
  The ironic part is they got four works bikes for 94 and they didn't win the championship.
• 42:19
  Crazy.
• 42:19
  And so, you know, I think back in those days, you know, the typical American people were
• 42:26
  were pretty much out of their depth when they went to Europe.
• 42:28
  Okay.
• 42:29
  Because that's the way we've always done it, in front of the approach.
• 42:32
  That's the way we do it in the US.
• 42:33
  They weren't really adaptable.
• 42:35
  We've got to fly home every weekend and we've got to make it in America and we've got to do this and we've got to do that.
• 42:40
  And they weren't really accepting that the Japanese were a bit of a powerhouse in the development and the technical side of the sport.
• 42:47
  So they felt they were in front and...
• 42:50
  So I thought, I'm out of here.
• 42:51
  So I came back to Australia and managed the road race and motocross here.
• 42:56
  Tell me a little bit more about that because in this era, I mean, you talked about Andrew McFarlane who is sadly no longer with us.
• 43:02
  I often tic-tac with his wife a little.
• 43:04
  I mean, there's a great Aussie story, mate, isn't there?
• 43:07
  Oh, Andrew was with Kawasaki from the junior programs.
• 43:11
  Ironically, we go through that period and –
• 43:15
  There's a small story there when Andrew and Chad went to Europe.
• 43:19
  And we'd been racing here and we built that 500 for Andrew to do the Grand Prix at Broadford.
• 43:25
  What year are we talking here?
• 43:26
  The late 90s, early 2000s?
• 43:27
  We're 2000 now.
• 43:28
  Yeah, yeah.
• 43:29
  And Grand Prix was going to Broadford for the Open Grand Prix.
• 43:34
  I went for RPM.
• 43:35
  Yes.
• 43:36
  Yeah, keep going.
• 43:36
  We want to be involved.
• 43:37
  So...
• 43:38
  Kawasaki don't have a big bike and the 500 was no good.
• 43:41
  So we took the 500 and we put it in the 250 chassis and built a swing arm and did a lot of modifications.
• 43:47
  Special bike.
• 43:49
  I'd love to know where it ended up.
• 43:50
  Wow.
• 43:51
  But built the bike for McFarlane and, of course, whole shot that race and got a podium.
• 43:57
  But that was the year of Byrne, McFarlane and Reid.
• 44:00
  Yep.
• 44:00
  And...
• 44:02
  We tried to sign Chad, but Yamaha had a better deal for him.
• 44:06
  Yep.
• 44:06
  And we'd already had such a long association with Andrew, and Andrew stayed on the team.
• 44:13
  And Andrew ultimately won the motocross championship and he won the Supercross Masters and won Thump and That's 250 class.
• 44:19
  We had a big year that year.
• 44:21
  Yeah.
• 44:21
  And I think...
• 44:23
  Melton won the 500 class on the bike we built for Andrew for the Grand Prix and Askenazi won the 125.
• 44:30
  So we had a really, really solid year.
• 44:32
  It comes to the end of the year and Jan de Groot rang me, who was the manager of Kawasaki's world motocross team.
• 44:38
  He said, we've seen the donations and we've been watching Australia and
• 44:45
  Who do we sign up?
• 44:47
  And the riders were all getting set to go to the donations for that year.
• 44:52
  And I said, well, our riders, Andrew McFarlane, and obviously we'd like to see him go from us into the Kawasaki team.
• 45:01
  In the end, Yamaha put a better offer on the table for Andrew, so he switched from Kawasaki Australia to Yamaha World Championship.
• 45:10
  And DeGroote said, who else?
• 45:11
  I said, well, Chad Reid.
• 45:13
  And Chad went from Yamaha Australia to Kawasaki World Championship.
• 45:17
  And, of course, the rest was history.
• 45:19
  They went to Europe and, funnily enough, we all –
• 45:23
  met up together and caught up in the States a couple of years later because we all ended up in the US.
• 45:27
  Amazing, amazing.
• 45:28
  You've touched on a couple of names here that I wouldn't mind bouncing around.
• 45:31
  Firstly, Peter Milton, Reggie.
• 45:33
  I mean, there's another one that we haven't really sort of covered off here in this discussion.
• 45:37
  Yeah, Reggie was just such a laid-back coins lander, wasn't he?
• 45:42
  And he...
• 45:44
  Liked to tinker, liked to do a lot of his own stuff, liked to look after his practice bike.
• 45:49
  So we really just supported Peter as much as we could and we bought him a big van to start with.
• 45:54
  And him and Brad, who still works with, well, he's with Cloudy this year, I think, with the Empire team, but worked with Craig Dack for so long.
• 46:03
  You know, and him and Brad would tour off around the country and I'd catch up with them here and there and provide them all the support I could.
• 46:10
  And, you know, Reg is turning up and he's, you know,
• 46:13
  long wheelbase, high roof transit van, and here's all the trucks, and Reg was out there winning all the races.
• 46:19
  You mentioned Kim Ashkenazi there before, and there was some amazing talent that we had there.
• 46:23
  I won't get you to comment on what happened in Anthony Gobert's life because I think that's well documented, and it's very sad to think what the latter years kind of became.
• 46:33
  I want to focus on the fact that he was just an immense talent, mate, wasn't he?
• 46:37
  And in some ways we didn't get to fully realise that, did we?
• 46:42
  You know?
• 46:43
  No, and look, I knew all the family and I still talk to the brothers.
• 46:48
  Nice.
• 46:48
  And, you know, while I didn't work directly with Anthony, I supported a lot of support to him over the years when he was through his motocross bikes and such as well and when he was young.
• 47:00
  And...
• 47:01
  I still remember a comment he made and it was along the lines, he was moving from juniors to seniors in Supercross and he'd basically tell everybody, well, as soon as I hit Supercross, I'm just going to go and kick those guys' butts.
• 47:13
  And...
• 47:15
  He went in his first year and won some supercrosses and that's almost unheard of.
• 47:18
  Heard of, yeah.
• 47:19
  Unheard of.
• 47:20
  And then, you know, that period, you know, we had the Chris Hill, the Anthony Goberts, the Matt Mladdens, they were all coming through.
• 47:27
  There was a lot of talent there.
• 47:28
  Yeah.
• 47:30
  A huge amount of talent that wanted to get into road racing.
• 47:32
  Yeah.
• 47:34
  That's that follow-on, I think, from the Gardner era to McGee, you know, to doing that era.
• 47:44
  I think a lot of people were inspired to get out of motocross and go road racing because so many of these young fellas jumped into road racing.
• 47:52
  But Gobert, yeah, and the talent was there and he was fast-tracked through and into –
• 47:58
  Superbike and what he did at Phillip Island, jumped off a Honda at the Australian round and won a world superbike race on a Kawasaki the next weekend.
• 48:05
  Insane.
• 48:06
  Yeah, insane.
• 48:07
  You don't – that's just unheard of now.
• 48:09
  Unheard of now.
• 48:12
  Obviously, Anthony liked to party up a bit and I don't think there's anybody who's still around the paddock, even up to me, who hasn't been partying with Anthony Govan at some stage.
• 48:24
  Some stage, yeah.
• 48:25
  Because he was a social sort of person.
• 48:27
  A person, yeah.
• 48:27
  That's what he wanted to do.
• 48:29
  But, yeah, we never realised the talent, unfortunately, but...
• 48:34
  He certainly left an impression around the world.
• 48:38
  Agreed.
• 48:38
  Agreed.
• 48:39
  A couple of others here to bounce around.
• 48:41
  Firstly, Michael Dowson.
• 48:43
  I must get him on the podcast, mate.
• 48:44
  And I think we've had a little bit of like Neil Bates, the rally driver, and he ended up doing a bit of four-wheel stuff over the years and things.
• 48:50
  I would love to get him on for a chat at some point.
• 48:53
  Yeah, the colonel as we used to call him in Australia.
• 48:56
  And, yeah, such a lovely guy.
• 49:00
  Obviously disappeared from there, but I catch up with him every now and again.
• 49:03
  He turned up at Barbagallo a few years back.
• 49:05
  Excellent.
• 49:06
  Turned up at the Grand Prix at Phillip Island.
• 49:08
  I think he's going to MotoGP in Sepang or Indonesia in a couple of weeks.
• 49:13
  Sepang.
• 49:14
  And so, yeah, still around.
• 49:16
  And, yeah, he was a great guy and a really good rider.
• 49:20
  Troy Bayliss.
• 49:21
  Troy Bayliss.
• 49:21
  I mean, you know, I can recall him, if memory serves, on a Kawasaki in the Australian Championship at places like Baskerville and stuff like that.
• 49:30
  to think what he would go on and ultimately achieve.
• 49:33
  Troy, there's a few stories with Troy and Troy had, there's a lot of traits with Troy in similarity to Mladen, even though they're totally different people.
• 49:43
  People, yeah.
• 49:44
  One of the biggest traits,
• 49:48
  traits they had, which was so beneficial, I think, to their career, both those guys was honesty.
• 49:53
  I remember Bayliss at Phillip Island and we used to do a test at the end of the year and we'd have, we had Robbie's bike, we'd have Slidy's bike, all the different riders' bikes and we'd get all the young guys come and ride them.
• 50:05
  So, you know, Gobert rode them, Bayliss, Dean Thomas,
• 50:10
  All these kids would come through.
• 50:11
  We'd pick 10 or 12 and we'd give them a half-hour session on each of those guys' bikes on the Monday after the race.
• 50:16
  So they were exactly as these guys rode them.
• 50:19
  And Troy came in and, yeah, Troy was a really aggressive rider back there on those 600s.
• 50:25
  Riding a 600 again, the old 600 he rode, the first one was a touring bike.
• 50:30
  It wasn't a race bike.
• 50:31
  He rode the wheels off that thing.
• 50:33
  He rode the super bike and he...
• 50:35
  He came in after the second session and he said, I'm not doing any more.
• 50:38
  And he goes, because I'm going to hurt myself.
• 50:40
  I'm going home.
• 50:41
  Wow.
• 50:42
  Right?
• 50:42
  And, yeah, took off home and, you know, just didn't feel right, thought he was going to get hurt, went home, didn't see the day out.
• 50:52
  But, you know, he soldiered on, soldiered on and, like Phyllis, ended up going to Europe really late, graduated late.
• 50:59
  But some of the things he did on the superbike here in 96, had a few guest rides in 95 and a few crashes, but in 96...
• 51:10
  we turned up at Lakeside with our new bike mid-season and we had one for him and one for Marty Kragle.
• 51:15
  And we didn't have a third bike and it was the old bikes.
• 51:19
  And Troy stuck his into the fence in the first race while leading and it went in wheels first and it bent, but it pulled the linkage out of the frame and did all sorts of damage.
• 51:30
  And we just didn't have enough parts.
• 51:32
  So we were going through and we ended up finding a linkage because we had multiple rear links in those days.
• 51:38
  Yeah.
• 51:39
  out of the other bike and we knew it wasn't going to be the same.
• 51:42
  We took a few educated guesses and moved a few things around and changed a few springs and we just got the bike ready for the second race and down there in line said, look, we're confident the bike's okay.
• 51:54
  It's not going to feel the same.
• 51:56
  We've had to change some parts in the suspension area and stuff, but it'll be okay to get out there, get some points and get through.
• 52:02
  And he went out and won the bloody race.
• 52:06
  Like, he did things like that and, you know, rode that 250 Suzuki at Phillip Island.
• 52:11
  So there were those standout moments that everybody knew that, you know, Troy Bowles can ride motorbike.
• 52:16
  There's no doubt he's something special.
• 52:19
  And it was just a late bloomer.
• 52:22
  Still likes twisting the wrist as you and I see it now even.
• 52:25
  Yes, I've got those photos.
• 52:33
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with Motorcycling Australia CEO Peter Doyle.
• 52:38
  If you're enjoying it, part two is all loaded up in our library and ready for you to hit the start button on during your next road trip or commute to work and back, the gym, whatever.
• 52:49
  From dominating in the United States with Suzuki to returning home and heading to the dark side, so to speak, leaving team land and working for the governing body and steering the ship through some troubled waters with a roll-your-sleeves-up, lead-by-example approach to ensure that the sport we love stays healthy and with a bright future in the risk-averse red tape world that we now live in.
• 53:16
  It's all ahead here on Rusty's Garage.