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Transcript

Garry McCoy - Part 1 · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:12
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:27
  For this episode, I'm at Phillip Island, ahead of the MotoGP race weekend here.
• 0:31
  It is a rare, beautiful day at what Barry Sheen once famously described as the gateway to hypothermia.
• 0:40
  Baz quietly helped a lot of people during his career, including my guest today.
• 0:45
  I've set up some mics and I'm in the commentary box at the top of the control tower overlooking the circuit.
• 0:51
  Downstairs in some nearby paddock garages are a fleet of identical bikes that are part of what's known as the Oceania Junior Challenge.
• 0:59
  There are kids from our part of the world racing them, some of whom aren't even in their teens yet, that are hoping to one day make it to MotoGP just like Gary McCoy did.
• 1:11
  He's now sharing some of the learnings with that next generation from a career that started almost for fun and was actually headed more in the direction of Speedway in those early days to a seriously rapid acceleration to the World Motorcycle Championship.
• 1:28
  He experienced the end of the mighty two-stroke era and the early years of the four-stroke machinery that is so close and incredibly competitive now.
• 1:38
  There's rides in the World Superbike Championship too, and why he's never really called time or formally retired as such, plus the nickname that is a reflection of his trademark riding style.
• 1:52
  I hope you enjoy the ride as Gary McCoy shares his story.
• 1:59
  It's great to be back at Phillip Island.
• 2:00
  Does this place and the paddock and so on evoke some good memories for you?
• 2:04
  Because it was your life for a good period there, wasn't it?
• 2:08
  Yeah, yeah.
• 2:08
  Thanks, Rusty.
• 2:09
  I mean, it's always great to be back at Phillip Island.
• 2:12
  You know, the weather's a little bit touch and go, as we all know.
• 2:15
  Beautiful today, but maybe not Sunday.
• 2:18
  Yeah, yeah.
• 2:19
  Or give it a couple of hours even, you know.
• 2:21
  You don't know what's around the corner here.
• 2:23
  But, no, it's a great place to come to, you know, overlooking the ocean and...
• 2:28
  uh you know bring this moto gp life here like you said i was in it for quite a while and half my lifetime there at one stage and um yeah it's good to be back amazing can we start with a little bit of early life stuff right so you grew up in in new south wales i'm always interested in the connection to a machine a a racing thing how old were you when you got your first bike what was that first bike and how did it all kind of come about
• 2:55
  Well, I was about five years old.
• 2:57
  I had what probably worth a little bit of money at the moment, the little Honda Mini Trail, which is like a Z50.
• 3:06
  She had the lights on it and well, we took the lights off and put a number plate on it and started off with Jim Karner, did a Jim Karner for a few years and then...
• 3:19
  Eventually, well, I rode in a paddock for a few years after that and then went to motocross and then from motocross to speedway.
• 3:27
  Speedway, yeah.
• 3:29
  I really wanted to go overseas and race in England.
• 3:31
  In the speedway?
• 3:32
  Speedway, yeah.
• 3:33
  Yeah.
• 3:34
  Because I obviously grew up or my father was racing speedway and he had a lot of friends.
• 3:42
  That's how I sort of got my contacts into the sport and knew a lot of guys there.
• 3:46
  So I was really looking forward to doing that.
• 3:49
  I didn't really even watch road racing at the time and I wasn't really too into it, but I just sort of got forced down that path and...
• 3:58
  And away you went.
• 3:59
  Yeah.
• 3:59
  So before we go that direction, let's talk a little bit about the Speedway side of things because they're this intoxicating machine, no brakes, and the skills you learn in that still serve you well even now, don't they?
• 4:13
  Oh, exactly.
• 4:14
  I mean, you know, when I started racing the two-stroke 500, I was a good one.
• 4:19
  you know the power that them things had on the bitumen felt very similar to a speedway bike on the dirt you know so i think it was a great learning curve for me and um i that's half the reason i adapted to the 500 so well what were the what was the speedway bike that you had and i mean a couple of names if i'm if i'm right here like todd wilshere craig boy some of those names were around in that period weren't they
• 4:43
  Yeah, well, Craig Boyce.
• 4:45
  Shit.
• 4:46
  Oh, sorry.
• 4:46
  It's okay.
• 4:47
  You're allowed to.
• 4:47
  We're allowed to.
• 4:49
  We grew up as kids, you know.
• 4:51
  He was my neighbour before I rode bikes.
• 4:55
  Wow.
• 4:56
  So my first motorbike that we were just talking about was Craig Boyce's first motorbike.
• 5:01
  Is that right?
• 5:03
  Yeah.
• 5:03
  That's got a bit of lineage.
• 5:04
  What became of that bike?
• 5:05
  Do you know?
• 5:05
  Is that gone?
• 5:05
  Has someone got that?
• 5:06
  No, it's gone somewhere, but...
• 5:08
  I've got like a replica one at home now.
• 5:09
  Have you?
• 5:10
  Okay.
• 5:11
  So from the speedway to road racing, if I'm lining stuff up right here, there was an opportunity I think around the Winfield Triple Challenge or something, wasn't there?
• 5:22
  Is that the first proper foray or how did you –
• 5:25
  Yeah, well, so Winfield Triple Challenge was my second ever road race meeting.
• 5:30
  Wow.
• 5:31
  The first one was in November, 91 at Oram Park, which is gone now.
• 5:39
  And then Winfield Triple Challenge was end of January.
• 5:42
  That's right.
• 5:42
  It was Australia Day long weekend, wasn't it?
• 5:44
  So just a few months later.
• 5:45
  Yeah, that's right.
• 5:46
  So, yeah, it was my second ever road race.
• 5:49
  I didn't even know who I was racing, never ridden at Eastern Creek before.
• 5:53
  um and barry sheen was the commentator and i went out and won both races just did what i thought i had to do basically and uh yeah i think i caught every a lot of people by surprise you know who was helping you then like how were you getting i just mean me and the old man really and then like a van or a trailer or something and off you had it had a van yeah what was the bike
• 6:15
  RGV 250.
• 6:16
  250.
• 6:17
  Crazy.
• 6:18
  So Baz invariably was great at seeing things.
• 6:23
  That might be you.
• 6:24
  I don't know who that is.
• 6:25
  Doesn't matter.
• 6:25
  We'll figure that out.
• 6:28
  He was great at spotting skills, talent and stuff like that.
• 6:32
  And I think he happened to go to a race meeting maybe in Japan and he spruiked
• 6:37
  your name to people.
• 6:38
  Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 6:39
  That's a part of it, yeah?
• 6:40
  Well, there's a kind of funnier side to that.
• 6:43
  It was Sunday night and he was… After the triple challenge?
• 6:48
  No, no, no.
• 6:49
  In Japan.
• 6:50
  In Suzuka, yeah.
• 6:50
  Okay, yeah.
• 6:51
  So it was a really wet weekend.
• 6:52
  Like everyone, a lot of people crashed, especially in the 125 class.
• 6:57
  So he was out on the Terp Sunday night and he was sitting at the trough, you know, doing his thing and some big German fella stood next to him and said, oh, do you know anyone in Australia that, you know, can replace our rider?
• 7:10
  And it all led from there.
• 7:11
  Amazing.
• 7:12
  Oh, you've got to get Gary.
• 7:13
  Give Gary a call.
• 7:16
  Yeah, and then he rang me on April Fool's Day.
• 7:18
  Yeah.
• 7:19
  I'm like, who is this guy?
• 7:21
  Did you have – because that's happened to a couple of people on the podcast at times.
• 7:24
  You must have had one of those double-take moments where you thought, this is not legit, surely.
• 7:27
  Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 7:28
  Especially it was April Fool's Day.
• 7:31
  I'm like, nah, you're joking.
• 7:33
  So this is a kind of rapid acceleration here, Gary, from November.
• 7:37
  Oh, definitely.
• 7:38
  Winfield Triple Challenge and now potential.
• 7:41
  My fifth ever road race.
• 7:43
  It was the Australian Grand Prix in 92.
• 7:45
  Amazing.
• 7:46
  So you're on.
• 7:48
  Tell us about the bike, how you stitched that together.
• 7:50
  Baz made some calls and the team and so on.
• 7:53
  Tell us more about that.
• 7:54
  Yeah, yeah.
• 7:55
  Well, basically it was the first time I'd ever ridden on slicks, first time on a 125, first time in a Grand Prix, first time for everything.
• 8:02
  The whole lot was just – It was just thrown at me and just had to deal with it, you know.
• 8:07
  And was a young Gary McCoy doing what at this stage?
• 8:11
  And did you all of a sudden go, hang on a minute,
• 8:13
  I'd quite like to pursue that.
• 8:15
  That's a bit of me.
• 8:16
  I mean, that's where, like you said, it's only over a couple of months here because I thought I'll give this a go.
• 8:23
  And then three, four months into it, I'm at a Grand Prix, you know.
• 8:28
  Unbelievable.
• 8:28
  People want me to go overseas and looking at me for next year and I'm like, wow, what's going on here?
• 8:33
  Yeah.
• 8:34
  So, I mean, in that rapid growth curve that you've just described there, I mean, now you're playing at a level where,
• 8:44
  Calibre of riders is incredibly good.
• 8:46
  Bikes are, you know, are good, but you're still at that sort of entry level of GP racing.
• 8:52
  How wide-eyed were you and what was that whole experience like?
• 8:56
  Yeah, well, look, it wasn't really until I went overseas, so you're moving away from your family, your home.
• 9:02
  Was that hard?
• 9:03
  Was that hard?
• 9:04
  Yeah.
• 9:05
  It wasn't hard to leave but when you're actually there and then you're setting up for the weekend, the bike rolls out, you've got a new track, you're back on this bike that you don't really know much about or hadn't spent much time on and then, you know, the guys are, you know, it's Grand Prix level.
• 9:22
  The guys are just going out first session, bang, they're on lap record pace.
• 9:26
  And here I am still trying to get used to this new bike, but I've also got a new track, a new country, different language, all sorts of stuff.
• 9:35
  So that was a big sort of eye-opener for me.
• 9:38
  It was like, oh, wow, this ain't just riding a bike around the track anymore.
• 9:42
  You know, it's more to it than that.
• 9:44
  Than that.
• 9:45
  When did it feel cemented?
• 9:48
  Because in that period you're never quite sure.
• 9:51
  It's a brutal game if you don't.
• 9:53
  deliver, if the team has financial issues, whatever it may be, you're sort of doing that dance, aren't you, to ensure that you can... Yeah, definitely.
• 10:01
  I mean, I had 1993 concrete, you know, I did a contract for 93 full season and we got some all right results, probably not as good as I was hoping.
• 10:15
  But like I said, again, you know, you're just moving around the country or the world and
• 10:19
  all year long, learning new tracks.
• 10:23
  It was another new bike for that year.
• 10:26
  So yeah, just had to try and get used to it.
• 10:28
  It's like anyone even now, say Quattro Raro goes to Ducati next year, it's gonna take him some months, six months, possibly a year.
• 10:38
  just to get a good feel on that bike and get it set up for him.
• 10:42
  What did you think of the 125s?
• 10:43
  Because they were a great class.
• 10:45
  We now have what we know as Moto3, which is four-stroke.
• 10:48
  Back then it was 125cc two-stroke.
• 10:52
  Some great names came through it.
• 10:53
  And in that period that you're describing, there was one Valentino Rossi that was coming through too, wasn't it?
• 10:59
  And invariably as you grew, and so did he, you two were battling each other quite a lot.
• 11:04
  Yeah.
• 11:05
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:06
  It wasn't until I looked back at some of the older races, like when I won in 96 at Eastern Creek in the 125 class, it was on the cool down lap after the race.
• 11:21
  I noticed, I'm like, oh, that's Valentino Rossi.
• 11:24
  I didn't even know he was in the race, you know.
• 11:27
  But you were with an Italian team at one point there and they were talking about this kid coming through.
• 11:32
  You know, his dad was very well known, obviously, you know, in motorcycle racing.
• 11:38
  Baz knew him and so on and raced against him.
• 11:40
  And so –
• 11:42
  And I think he gave you a really nice credit at one stage there where, you know, like racing you, battling you, chasing you was fun, didn't he?
• 11:52
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:52
  He respected you.
• 11:53
  I think at one stage he said, you know, people should have to pay a ticket to follow me.
• 11:58
  Pay for a ticket, yeah.
• 12:00
  Excellent.
• 12:00
  Yeah.
• 12:01
  But no, we spent a lot of time together in the earlier years.
• 12:06
  I think he might have used me a little bit to sort of learn the tracks that he didn't know.
• 12:10
  Okay.
• 12:10
  Because, you know, when I went overseas, I didn't know anyone obviously and just had to go out and learn it for myself.
• 12:17
  But when Valentino came in, he was a good friend.
• 12:21
  You know, obviously we still are but...
• 12:24
  He was a specially good friend then and we'd go around on the scooters, around all the tracks and I'm like, oh, you've got to come out here and this is the line and blah, blah, blah.
• 12:32
  Excellent.
• 12:33
  Because that was his first year obviously.
• 12:35
  Yeah.
• 12:36
  But then we were a little bit sort of competing against one another and he sort of took his side a little bit and yeah.
• 12:43
  The way it went.
• 12:44
  Was your Italian good?
• 12:45
  Were you learning some things like that?
• 12:47
  Yeah, I was pretty much fluent in Italian.
• 12:50
  I lived in Rome for two years.
• 12:53
  So it wasn't, we were on a plane one day and someone was talking, you know, across the aisle in Italian and I bumped one of the mechanics.
• 13:02
  I said, what language is that?
• 13:04
  He goes, oh, it's Italian.
• 13:05
  I'm like, oh, I couldn't really pick up.
• 13:08
  He goes, no, you speak Roman, not Italian.
• 13:13
  Excellent.
• 13:14
  The first win aboard a 125, what did that mean?
• 13:19
  Take us back to that day and it wasn't all that far in real terms, was it, from where we are now?
• 13:26
  No.
• 13:26
  Well, yeah, I mean, well, it was a terrible day but it was a great day for me.
• 13:32
  It was pouring down rain.
• 13:33
  We're in Malaysia.
• 13:35
  Sepang.
• 13:36
  It was obviously hot, still humid, even though it's pouring down rain.
• 13:40
  but it rained that heavy.
• 13:43
  I remember the last corner, it was just like riding through a bathtub, you know, just water spraying out the sides and, yeah, just kept, you know, gas on, head down and wanted to see that finish line until they red flagged it but it was more than half race distance so they called it and it went back a lap and I was actually leading that lap.
• 14:05
  I was battling with Stefano Perugini.
• 14:08
  Ginny, yeah.
• 14:09
  And, yeah, he's a hard basket to crack, that one.
• 14:13
  But I actually got along with him really well too.
• 14:15
  We're all good friends because he lived pretty close to Rome and we used to catch up every now and then.
• 14:21
  But, yeah, he's a fun guy, great guy.
• 14:23
  And, yeah, it was just great to be out on top and take my first Grand Prix victory.
• 14:28
  So for a bloke who was initially keen on Speedway, had come through dirt bikes and so on, thrust into the whole road racing scene, catapulted into the World Motorcycle Championship and now you are a GP winner, a pretty special place in the record books for Aussies.
• 14:43
  Yeah, yeah.
• 14:43
  I still look at that every now and then.
• 14:45
  I'm actually...
• 14:47
  Pretty close to, because I think Kevin McGee only won one race.
• 14:51
  I think Beattie was one or two.
• 14:54
  Three.
• 14:55
  Three, was it?
• 14:55
  Because I've won three.
• 14:56
  Three in the big class and two in the little class.
• 14:58
  Excellent.
• 14:59
  So sort of five in total, which again, I don't think anyone else has done small class and big class until Jack Miller come along.
• 15:08
  Excellent.
• 15:09
  Yeah.
• 15:09
  No, it's good to be up there with the boys.
• 15:12
  It's good to catch up with them and have a few laughs every now and then.
• 15:15
  I have very vivid memories.
• 15:17
  I was very green as a commentator and still learning my way of working at what is now Sydney Motorsport Park at Eastern Creek and Barry...
• 15:27
  and the late Darrell Eastlake going crazy because you were, you know, you had success there on a 125 machine in front of a massive crowd that day, mate.
• 15:35
  That was pretty special too, wasn't it?
• 15:36
  Yeah, yeah, it was.
• 15:38
  I mean, that kind of felt like my first, even though it wasn't my first victory, it was my second one.
• 15:44
  Yeah.
• 15:44
  But doing it in front of the home crowd and hearing, you know, Darrell Eastlake, as you know, you know, he was just a cracker on the telly.
• 15:52
  Yeah, yeah.
• 15:53
  And then Barry just screaming out,
• 15:55
  Go Gaza, go Gaza.
• 15:57
  I'm like, yeah.
• 15:58
  It was a moment I just will never forget.
• 16:02
  Cool.
• 16:03
  Was Baz good at, you know, sort of little follow-up bits of advice along the way perhaps or, you know, when you were contacting him again?
• 16:10
  Yeah, definitely.
• 16:10
  Always gave me advice, you know.
• 16:12
  Obviously, he watched me all the time when…
• 16:15
  whether it was just out the window looking upon the track or on telly.
• 16:22
  But I remember he used to tell me a lot, don't look back, don't look back.
• 16:25
  And I'm like, well, everyone else is and I want to know who's there.
• 16:29
  He's like, just keep looking forward.
• 16:31
  And later on in my career,
• 16:34
  It sort of sunk in and I never looked back.
• 16:38
  Wow.
• 16:38
  I just, you know, read me pit board.
• 16:40
  The pit board says everything.
• 16:41
  Yeah.
• 16:42
  It's got everything on there, you know, how far the next person is behind you or how close they are, what your gap is to the leader or, you know.
• 16:51
  So everything's there.
• 16:52
  There's no reason to look around and I'm trying to drill that to some of these kids now because they're all, they're looking at the current Moto3 racing and...
• 17:00
  As you know, especially in qualifying, they're all sitting up and looking around and looking for a toe.
• 17:06
  I'm like just bum up, head down, bloody off you go.
• 17:13
  Just keep looking forward and just go as hard as you can.
• 17:16
  Let's just expand on that a little bit.
• 17:18
  As you sit in front of me, you've got the Blue Crew gear on, the Oceania Junior Cup.
• 17:23
  There's Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP here, the three classes of the World Championship.
• 17:29
  We have this great...
• 17:30
  thing that complements it with lots of very talented young riders so it's a great chance for them to be on center stage here just explain what you do in terms of helping them and tapping into that knowledge bank I mean you're about to when we wrap up this conversation go on a track walk with them and share some insights of Phillip Island and so on aren't you
• 17:48
  Yeah, well, that's right.
• 17:49
  I mean, I'm here to sort of basically go through everything I went through, just show them and make them understand, you know, everything they really need to know.
• 17:59
  If they want to make a career out of this, you know, this is your life.
• 18:03
  This is what you have to do.
• 18:05
  You know, it's not just belting around, having fun.
• 18:07
  You've got to, you know, take a lot of stuff in and look at the weather conditions, track conditions.
• 18:13
  Even, you know, I'll say to the kids today, you know, MotoGP's on, you're going to have nice fresh paint, you know, check all the paint around the track and stuff like that.
• 18:25
  So it's just little things that, you know, obviously the guys in the GP and that, they'll be doing exactly the same thing, exactly that.
• 18:33
  Is the talent pool that you've seen so far, like have we got some good things to look forward to in the years ahead, maybe another Gary McCoy, another Jack Miller, whatever it might be?
• 18:42
  I think there's some good ones there.
• 18:44
  I think one of the issues I see is their age between 11 and 15, and that's very young.
• 18:51
  Like when I did my first Grand Prix, I think I was 19 years old.
• 18:55
  It's already too old to start racing, you know, but that's how it was back then.
• 18:59
  And I think you're sort of...
• 19:01
  At 19 years of age, you're already looking for that direction on where you want to be and what you want to do.
• 19:09
  11 years old, you know, they're still watching cartoons in the morning when they get up, you know.
• 19:15
  It's, yeah.
• 19:16
  You're telling them, no doubt, about things in terms of paddock life too, I would imagine, you know, from mental approach to diet, all the things that they probably need to do.
• 19:27
  Get serious about too.
• 19:29
  Yeah, I try to get them off the lollies and stuff, but it's kind of hard.
• 19:33
  They're still young.
• 19:34
  They've got to have a bit of life, mate, too.
• 19:35
  Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 19:37
  But no, I...
• 19:39
  Obviously, I try to tell them everything.
• 19:42
  Everything, you know, eat two hours before you go out and do your sessions.
• 19:48
  You know, you need the body to sort of start processing the food.
• 19:52
  And, yeah, you don't want to eat two minutes before you go out.
• 19:56
  You're going to throw up in your helmet and whatever.
• 19:59
  All them little points, just what I learned along the way and everyone knows.
• 20:04
  Basically, it's common sense when you're over 20 years of age, but trying to tell an 11-year-old.
• 20:10
  You're asking a lot of them to sort of grow up in that sense, mate, aren't you?
• 20:13
  Exactly, exactly.
• 20:13
  That's right.
• 20:14
  So that's sort of the tough side of it.
• 20:26
  If you like two wheels, it's not just the riders in Rusty's library you might enjoy.
• 20:31
  Alex Briggs has worked on race bikes for some of the greats, including Valentino Rossi, although Axe really should have learned some Italian when he was in Valleys Garage.
• 20:41
  He'll tell you the story too.
• 20:43
  So almost early on, I bought one of those little Oxford Italian to English books.
• 20:48
  And I remember going to him like in the back of the Honda truck and saying, mate, mate, I'm going to learn Italian.
• 20:54
  Don't worry.
• 20:55
  And he's like, yeah, okay.
• 20:56
  And he still gives me shit today.
• 20:59
  No joke.
• 21:00
  He still just goes, yeah, I remember.
• 21:02
  So I never learned.
• 21:05
  Mick Doohan and Jeremy Burgess, who Alex worked closely with for years, are also in Rusty's library.
• 21:11
  They've kept some cool old machines in their garages, which they chat about, and they're adamant that posty bike power is more than enough for Rusty.
• 21:20
  A fair weather rider continues the convo with Gary McQueen now.
• 21:24
  Before we go back to GP Racing here, I think Christopher Mullen told me you've been doing some rider training in other areas too, up around Warwick and Queensland and so on.
• 21:32
  I don't know whether you've still got this bike, but he joked, I think, in a pod with a colleague of mine, Matt Clayton, about someone saying, oh, you want to see him go.
• 21:41
  He's got this 1,000cc machine.
• 21:43
  And someone said, no, no, no, it's a 600.
• 21:44
  But he's rounding them up like it's 1,000.
• 21:47
  Yeah, that's right.
• 21:49
  Well, we're out at Morgan Park and it probably –
• 21:52
  I mean, the track sort of, you can do quicker lap times on a suit bike, but the 600s aren't too far away.
• 21:59
  Why?
• 21:59
  Okay.
• 21:59
  But when I'm coaching, there's, you know, we don't have Mike Jones and Wayne Maxwell and all them there.
• 22:04
  It's sort of your Queensland runabouts, you know, out there having a bit of fun.
• 22:08
  But so that really made me look good in a way because, yeah, I was only on a 600, but I'm literally smoking these thousands, you know.
• 22:17
  Yeah.
• 22:18
  Yeah, one guy come up to me and goes, oh, what have you done to your R1?
• 22:21
  And I'm like, have a better look, mate.
• 22:25
  Like, she's an R6.
• 22:27
  Awesome.
• 22:28
  Let's transition here from 125 to the big league.
• 22:32
  How did that come about?
• 22:33
  Just walk us through that chapter of your career.
• 22:36
  Yeah, well, I wanted to be in the big class for a long time.
• 22:40
  You know, I grew up around, you've got Troy Corsa, Anthony Gobert, Matt Mladen, Ben Archibald.
• 22:48
  There's a lot of names where, you know, we all sort of grew up together.
• 22:51
  And they all went pretty much straight to super bike class.
• 22:55
  And as you know, you know, Anthony, Troy, they had a crack at the 500 two-stroke as well.
• 23:04
  And I always thought, you know,
• 23:06
  We've always ridden together and we're sort of not too far apart.
• 23:11
  I'm like, I can have a go on this.
• 23:12
  But, I mean, my opportunity to get into the Grand Prix, which Barry Sheen got for me... Did he?
• 23:18
  ...was through the 125 class.
• 23:20
  Okay.
• 23:21
  But then later on, I remember Kevin Schwantz got injured over in Spain and Gary Taylor was looking for someone to ride the bike.
• 23:31
  And I actually had a meeting with him and I said, look, I reckon I could have a crack at this.
• 23:35
  And in the end, he was just like, oh, nah, you know, you just ride the little bikes and we're sort of a little bit unsure on how you're going to go.
• 23:43
  Okay.
• 23:44
  But a couple of years later, I'm winning races on the Red Bull Yamaha and Gary Taylor's, you know, up on the podium with us with Kenny Jr. on the podium.
• 23:52
  And I'm like, I told you, you should have given me a go.
• 23:56
  So we're talking kind of late 90s here.
• 23:59
  What year would that have been, 97 maybe?
• 24:02
  What year?
• 24:02
  99.
• 24:02
  99, was it?
• 24:03
  Yeah, 99, yeah.
• 24:04
  Okay, crazy.
• 24:06
  Let's step back though because I think the proper – Sorry, talking to Gary Taylor would have been mid-90s.
• 24:12
  Yeah.
• 24:13
  Yeah, and then it was only like three years later.
• 24:17
  Yeah, that you're on the podium.
• 24:18
  I'm on the top step and poor old Gary Taylor.
• 24:20
  Hey, remember that combo?
• 24:21
  Yeah, yeah.
• 24:23
  Was the first bike, was it Harbick Racing, that shell machine?
• 24:27
  Yes, on the 500, yeah.
• 24:28
  So it was the two-cylinder, you know, the twin that Honda brought out.
• 24:33
  I thought it was a great machine.
• 24:34
  It was a good way to get into the class without going to the so-called, you know, big bang suicide machines, you know, that just want to spit you off every corner.
• 24:47
  Nice way to move into it then.
• 24:48
  Yeah, it's kind of, it's...
• 24:50
  They used to talk about it pretty heavy, but it's not until you actually jump on it and ride it and it's like, well, it's not really that bad.
• 24:56
  They do buy it.
• 24:58
  They do buy it.
• 24:58
  Where were you when you rode it for the first time?
• 25:00
  Take us there.
• 25:01
  The big one you mean?
• 25:01
  No, no, no.
• 25:03
  The very first time I bought one.
• 25:06
  I think that would have been...
• 25:09
  The first time.
• 25:10
  I think it was down here at Phillip Island.
• 25:11
  Was it?
• 25:12
  Yeah, we did a test down here at Phillip Island, yeah.
• 25:13
  What did you think?
• 25:15
  I think it was great.
• 25:16
  I did love it.
• 25:18
  Unfortunately, it was a little bit too, like, a lot slower down the straight than what a four-cylinder is.
• 25:24
  But around the corners and everything, I used to light up that rear tire and it just had good bottom-end power.
• 25:30
  Yeah, I did.
• 25:30
  I loved it.
• 25:31
  I actually wish I had one now just to go out and have some fun on it, you know.
• 25:34
  Yeah.
• 25:35
  But if you want to win races, it wasn't the bike to win a race on.
• 25:40
  That's for sure.
• 25:40
  So what about stitching deals together?
• 25:42
  I mean, you talked about, you know, Gary balking at you because of, you know, you being in the 125 class.
• 25:49
  How did you go piecing that together to move into the big league?
• 25:53
  It was basically through Jeff Hardwick.
• 25:56
  Known him for years.
• 25:59
  Ever since, you know, I raced back here in Australia doing the ARRC at the time.
• 26:04
  And then, yeah, he obviously slowly moved into Grand Prix racing himself.
• 26:10
  and then spoke about, you know, getting this 500 class going.
• 26:13
  He said, I really want you on the team.
• 26:15
  And I'm like, yeah, bloody oath, I'll do it.
• 26:17
  Awesome.
• 26:17
  Yeah, it'd be great.
• 26:18
  And at what point then, you know, because the paddock, once you're at that absolute pinnacle of motorcycle racing, everyone in this paddock keeps a close eye on their rivals and riders and to walk us through that path,
• 26:35
  that first kind of year, if you like, at the pointy end?
• 26:38
  Yeah, it's definitely tough, but I found it with being on the twin, people didn't really expect too much from you.
• 26:46
  I think if I jumped, like say Anthony Gobert went straight to the Lucky Strike Suzuki team, they were eyeballing him the whole time expecting results.
• 26:58
  Whereas because I was in like a new team with a new bike and it wasn't quite the four-cylinder 500,
• 27:05
  It was just the twin and they had their own little twin class.
• 27:08
  There was a few riders out there so we're all sort of competing against ourselves rather than, you know, Mick Doohan and Crafar and all that lot, you know, they were just...
• 27:19
  in another league basically.
• 27:20
  It was on the bike with Nitro compared to our little slugs.
• 27:27
  But no, it was good to come in at that way because, yeah, the eyes weren't really on you, focused on you.
• 27:34
  They were all appreciative that you were on an underpowered bike and you're still out there having a go and getting the results that we were.
• 27:42
  So if anything, they were giving you more credit than sort of bagging you, let's say.
• 27:47
  But, yeah, it's not until you get actually on the four-cylinder bike that's when they're like, oh, okay, now you've got to prove a point.
• 27:53
  Point, yeah.
• 27:54
  At this point in time, you were living in Andorra.
• 27:56
  Is that right?
• 27:57
  Yeah.
• 27:57
  And you sort of pioneered that in some ways.
• 27:59
  It's become a great place.
• 28:00
  I mean, Vermeulen lived there for a while.
• 28:02
  I think you showed Simon Crafar around.
• 28:05
  You know, he's still there, isn't he?
• 28:06
  Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 28:08
  Well, yeah, I was – well, Jeff Harbick was the first one there.
• 28:10
  He's the one that –
• 28:12
  sort of, you know, told me to come along and have a look.
• 28:14
  Okay.
• 28:15
  And then he sort of hooked me up and then I ended up buying a place there and I bought a couple of places in the end but… Go dirt bike riding regularly because you could.
• 28:23
  Yeah, yeah.
• 28:23
  We just had trials bikes because it's like a, you know, it's in the Pyrenees Mountains.
• 28:28
  Mountains.
• 28:29
  There's a lot of hiking paths and ski resorts and all that sort of stuff.
• 28:33
  And we just get on the trials bike and just use it like a big trial area, you know.
• 28:39
  How does that help in a riding sense?
• 28:41
  Is it just physical fitness or is it some of the things you're actually doing on the bike are quite good?
• 28:47
  Well, it's also riding at the altitude.
• 28:50
  You do some of the physical stuff up in a high altitude.
• 28:53
  You run out of breath really quick.
• 28:54
  Quick, yeah.
• 28:56
  And then when you go back to sea level, you seem to have that extra energy.
• 28:59
  Yeah, that crunch.
• 29:00
  Yeah, yeah.
• 29:02
  So, you know, it was definitely a good help, I believe.
• 29:06
  And you're on two wheels, you're holding a throttle, you're going through gears.
• 29:09
  It's a motorbike.
• 29:10
  Yeah.
• 29:11
  The Aussie contingent in the paddock and in the pit line, was it, you know, were they pretty welcoming and you all got on pretty well?
• 29:18
  Yeah, yeah.
• 29:19
  Yeah, no, it was all good.
• 29:21
  Brock Parks was over there.
• 29:23
  So me, him, Christopher Muhlen.
• 29:27
  There was Ruben Zaus, a few others, but, yeah, it was only a little handful of us to start with.
• 29:35
  But, yeah, I hear about it now.
• 29:36
  Everyone's there, even I think Max Freak from Speedway.
• 29:41
  Okay.
• 29:41
  I think he's living there too from what I've heard.
• 29:43
  Okay.
• 29:44
  It's become a little hub, hasn't it?
• 29:45
  Yeah, I know.
• 29:46
  Yeah, it's amazing.
• 29:47
  It can be a brutal game in injury terms.
• 29:52
  What's the one for you along the way that was –
• 29:56
  I was really disappointed.
• 29:58
  I think I reached the pinnacle of my career but I was ready to raise the bar the following year which was in 2001.
• 30:07
  And so that's when…
• 30:12
  It was mixed four-stroke and two-stroke.
• 30:16
  Yep.
• 30:16
  So 2000… Very beginning of four-stroke.
• 30:18
  We'd begun merging, haven't we, into the new era.
• 30:20
  That's right.
• 30:21
  Yeah.
• 30:22
  So we did a pre-season test at Estoril in Portugal.
• 30:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:26
  And I'd won there the previous year, I'm pretty sure.
• 30:30
  Yeah.
• 30:30
  And won it by like a mile.
• 30:34
  I was five seconds in front to…
• 30:39
  Kenny Roberts got second, Valentino Rossi got third.
• 30:43
  Excellent.
• 30:44
  But, yeah, so we did the pre-season test for...
• 30:48
  2001 and I was like quickest every session and then we went out and tried a new shock, a new rear shock and it was a little bit windy.
• 30:59
  It was getting later on in the afternoon so track temp had dropped a little bit and this thing just spat me over the bars and snapped my leg.
• 31:09
  I...
• 31:09
  I saw, you know, a big kink, you know, around my shin and I thought, oh, that's not good.
• 31:16
  So, yeah, they chucked me in a van, carted me back to the medical centre, old Costa, and then they laid me on a bed and they said, oh, we've got to straighten this thing.
• 31:25
  So they just started pulling on, you know, grabbed my foot and just started yanking it and I was screaming like, yeah.
• 31:33
  It was the most pain I've been in, I think, my whole life.
• 31:37
  Just that one moment of actually breaking my leg and sitting on the track and realising it.
• 31:42
  I don't know if it was the adrenaline or what was going on, but it didn't seem to hurt.
• 31:46
  But once they tried to, you know, pull my leg down and get the bones back in...
• 31:52
  That hurt like hell, yeah.
• 31:54
  You opened your answer there by almost talking about it being like a bit of a turning point.
• 31:58
  Is that what you're saying?
• 31:58
  Yeah, yeah.
• 31:59
  So then there was a lot of, yeah, obviously had surgery, did a lot of rehabilitation to try and get back on track.
• 32:09
  Went to Suzuka.
• 32:12
  which I think was the first race of the year.
• 32:14
  Yeah, it was.
• 32:16
  And I think it was only three months of rehabilitation that I did.
• 32:21
  And, you know, it was still very fresh.
• 32:25
  And even though it was pinned and screws everywhere and all the rest of it, it sort of worked.
• 32:31
  I went there, had a go.
• 32:33
  It was raining.
• 32:34
  I crashed.
• 32:34
  Yeah.
• 32:35
  And I think, yeah, just everything from there on end, just there on in just started to sort of fall away a little bit.
• 32:43
  I did get some good results at the end of the year.
• 32:47
  But then, yeah, we sort of, you know, the year after that, we went to Dunlop Tyres, which wasn't really competitive for us during that year.
• 32:56
  And then the year after that, I went to four stroke on a bike that was pretty new in the paddock.
• 33:02
  We're jumping around here and we'll come back and cover off a couple of key things.
• 33:06
  But firstly, do you – I mean, you're in your early 50s now.
• 33:08
  You're younger than me, which is, you know, you're still spring chicken really.
• 33:12
  But do you feel any of that stuff now or you're actually fine from an injury standpoint?
• 33:16
  Oh, yes and no.
• 33:17
  I mean it's still there.
• 33:18
  I think I've just lived with it long enough now to sort of put it out of my mind, you know.
• 33:24
  But sometimes, you know, if I'm on my feet all day, obviously the ankle that I was just talking about, you know, you sit down for half an hour, you've got to get up and it's like, no, you can't, you know.
• 33:35
  You've been on it all day.
• 33:37
  Seized a bit kind of thing, yeah.
• 33:38
  You're not giving it more now, yeah.
• 33:40
  Cool.
• 33:41
  You love it.
• 33:41
  You love bikes and, you know, that's half the reason why you're still here today.
• 33:47
  Did one of them in this period ever scare you at all?
• 33:50
  I mean, they're just – we can't undersell enough to the audience, particularly if they're not massive into bikes, just how wild a thing they are to tame, mate.
• 34:02
  Hey.
• 34:02
  Yeah, definitely.
• 34:04
  I wouldn't say –
• 34:07
  None has ever scared.
• 34:09
  I mean, yeah, you get scared, but not scared where like I don't want to do it anymore or I don't want to get back on that bike.
• 34:18
  It doesn't scare you in that way.
• 34:21
  At the end of the day, it's a machine.
• 34:24
  You're the one controlling the machine.
• 34:27
  So it's up to you to get your head straight and, you know, work your way around the bike and make it work.
• 34:40
  That's the end of part one of my feature episode with Gary McCoy.
• 34:44
  Thankfully, it's Thursday here at the island.
• 34:46
  It isn't too busy, and both of us have a bit of extra time available.
• 34:50
  So there is a part two in the library for you, and it is ready to fire up whenever you like.
• 34:56
  From the origins of his nickname to a change of direction that meant leaving this paddock to try World Superbikes.
• 35:04
  Was it the right move?
• 35:06
  And what about working on projects like the foggy Patronus machines and helping triumph back into the record books decades after they had last tasted success?
• 35:17
  And how close he went to getting his hands on a Steve McQueen scrambler.
• 35:21
  All that and more here on Rusty's Garage.