Latest / Rusty's Garage / Kevin Magee | Part 2 - World class talent & world records

Transcript

Kevin Magee | Part 2 - World class talent & world records · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:16
  Our hearts out with this man, it's one of the great sporting comebacks in sport that McGee has come back the way he has.
• 0:37
  Growing up around Horsham and cutting his teeth on the dirt.
• 0:41
  Losing his dad at a relatively young age and the impact that had.
• 0:45
  Doing some seriously hard yards before discovering that he might be able to make a career out of racing bikes.
• 0:53
  In this second part, he opens up on a few things...
• 0:56
  finally breaking into Grand Prix racing and those fearsome, those awesome, those wild 500cc machines.
• 1:04
  The part that Bathurst played and the hurdle just before his debut.
• 1:09
  He also talks about some frightening accidents, including the 1989 US Grand Prix.
• 1:14
  On the cool-down lap, McGee had stopped to perform a burnout and was hit by former US Grand National and Superbike champion Bubba Schobert, who hadn't seen the Aussie while
• 1:25
  He was on a congratulatory exchange with his countryman, Eddie Lawson.
• 1:29
  Schobert suffered serious head injuries, and although he'd recover, it ended his bike racing career.
• 1:35
  You'll get a sense of how hard that hit, McGee, who had his own near-death experience in almost the same spot at Laguna Seca 12 months later.
• 1:45
  Let's launch into this second instalment now.
• 1:50
  When did you get your bum on a GP bike for the first time?
• 1:54
  Where were you?
• 1:54
  Take me there.
• 1:55
  And what was that sensation like?
• 1:57
  At the end of 86.
• 1:58
  So the Yamaha, the Yamaha dealer team was run by Jeff Pine from Yamaha Australia.
• 2:05
  And then they got in Trevor Flood, ran us at Bappers.
• 2:08
  That was when I won in 86.
• 2:10
  the RI 500.
• 2:12
  And then Warren Willing had sort of finished off all his, I think, Grand Prix stuff and Dunlop stuff and all that.
• 2:19
  And he became the manager before the end of the year at the dealer team.
• 2:25
  And obviously he was overseas racing in Grand Prix and stuff and knew Kenny Roberts and that sort of thing.
• 2:31
  And obviously Kel Carruthers, 1969 250 world champion, working for Kenny Roberts with Eddie Lawson and Kenny himself before that.
• 2:41
  So that was the link with Warren.
• 2:43
  He got on to Kel and Agostini.
• 2:45
  He knew all those people.
• 2:47
  And they came out for the Swan Series and brought out those two Wysitars that they raced during the World Championship season.
• 2:54
  And one for me and one for McElnay.
• 2:55
  No practice, no secret private tests, no anything.
• 2:59
  Turn up at Surfers.
• 3:01
  Don't even think we tested on the Thursday then.
• 3:03
  I think it was just a Friday morning talking to Kel Carruthers.
• 3:06
  And he said, Kevin, I'll tell you one thing.
• 3:09
  It's easy to ride a slow bike fast, but it's hard to ride a fast bike fast.
• 3:14
  And it was spot bloody on.
• 3:17
  Minimum weight for those back then were 118 kilos.
• 3:21
  And you probably got a true 170, 175 two-stroke four-cylinder horsepower.
• 3:28
  That must have felt unbelievable, mate, did it?
• 3:31
  I can remember he said, go out and run it in for two laps.
• 3:34
  Take it up to 10 grand.
• 3:36
  And 10 grand, they're just starting to get happy.
• 3:38
  It was the fastest, lightest, quickest stopping.
• 3:41
  I had to keep letting the brakes off because you just stop underneath you.
• 3:45
  And you had to get on the gas to get to the corner.
• 3:48
  It was crazy.
• 3:49
  Wow, so you had to adjust your stopping distances and go even deeper.
• 3:52
  It was madness.
• 3:53
  Like, it was crazy.
• 3:54
  You just didn't think, you know, it's like rechipping your brain.
• 3:57
  You've just got to pull that one out and put another one in.
• 3:59
  Like, I can go to that braking marker because this thing will stop and won't.
• 4:06
  Because they were so light, it didn't try to chip over as much as sometimes.
• 4:10
  I know Superbike's heavier, but I don't know.
• 4:13
  It was just uncanny how easy it would stop.
• 4:15
  But I'll tell you what.
• 4:17
  If you're hitting the back of the shorts, when it hits 10, 10, 2, you know you're alive then until about 11, 8 or so, and that was pretty much your operating range when you wanted full noise.
• 4:29
  And that first session was just wild.
• 4:32
  And Macon, he's gone because he's used to fast tracks in Europe, and, you know, eyeballs are bouncing around in the sockets.
• 4:39
  It was a little bit bumpy in a few places at surfers, and you're just getting used to the actual average speed.
• 4:47
  It was amazing.
• 4:48
  It was just...
• 4:50
  I was embarrassed to be smoked by McElnay so much, but given he'd been riding it for the year and ridden 500 years before that, the Skull Bandit Suzuki's Atlas 1 Series and in the World Championship, I thought, next weekend's on par.
• 5:02
  I'll have a good crack there.
• 5:04
  And did you and did that sort of open the door to the World Championship?
• 5:08
  How did that kind of first proper contract at 500 world level come about?
• 5:13
  Kelka rather saw that I raced fairly and squarely against Rob Magelney.
• 5:18
  I beat him in one of the races at Oram Park the next weekend.
• 5:22
  I got my typical crap starts, but just chipped away.
• 5:26
  And I think we're pretty much using second-hand Michelin tyres too from the Grand Prix season.
• 5:32
  So there was a bit of coin flipping in the back of the truck for who got what tyre and...
• 5:36
  I was good on knowing when the tyre pressure got too high from getting too hot, from abusing it too much.
• 5:42
  When I got a shit start, I couldn't hammer through the field.
• 5:45
  I had to measure it.
• 5:47
  Then we went to one...
• 5:50
  The old quarter with the hump over the back in it.
• 5:52
  That was good fun.
• 5:53
  McElnay crashed in the wet one.
• 5:55
  I think he picked it up and beat me.
• 5:57
  Wow.
• 5:58
  I was paranoid about falling off at Rusty because there was sort of a saying going around then, you know, the factories can easily get another bit of meat.
• 6:06
  And the mechanics like Mike Sinclair, your mate here in New Zealand, Paul Tracy, New Zealand, and Jerry Burgess in Adelaide.
• 6:13
  You know what they used to call us riders?
• 6:15
  What?
• 6:15
  Spaces.
• 6:16
  Yeah.
• 6:16
  Yeah, we just filled the space between the handlebars and the seat.
• 6:20
  Now, your GP debut, if I'm not wrong, was slightly delayed, was it, mate?
• 6:24
  Did you have a prang at Bathurst and that sort of delayed your foray into GP racing?
• 6:29
  So this is the end of 86, so I've never been shoulder there.
• 6:32
  And that was pretty good because everyone was odds on bet that McElnay was going to win all six races over three weekends and take away 50 grand.
• 6:40
  Price money.
• 6:41
  That was extra price money.
• 6:43
  just for winning all six and giving no one else a chance, which was odds-on by the looks of things at surfers.
• 6:49
  So then we go into the start of 87th,
• 6:52
  And, oh, sorry, back in the middle of 86, when I got back from 85, I said to Dowson, we've got to get, you know, Marlborough 86 contracts.
• 7:02
  We've got to get the Suzuka 8-hour in.
• 7:05
  So we wouldn't sign our contracts.
• 7:06
  We'd done a few races.
• 7:08
  We wouldn't sign our contracts until the Japanese had us down for the 8-hour.
• 7:11
  So then we signed our contracts.
• 7:13
  Awesome.
• 7:14
  Little pricks we were.
• 7:16
  So we got a Yamaha FZ 750 Japanese super bike spec bike.
• 7:22
  Takaki Suzuki was the engineer.
• 7:24
  I remember him with the Yamaha too.
• 7:26
  Anyway, that was on Dunlops.
• 7:29
  And you got your A and your B riders.
• 7:31
  And I was a B rider.
• 7:33
  Dawson was an A rider.
• 7:35
  Qualifying A and B.
• 7:36
  Long story short, Warren had managed to get the magnesium flat slide carburetors instead of the...
• 7:43
  CV carburetors with the diaphragms and the butterflies and crap in them.
• 7:46
  They're just horrible on a race bike.
• 7:50
  And we're going pretty good.
• 7:52
  And Garson crashed it in his qualifying, which mine came after that.
• 8:00
  And the Japanese took the flat slides off and put the CVs back on it.
• 8:05
  So I've gone out to qualify and there's, when the throttle's not connected to the back wheel, which is what happens with the CV, is when you turn the throttle, you want the throttle because if you haven't pushed the front, you want the back wheel to turn so you can pick the front back up.
• 8:20
  Gotcha.
• 8:20
  And if it doesn't happen at that instant, no good.
• 8:23
  So I do my outlap and come around and was going all right.
• 8:27
  I was never a really good qualifier.
• 8:29
  Yeah.
• 8:30
  I was just getting the thing wound up and getting used to where this flat spot was.
• 8:35
  And that hairpin around the back, and then you've got that big, long right hand, or I don't know what it's called, before you flick it into the spoon at the back there, the long left.
• 8:45
  You pin through there in fifth, and back to third, flicked it into the spoon, lost the front.
• 8:50
  And back in those days, the kerbs were about six inches high.
• 8:53
  I've rolled on to my left side and tried to bunny hop my body over the kerb.
• 9:00
  I walked back to the pits and from my ankle to my hip, at my hip, it was just that raging purple-red colour.
• 9:12
  It went right down the left side of my leg because when I got launched off the kerb.
• 9:16
  Sugar.
• 9:17
  Nelson said go back to the hotel and just put hot and cold water on it for 20 minutes and it was just like a big lump of bloody jelly.
• 9:25
  Anyway, we'll race the next day and yeah, we got second and that was quite impressed because Kenny Sr., Kenny Robb Sr. had ridden that bike at Yamaha's Test Track.
• 9:35
  And what I forgot to tell you was that I put that Japanese domestic superbike on Dunlop's, fourth on the Le Mans grid for the start of the eight hour, amongst I think there was 13 factory Formula One bikes.
• 9:48
  Unbelievable.
• 9:49
  Yama Ha Factory gave me a test at Sugo in Japan up near Sendai on the TT Formula One bike.
• 9:55
  Yep.
• 9:56
  And Christian Sauer was riding one.
• 10:00
  as well.
• 10:01
  So that was the test.
• 10:02
  Yamaha's track, Yamaha's Grand Prix rider on a TT Formula 1 bike against a kid from country Victoria.
• 10:09
  Anyway, got my crap start and done the same lap times and finished just a couple of seconds behind him.
• 10:17
  Amazing.
• 10:18
  That was 86 and that's when they tested me against McInerney and the Swan Series on the 500s.
• 10:24
  And then they wanted me to run the Japanese TT Formula One championship in 87 in Japan.
• 10:32
  And so we go over there for testing it late February at Suzuka.
• 10:37
  Yamaha only.
• 10:39
  I think it was eight or nine.
• 10:40
  It was all the Japanese racers, the Japanese test riders, all the factory boys, all the Mulberry Yamaha, Lucky Strike, Goulwas, Yamaha, the French guys.
• 10:50
  And I was there on the TT Formula 1, the 754 stroke.
• 10:54
  That was frustrating.
• 10:55
  Hadn't ridden a 500 a couple of months ago.
• 10:57
  But anyway, Eddie Lawson called it the diesel.
• 11:00
  So I'm ripping around on the diesel.
• 11:03
  What come out of that?
• 11:04
  Gardner had the TT Formula 1 lap record, I believe was 217.8.
• 11:10
  And I went around in 216 dead.
• 11:13
  Neil McKenzie had the lap record, I think, at 215.8 for a 500.
• 11:20
  No, 215.5, I reckon, from memory.
• 11:23
  Eddie Lawson went around in 215.7.
• 11:26
  I was 16 dead and all the rest of the 500s were slower.
• 11:30
  Does this lead to, I think there's some wildcard opportunities with Kenny Roberts' Yamaha team that sort of come in the wake of this, isn't there?
• 11:36
  Yeah, well, what happened next was a very quick lead into, well,
• 11:42
  we'll do you a wild card in the Japanese Grand Prix.
• 11:44
  It was the first Grand Prix in Japan, World Grand Prix in Japan since 1962 when I was born and when Suzuka was invented, as in the racetrack.
• 11:55
  And so it's 87 and I'm a wild card Japanese factory rider, no lucky strike, no Mubryama or anything, and qualified...
• 12:12
  Six, so I was the first guy on the second row of the grid because they used to have five back in the day.
• 12:18
  So then it's poor and rain for the race.
• 12:22
  And I was going good.
• 12:23
  Like Randy Mimola on the Dunlop wets and Mike Baldwin on the Dunlop wets.
• 12:28
  So both on Kenny's Lucky Strike Gamars.
• 12:31
  They were gone.
• 12:31
  They were just on another level, completely another level.
• 12:35
  So they're gone and gardeners in third and I was going for third, come out of the spoon and I'd sized him up and there was enough room there at that last.
• 12:46
  It's a bit of a kink before you straighten up for the back straight.
• 12:50
  And then all of a sudden I was in the grass the next lap.
• 12:53
  So that didn't work.
• 12:55
  So I dropped right back because you're in fifth gear going through there.
• 12:58
  So...
• 13:00
  Then I was a bit angry and overcooked it up the back of the pits and high side of the thing.
• 13:05
  And I just walked away in disgust because I was so annoyed with myself.
• 13:10
  And Mike Sinclair pulled it apart and showed me at the end of the race, in a wet race, because the carburetors face forward, as in that's where they get the air from, they just fill up with gunk.
• 13:22
  So that goes through the engine and the piston ring was like,
• 13:27
  I don't know how I didn't jump out in the gap between the piston and the ball because the cylinders and the piston and rings are completely stuffed after a wet race because they're completely worn out with all the grit that goes in them.
• 13:39
  And that gets them a little bit peaker, he said.
• 13:41
  The power comes on a lot sharper when they're worn out.
• 13:44
  So I could use that as an excuse, but I think I was more angry because I was trying to get on the podium in my first Montprey.
• 13:50
  I think only in your third ever GP you get points.
• 13:54
  Yeah, okay.
• 13:55
  So at Assen, so the Bathurst where I broke my lead and, you know, life was gone.
• 14:00
  No, I won the 200k race at Suzuka five weeks later, Rusty.
• 14:03
  Five weeks.
• 14:04
  Amazing.
• 14:05
  Then comes Assen and that turned to shit.
• 14:08
  It was raining.
• 14:09
  There was two restarts.
• 14:12
  So we started the race and I think we had two restarts after that.
• 14:15
  And back in those days, you got a point for 10.
• 14:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:19
  I was racing Kenny Irons, again, the late great.
• 14:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:23
  And I managed to nab him for 10th.
• 14:26
  Oh, but before that, in the dry qualifying, I've never been to Aston.
• 14:30
  And when qualifying finishes, I'm second to Eddie Lawson.
• 14:34
  Amazing.
• 14:35
  So that was a bit of a spin out.
• 14:37
  Then that leads to Portugal.
• 14:39
  Late 87 now, and I've just been to Sugo for the World TT Formula One Championship, proper world championship.
• 14:48
  Yep.
• 14:49
  Crashed in Friday on practice, crashed in Saturday on practice, rolled the golf cart with Warren Willing in the passenger side.
• 14:56
  I landed in on him.
• 14:58
  He is swearing his lungs out at me.
• 15:02
  pushed it back over, drove to the pits, got on the factory Formula One bike, crashed it at the last chicane in morning warm-up.
• 15:10
  I'm walking back, Warren's walking towards me, and he started yelling from about 50 metres away.
• 15:16
  And I just said, doesn't matter, Warren, I'm going to win it anyway.
• 15:19
  because I was trying to get through this shitty chicane to get up the hall where the Hondas just ride away from it and the Suzuki.
• 15:26
  You've got to make it up around the back.
• 15:28
  And so having crashed three times, packed up new leathers to go to Portugal the next weekend.
• 15:34
  First bloke I saw at the back of the pits was Kenny.
• 15:36
  Kenny goes, how did you get here?
• 15:38
  I said, I drove from Japan to Spain.
• 15:42
  He looked at me a bit bewildered.
• 15:44
  So we get on it there and qualified...
• 15:48
  fifth on the front row, a bit worse than Assen but better than Suzuka, and then rolling around.
• 15:54
  And just before the race, Kenny Sr. says to me, you know, if you can help Randy out with points, you know, help him out.
• 16:03
  I'm looking at Kenny Roberts Sr. going like, you're a goose.
• 16:06
  You're thinking I'm going to be able to help.
• 16:08
  Randy Mimola, Grand Prix, and I've looked at all of them in the magazines for years.
• 16:12
  Help him out with points.
• 16:13
  How do you reckon that's going to happen?
• 16:15
  Anyway, Randy ran off at the end of the straight while he was trying to beat Eddie Lawson, apparently.
• 16:19
  And I was sort of chipping away and got my usual first lap loss of about eight and a half seconds or something.
• 16:25
  And I pretty much stayed at that.
• 16:27
  So I was pretty much doing competitive times.
• 16:29
  And then I think Randy ran off somewhere else again and ended up behind me.
• 16:33
  Because I remember reading the ACU rule book, you had to make a bona fide attempt, otherwise you'd get thrown out.
• 16:39
  So I waited till up around the back of the Pegaso ramp for Randy to catch me, and I felt like I could get off the thing and push it faster.
• 16:47
  He's gone past, he's got second and I've got third.
• 16:49
  And then it was all on from there.
• 16:51
  Aggo was on the phone.
• 16:52
  What did that podium mean to you, mate?
• 16:54
  If Aggo's on the phone and things, this is clearly a huge turning point.
• 16:57
  That meant everything and that just cemented the whole deal from everything late 86 through 87.
• 17:03
  That was concrete.
• 17:04
  I'll be there next year.
• 17:15
  There's two real stories in Rusty's library that will appeal to listeners on both sides of the Dutch.
• 17:20
  Do you like what I did there?
• 17:22
  In 2022 he spoke with former racer turned commentator and official, Simon Craefar.
• 17:29
  I believe that if we're talking about my sport, what's the word?
• 17:33
  You've got to have a little bit of mongrel in you to want to risk your body, risk everything to beat that other guy.
• 17:42
  You know what I mean?
• 17:43
  You've got to have a bit of that.
• 17:44
  And I mean, that mellows with age.
• 17:48
  Search for the two-parter with Simon Craefar in the Rusty's Garage Library later, and enjoy the story of a young Kiwi from a family who sacrificed so much that made it to MotoGP on incredible self-belief, and how he shares those learnings now.
• 18:02
  Time to shift back into gear with Rusty and Magoo.
• 18:06
  I want to pinpoint some key moments of your career now, if we can, just so that we don't run out of time.
• 18:11
  Firstly, winning the last ever Spanish Grand Prix at Harama, and there were two Aussies on the podium that day.
• 18:18
  That must have been mega, mate.
• 18:19
  Is that the zenith moment?
• 18:21
  Is that the pinnacle moment for you?
• 18:23
  It's hard because there's a few, Rusty, but it is definitely...
• 18:28
  the pinnacle because it was such a hard battle with Eddie Lawson, one of the best.
• 18:32
  You know, that doesn't come much harder when beating Lawson on, on a good day.
• 18:37
  And he certainly didn't have a bad one.
• 18:39
  When I rode five hours, I think it was 36 minutes in the 87 Suzuka 8 hour, like that was massive.
• 18:46
  We just weren't supposed to win Yamaha's first Suzuka 8 hour.
• 18:51
  Incredible, mate.
• 18:52
  Like, that's the first win.
• 18:55
  37 degrees, I think it was, and 98% humidity.
• 18:58
  Unbelievable.
• 18:59
  And that was a few months after I'd broken my femur.
• 19:02
  And there's a few like that, like after the head injury and back on the world super bikes and stuff like that, but...
• 19:08
  Because Harama is such a tight, difficult circuit, 500s are so volatile, and Eddie Lawson was such a reliable motorcycle racer, yeah, Harama was definitely one of the massive moments.
• 19:22
  Awesome.
• 19:22
  Can I come to probably two of the more difficult moments?
• 19:26
  Let's talk 1989 US Grand Prix there and what happened kind of on the cool down and how that affected you and so on.
• 19:35
  Rainy and Swanson were going out front in the race.
• 19:38
  It was Edie and Gardner, and I knew that I couldn't ride as hard as I could because I just, well, I think that we were doing 40 laps back in those days, and I knew I couldn't punish the tires, and Warren was always on to me about that because I could just go and screw them to the wall in like five laps if I wanted to, but you had to last 40.
• 19:58
  So I tried to measure it out, and I didn't punish the tires.
• 20:03
  Everything was going good.
• 20:05
  And I'd caught Eddie and just stayed with him to let the tyres cool and not put any more pressure on.
• 20:10
  Gardner was in there somewhere.
• 20:11
  I can't remember exactly how that worked.
• 20:14
  But I remember Eddie was the main target.
• 20:17
  And I knew fuel was an issue because I didn't do the siding lap on Warren's recommendation.
• 20:22
  Yes.
• 20:22
  So I caught Eddie and then I pulled the pin with like a lap and a half to go.
• 20:26
  And then a lap later going up towards Corks or up the hill.
• 20:30
  Ramp, ramp, ramp, ramp, ramp.
• 20:33
  I'd already calculated in your head that I'd be equal second with Eddie on points in the world championship, and that's where I wanted to be.
• 20:41
  So it's chugging.
• 20:42
  Eddie comes past me.
• 20:43
  I roll down the line.
• 20:44
  I think I got fourth.
• 20:45
  Eddie got third.
• 20:47
  And then when you get around the infield, I should have just thrown the thing against the wall.
• 20:50
  Wish I had it.
• 20:51
  When you get in the infield and then you start going uphill with the fuel tanks there, you know, they used to be nearly three foot long, the big fuel tank we had.
• 20:59
  I think it was like 28 litres.
• 21:02
  And the fuel ran to the back where the fuel tap was and fired up.
• 21:05
  And I said, I'm not flying far enough.
• 21:07
  I'll do a burnout.
• 21:08
  And Eddie and Bubba being the Americans, they were, you know, shaking hands, patting each other on the back and all that.
• 21:16
  And consequently, Bubba hit the back of me.
• 21:20
  And I wasn't worried about me.
• 21:24
  I was bawling my eyes out because he wasn't moving.
• 21:26
  Far out.
• 21:27
  And that's what killed me psychologically.
• 21:30
  Stood up and thought I tripped over something.
• 21:32
  I looked down and I'm looking at the bottom of my boot.
• 21:35
  My boot was facing upwards and the leg was still in it.
• 21:38
  But I was worried about Bubba who was up the road.
• 21:41
  And that affected me for a long time because I was the ass of the paddock because I'd injured Bubba.
• 21:48
  How did you cope with that, mate?
• 21:51
  me mentally but um we just had to get on with life so you continue to race and there is a cruel kind of moment here that sort of same race meeting 12 months on you have a crash that correct me if i'm wrong here mate i think they basically in some of the papers in australia or perhaps globally somewhere they pronounced you dead is that right
• 22:18
  Apparently it is.
• 22:19
  There's a newspaper somewhere that was a fatality.
• 22:21
  Talk me through that day.
• 22:22
  What happened, mate?
• 22:24
  Well, the irony is that a wooden star, Jeff Crask, a big, burly, army mechanic, he pushed me up that Laguna Hill from the start of all for quite a while until the thing finally fired up.
• 22:36
  And anyway, coming through that turn six,
• 22:41
  to go up the hill, ripply from all the car mileage they do around there.
• 22:46
  So I just wanted to come through there, and there was like this inside rut.
• 22:51
  You'd sort of drop into the rut right near the white line on the apex, and then that's where you'd hook it, and you'd do a high percentage of your turning there.
• 23:00
  You couldn't particularly tell, but that's where you're bashing the bike to head up the hill.
• 23:05
  And I just wanted to tighten up my line by about a foot, 15 inches,
• 23:09
  because I was just getting into the ripple bumps and it was just losing traction and going sideways.
• 23:13
  And I'd moved from Dunlop to Mitchell as well, and Mitchell and we're a lot more snappy.
• 23:18
  And the thing just snapped out, and I don't remember the crash.
• 23:24
  I remember everything about a half a lap to it.
• 23:28
  And obviously from watching videos, you had to work out what was wrong and what was your fault and don't ever do it again.
• 23:34
  Remember Mel Campbell's saying, if you crash, you just got to work out why I crashed and not do it again.
• 23:38
  So, yeah, and then it just flung me.
• 23:40
  But I had an injury from a testing crash where my right arm was really weak from nerve damage, so my left arm held onto the bar and the right one came off, licked me onto my back.
• 23:50
  And Lou Martin told me the helmet looked like a dropped egg.
• 23:55
  Oh...
• 23:56
  He's a great photographer, been around motorcycle racing for a long time.
• 24:01
  What was the road to recovery like and so on?
• 24:04
  I had to work out what happened and I was stiff as a board.
• 24:06
  I got back to Australia Road, weighed 40, 48 kilos or something, 49 kilos.
• 24:11
  Stiff as a board.
• 24:12
  You couldn't, you know, if you're laying flat, you couldn't only get up to like 45 degrees.
• 24:17
  I was literally weak as.
• 24:19
  Needed heaps of sleep.
• 24:22
  I think because of the medications when I was in the coma for 13 days, I think.
• 24:28
  I'd wake up in the middle of the night in Western Victoria in Horshing, soaked.
• 24:34
  Top sheet, bottom sheet, no blankets, soaking.
• 24:37
  I'll get out of bed at night past two in the morning and have a shower.
• 24:40
  Wow.
• 24:41
  I think that was just all the medications coming out.
• 24:44
  And you had to have them four times a day.
• 24:47
  I felt a fair bit better one morning.
• 24:52
  And then I thought, I think I forgot to take one.
• 24:55
  So I counted them out because I was strictly numbered and measured.
• 24:58
  Yes.
• 24:59
  With one too many.
• 25:01
  So I took four the next day, I took three the next day, and I was good, bad, good, bad.
• 25:06
  So then because your head actually felt like, your head doesn't really feel anything, but it just felt like it was the only thing inside my skull was wooden.
• 25:15
  It was a weird feeling.
• 25:16
  I can't explain it.
• 25:17
  To this day, I can't explain it, and that's a lot of years ago.
• 25:19
  What lasting effects did it have, mate?
• 25:22
  Some memory loss, short-term memory sort of thing, but people are staggered that the things I can remember from decades.
• 25:29
  You have just done in this podcast, mate, some incredible detail around motorcycle types and sprockets and all sorts of things.
• 25:36
  You've got some stuff that's still locked in there.
• 25:39
  Yeah, there's shit like Sinclair, Mike Sinclair in that.
• 25:43
  I can tell him what gear I was around in that track and shit like that.
• 25:46
  But anyway...
• 25:50
  I don't know.
• 25:52
  Like before when I was techno sort of ignorant, scared really, didn't use the contact in my phone.
• 26:04
  And working at Fox and you've got to remember a heap of stuff on the spot.
• 26:08
  Like you haven't got time to look up.
• 26:09
  You haven't got time to think.
• 26:10
  It's just got to be there.
• 26:12
  And I was thinking I've got to free up some disk space up here.
• 26:18
  Yeah.
• 26:18
  Yeah.
• 26:19
  But I'll use this contacts thing on the phone.
• 26:21
  So I sat in my office in Sydney, filled three A4 pads with, back in the day, mobile numbers, some home phones, some fax numbers.
• 26:36
  33 lines on each page.
• 26:38
  Three pages.
• 26:39
  I just went, oh, that's enough.
• 26:40
  If I put all those in my phone, I'll have more space in the tank up here.
• 26:45
  Well done.
• 26:46
  Yeah.
• 26:46
  You would get back on the bike, you would do some GP events again, you would win again in superbikes, which I'll come to, but was it fundamentally the end of the GP chapter and how difficult was it to confront the proper end of the GP chapter?
• 27:02
  Yeah, well, I had the two-year contract with Suzuki.
• 27:06
  They said it was Lucky Strike, didn't want the litigation because I'd have the head injury and all that, so that didn't happen.
• 27:11
  So there was all kinds of stuff about the sponsors and litigation.
• 27:16
  Believe what you will, but I didn't get a full-time gig again.
• 27:20
  I did a wild card with Suzuki at Suzuka and Eastern Creek that you had to be riding.
• 27:29
  Back in the day, I said, well, I was riding like I had mum on the back.
• 27:32
  Oh, wow.
• 27:33
  Because if anything happened, it was going to be my fault.
• 27:37
  You know what I'm saying?
• 27:38
  Yeah.
• 27:39
  I mean, when I flew over to England down to Donington, met up with the head neurosurgeon who ironically rode his VFR 750 out of London down to Donington.
• 27:53
  He'd done all these tests.
• 27:55
  He looked at me and he goes,
• 27:57
  Was he four times faster than the average human being?
• 28:01
  And I felt dopey compared to how I used to feel before the accident.
• 28:04
  Wow.
• 28:05
  Must have had really good reaction times.
• 28:07
  And the decision-making one is the same sort of thing.
• 28:09
  And he goes, all right, let's go for a ride.
• 28:12
  So he jumped on his 750.
• 28:13
  They give me a RGV 250 to lap around Donington to start with, come back and...
• 28:19
  The neurosurgeon said, nah, he's all good, and sent him out on the 500.
• 28:22
  And I was really worried because I thought the 500 would feel super fast after like a year off it.
• 28:28
  Yeah.
• 28:29
  And actually didn't.
• 28:30
  And, yeah, all that went good, and I got my license back and did the wild card in Japan.
• 28:35
  I think I came 12th or 13th, and...
• 28:37
  about the same but one of them I think I beat my replacement two quick ones to finish if we can please firstly an unbelievable chapter with Fox Sports mate as the expert there I think at one point you were the longest serving freelancer in the company's history weren't you on the sports side anyway yeah
• 28:58
  Yeah, I think so.
• 28:59
  In total, Rusty, 27 years.
• 29:02
  Unreal, mate.
• 29:03
  Great stint.
• 29:04
  Great stint.
• 29:05
  And one of the really cool projects that you worked on in post-race life, and I'm glad we're getting to talk about it in a podcast sense, you were part of a record-breaking effort with a vision-impaired rider, weren't you?
• 29:18
  Just give us the summary of that.
• 29:20
  Yeah, was it?
• 29:21
  Dan Gatton, that motorcycle in New South Wales sent me a cold calling email.
• 29:26
  Hey, Kev, bloody blah, blah.
• 29:28
  This guy, Ben Felton, he's blind, wants to break the Guinness World Land Speed Record for a motorcycle ridden blindfold.
• 29:36
  Mum hadn't long passed away before that.
• 29:41
  and cleaning her stuff out.
• 29:41
  And she used to volunteer and rattle the Labrador for the Victorian Guide Dogs Association and all that stuff.
• 29:47
  Yep.
• 29:47
  So I sort of hit home and I was scared as a kid because when we're little rough farm kids go to school and mum and dad always told us, don't throw sticks or stones at other kids.
• 29:58
  You know, hit them in the aisle, they go blind.
• 30:00
  And I can remember walking around the schoolyard with nice clothes pretending.
• 30:03
  Wow.
• 30:04
  And so I thought about this.
• 30:07
  I just started emailing and I got like,
• 30:10
  First, second, third, fourth paragraph.
• 30:12
  And I thought, what am I sending in an email for if he's blind?
• 30:15
  Well, maybe he's not fully blind.
• 30:17
  And I'd put his number in my phone ready to push dial.
• 30:21
  So I pushed send and then rang him.
• 30:23
  Ben, Kevin McGee, blah, blah, blah.
• 30:24
  Right.
• 30:26
  So I had the gut-wrenching thing was I had to ask him how blind is he.
• 30:30
  That killed me.
• 30:31
  That was, that was shit.
• 30:32
  Yeah.
• 30:33
  And he said, black, totally black, and that's when you just, your heart drops through the bottom of your guts.
• 30:41
  And I thought, well, I couldn't leave a blind guy on the side of the road and
• 30:45
  He seemed pretty ambitious and buggering.
• 30:48
  So that's incredible.
• 30:49
  So you effectively acted as like a shadow for him.
• 30:52
  And what speeds did you get to?
• 30:54
  And you were basically on the same place where they break, was it Lake Gardner or Lake Eyre?
• 30:59
  And it's where they break the land speed records, isn't it?
• 31:02
  Lake Gardner.
• 31:03
  Yeah.
• 31:03
  Yeah.
• 31:05
  We practice out at Sydney Motorsport Park and that.
• 31:07
  They give us the strip when they close down and that, the drag strip over the back and the front straight stuff when they finished up.
• 31:13
  So it was real funny out there one night because some of the staff said, you know, well, it's getting dark.
• 31:21
  I said, well, that doesn't matter.
• 31:23
  And then the latest progression was the salt and 272.9 something, I think, K's.
• 31:31
  Unbelievable.
• 31:33
  That is seriously cool, mate.
• 31:35
  Well, on that world record run, the salt's funny, and my visor was just wiping out.
• 31:41
  And the black markers that are like a quarter of a mile apart, Ben was nearly at them when they came into view for me.
• 31:49
  Wow.
• 31:50
  It was a bit of a guessing game, and I sort of imagined that if I was on the trajectory of a line straight through the middle of my skull and back...
• 32:00
  and did not deviate from that at all, then I'd end up somewhere near the middle of the next set.
• 32:06
  So that's where I should send him.
• 32:09
  And I got to the other end.
• 32:10
  I was balling.
• 32:11
  Because I got him through it.
• 32:12
  I said to ball, can't do that again, can't do that again.
• 32:14
  And the wind come up and it was delayed.
• 32:16
  And I'm going, thank God for that.
• 32:19
  And righto, the wind's 10 under 11 kilometers.
• 32:21
  You go out and they come up again.
• 32:22
  So we sat down.
• 32:23
  I'm going, gosh.
• 32:24
  And then I was like, all right, stuff it.
• 32:26
  And I knew I was on a mission because I heard him hit the rev limiter in fourth gear.
• 32:31
  Wow.
• 32:32
  And there was a sinkhole.
• 32:35
  Partway down the track.
• 32:36
  Yeah.
• 32:36
  I got it in pass on the way down because I stuck to sort of one third of the track.
• 32:41
  Yeah.
• 32:41
  And on the way back, I'm just kidding yourself that much.
• 32:43
  I thought, stuff it.
• 32:44
  And when it hit that, it hit me at like 260 plus Ks, the wet salt that come off the thing.
• 32:51
  It was like shotgun going off.
• 32:53
  I shit myself, but then it was like mine back on the job.
• 32:56
  Yeah.
• 32:56
  And, yeah, we got to the other end.
• 32:58
  But at the end, because Ben's a bit chubbier than I am, he was actually pulling away from me.
• 33:03
  Wow.
• 33:04
  Before we got to the end of the call.
• 33:06
  So he was disappearing because my arm was wheel spinning.
• 33:09
  On the salt, you can roll it on in 50 or 260 k's.
• 33:12
  Mate, you can just start landing.
• 33:15
  Oh, wow.
• 33:17
  That is incredible, mate.
• 33:18
  What a great achievement in post-race life.
• 33:20
  Thank you for the little walk down memory lane today, mate, and to pick some key moments of your career and tell a bit more of your story.
• 33:27
  And we got to commentate together over the years, which I'm chuffed about, mate, and it's lovely to see you today and have a conversation with you.
• 33:33
  Thank you for coming on.
• 33:34
  Yeah, no worries.
• 33:35
  I'll never forget how serious you were on that tarmac rally when you were trying to drink.
• 33:39
  When you were in crackers at you and you were getting all shitty.
• 33:44
  Great days, brother.
• 33:45
  Great fun.
• 33:53
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 33:56
  Series editor and producer is Joel Harrison.
• 34:00
  Audio production by Link Kelly.
• 34:03
  If you've got a guest suggestion, get in touch with me on social media.
• 34:07
  The Garage, it's where a journey begins with a tank full of passion-fueled stories.
• 34:12
  Music.