Latest / Rusty's Garage / Stephen Gall | Part 1 - paddock bashing & battles with ‘Grunt’

Transcript

Stephen Gall | Part 1 - paddock bashing & battles with ‘Grunt’ · Rusty's Garage

0:02
A listener production.
0:14
I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
0:27
For this episode, I'm one of listeners' sister studios, Triple M, quite fitting in some ways because today's guest was sponsored by the Hit FM radio station during the heights of his racing career in Australia.
0:40
We're on the Gold Coast for the chat because that's where Stephen Gall is based now and has been for some time.
0:46
But he cut his teeth with his brother Dean on paddocks and tracks in Sydney's south and that fun during his upbringing would have a lasting, very powerful impact on
0:56
on where Stephen ended up as a star of Mr. Motocross and later in Speedway racing midgets and sprint cars.
1:03
How a visit to Orrin Park in the early 1970s to see the guns of international motocross then left him mesmerised and the vivid memories that he has more than 50 years on from that race meeting.
1:16
His rise to success built on more than talent, an incredible inner drive and a commitment to proper athlete preparation off the bike, physically, mentally, kind of changing the culture, if you like, to one of professionalism in every aspect.
1:33
His timing, together with the amazing work done by Vincent Teserero of Forcefield Marketing,
1:39
really helped to transform the sport, and we'll talk about that.
1:43
Gawley also opens up about some key and very cool bikes, as well as friendships that were also rivalries, the great battles with the late Anthony Gunter, Grunt, for example, and seeing the emergence of the next wave, like Craig Dack and Jeff Leask, who you can find in our library, how he channeled their arrival to see what metal they were made of and to keep bettering himself too.
2:07
his natural move into coaching and the creation of an academy with highly regarded programs that he ran here and abroad.
2:15
His eye for that stuff is still as sharp as ever, as you'll hear in the conversation, with some reflections on modern day stars.
2:23
Plus the move into Speedway, which in some ways was his first love and how he applied the kind of same principles that he'd become famous for on two wheels to four.
2:34
Our convo also includes details of a supercars test that I didn't know about and a whole lot more.
2:40
Because we get so engrossed in the conversation.
2:43
I didn't get to his work on the recent Mad Max films, Fury Road and Furiosa, that is my bad there, where he helped to create spectacular stunts with a team of Aussie riders and mechanics.
2:54
From a short-lived apprenticeship working on Jaguars to a life spent around bikes and racing, with an overarching message to aspiring racers and to fans that there is no easy way, and that is the title of his fabulous new book,
3:09
I'll put a link with details of where you can find it, how you can buy it in the EPS description.
3:14
Time to fire it up.
3:15
I hope you enjoy the story of Stephen Gould's journey.
3:19
Hello, mate.
3:20
How are you?
3:21
I'm very good, Rusty.
3:22
Hey, we are recording this on a beautiful kind of autumn afternoon here on the Gold Coast, but you have not wasted the day, which is typical of you, mate, isn't it?
3:30
Where were you this morning?
3:31
You were at the motor park, weren't you?
3:33
Tell me about that.
3:34
Yeah, well, I asked you to do it a little bit later in the day for obvious reasons.
3:39
I needed to get my Thursday morning fix, which was at Queensland Motor Park on my YZ450.
3:44
And a few 15-minute motos later, I was happy and I drove home and geared up for this.
3:49
They tell me you're still pretty handy and you can smash out a 30-minute moto too.
3:54
Is this true?
3:55
Yeah.
3:55
Yes, it's true, but at a subdued pace and with a lot of years of training other individuals, I know the difference between a race pace and a riding pace.
4:03
I can ride for 30 minutes, but I can't race for 30 minutes.
4:06
That's still amazing, mate.
4:08
I look at you and you've preserved, I feel, your age, your youth.
4:14
So, Will, mate, that's amazing that you're still there.
4:16
And you've never lost the love for it, have you?
4:18
No, no, no.
4:19
I really think as far as preserving being an athlete, you've got to look after yourself.
4:25
And for years and years I did stories in the Australian Dirt Bike Magazine, 38 years actually, and people always perceived me as a health freak and always fit.
4:33
So it would look really silly if I went the other way.
4:37
Yes.
4:38
Let yourself go.
4:39
Yeah, that's right.
4:40
So the pressure was on because they fit, they look good, but I like it.
4:43
You know, I like it a lot.
4:44
And I think the motorcycling now, I'm not much of a reader.
4:48
I don't do puzzles.
4:49
So the cognitive ability of your brain to handle motorcycle, off-road, motocross,
4:56
Each hand's doing something different.
4:57
Your finger's doing something different to your hand, your eye line, your thoughts, your body, you're moving, both legs doing different things.
5:04
So the cognitive ability of your brain is working overtime to ride a motocross bike, let alone a regular motorcycle.
5:11
But a motocross bike's on the edge of heightened ability because you've got ruts, you've got holes, you've got rocks to miss, you've got lines to pick.
5:20
You know, it's a bit like most racing, but there's so many veritables there.
5:23
Mm-hmm.
5:24
So I think it's really good for my mental outlook.
5:26
I mean, people, as they age, like to do things like crosswords.
5:30
Forget it.
5:30
That's from a mental perspective.
5:32
What you just described is way better than that, isn't it?
5:34
It is, and I'm not into crosswords, I'll tell you.
5:38
Can we come to early life for you, if you don't mind?
5:39
I'm glad that you bring up ADB magazine there too, because I think they were often regulars at the family farm when you were, you were younger, you would do some riding along the way.
5:50
But I mean, it was a, correct me if I'm wrong here, an 11 acre family farm, Menai in Sydney's south.
5:56
And in,
5:57
Gawley, it sounded like a fun place with different toys and things that you and your brother could roar around in bush bashing and so on, couldn't you?
6:05
I was very lucky.
6:06
Yeah, my dad had Shetland ponies and there was 11 acre property and he liked go-karts in the early days.
6:11
So he had an oiled go-kart track at the back dirt and I used to be on the track degrading it and sliding and dropping oil on it.
6:18
My brother Dean would do the same thing and I was driving go-karts and in my book, I've got a page of where it all began.
6:25
It's a classic photo because-
6:26
Beautiful photo.
6:27
I've got a cap on.
6:28
I've got thongs on.
6:29
The inside front wheel's off the ground.
6:31
The thing's sliding.
6:32
It's just a classic.
6:33
And anyone looking at the day go, oh, God, that's dangerous.
6:37
But anyway, it was good fun.
6:38
You can, without doubt, it's unmistakably you.
6:41
You can see the eyes and the kind of look.
6:44
It's a mixture of fun, but an early glimpse, I reckon, of the bit of the intensity that we came to know from you.
6:51
Speedway, which we will come to later in the conversation, was very much in the family kind of DNA.
6:58
Your dad loved it, didn't he?
6:59
He did.
7:00
He really loved the Speedway at the Sydney Showground.
7:02
And not only did he present his horses during the Easter show at the Showground, but every Saturday night we went, sat in the member stand, watched the legends go around, the Jim Aries and the Gordon Gasko's and the Billy Warners, you know, Howard Revell, Johnny Stewart was my hero back in the day.
7:18
All those guys.
7:19
I just loved it.
7:21
I don't know where the smell of methanol and castrol came from back in the day, but it
7:26
I've always loved going fast in, and it's actually a bit of a worry to me nowadays, as I just explained before to you, but you get that.
7:34
Yeah.
7:34
I mean, an amazing and iconic place from a speedway perspective.
7:39
You brought up the Shetland ponies there a moment ago.
7:41
Your dad, Bert, had a few kind of rules around if you were going to muck around on the property with noisy things, bikes, bushbashes, whatever, you weren't allowed to scare the ponies, were you?
7:52
No, and in fact, he threw me on the Shetland ponies to break them in sometimes.
7:56
Really?
7:56
I was young and a bit more invincible than anyone else was.
8:00
But I never liked one horsepower.
8:02
Okay.
8:03
That's the best way I can say it.
8:04
I never liked one horsepower, so I needed multiple horsepower, which certainly developed that way later on with sprint car racing.
8:10
Definitely.
8:10
I'm always amazed when I'm up to like 400 episodes of this now, and I'm always amazed about how athletes in any sport, but mainly motor racing,
8:20
latch on to gravitate to connect with their thing now if i look for you i mean you clearly fall in love in a two-wheel perspective at quite a young age i think you had like a fold-away army bike a kawasaki 75 honda xr 75 but you get your hands ultimately on a yamaha and it's kind of love at first sight a deep connection there mate wasn't wasn't there
8:47
It was, and it wasn't just the bike.
8:49
The first ever Yamaha minibike was a JT1 60cc bike, but it wasn't all about the bike.
8:55
Sure, the bike was good, but it was about the dealer, Trevor Hunter at Stony Creek Motorcycles.
9:01
He helped me initially, and then Macklin Motorcycles and another Yamaha dealer, Harry Macklin, helped me, and Steve Ashkenazi eventually became one of my mechanics.
9:10
He worked for Harry, and it was the love that they put into the sport, and I could see that love, and I...
9:15
I sort of gravitated towards it.
9:18
I can't really explain why.
9:19
But Yamaha, then I've been now Yamaha for 52 years.
9:24
And there's very few athletes, sports people out there that have ever been with one company for 52 years.
9:30
And Yamaha has just been so good to me over the years.
9:32
Backed me right through my racing experience.
9:35
15, 16 years of schooling that I travelled Australia teaching safer motorcycle schools to people.
9:40
You know, there's road racing, there's Sphinx, there's even a sponsor of the sprint car back in the day.
9:44
So they've really been good people.
9:47
I think when you look globally at the example you've just given, right, I mean, the only one I can immediately think of
9:53
is like Sir Jackie Stewart, who has a 58-year relationship with Rolex.
9:59
Oh, okay, Rolex.
10:00
But there's very few athletes that have been able to have that longevity.
10:03
And we probably need to tell more of your full kind of timeline in the discussion here to get to that.
10:08
But what is the secret of that longevity?
10:11
Because that is a great example, I think, to young athletes
10:13
athletes of what is possible.
10:16
And in your case, when you look at your story, it isn't just about the wins.
10:21
It isn't just about the stats and successes.
10:24
It's the relationship and what you built with them, isn't it?
10:27
It is.
10:28
Like I said before, nice people.
10:31
And I think it was drilled into me by my mother more than anyone, that you've got to be a stable individual, look after the people, look after you, hang with them.
10:40
Don't just, you know, kick them aside, which a lot of people do these days.
10:44
And yes, I had opportunities.
10:46
Honda came to me once.
10:47
BMW came to me once.
10:49
I had all these other opportunities, but I never really went there because Yamaha were always so good to me.
10:54
And through a lot of my racing and into my schooling days, there's a guy called Stephen Cottrell that was in charge of Yamaha, and he was really good to me over the years, and
11:02
You've got to give back.
11:03
And that's what I did.
11:04
I can't remember with him.
11:05
What was his total?
11:05
It was like 37 years with a business or something or other, wasn't he?
11:08
He was with them forever.
11:09
Yeah.
11:09
And he started some really smart things with Yamaha in as far as financial and insurance.
11:15
And he...
11:17
At Yamaha Australia, there's always been a Japanese individual that's been above everyone.
11:22
But when Stephen was there, they actually put him as the head guy because they respected his ability so much.
11:29
So take my hats off to Steve.
11:31
He's retired now and he's enjoying Sunshine Coast, but good on him.
11:34
Good on him.
11:35
Great fella too.
11:36
Did you keep that first bike?
11:38
What became of it, that Yamaha?
11:40
Oh, I don't know.
11:41
That first JT1 bike.
11:43
But what I did keep was, this is a little story too, in 74, the first YZ came out, which was a road race engineered design motocross bike.
11:57
And it had drilled clevis pins and all sorts of magnesium on the bike in 74, we're talking.
12:04
And the bike was so trick.
12:05
I walked to Harry Macklin's shop and it was on display in the window and I'm just sitting there as a...
12:10
14-year-old, Googling at this bike and thinking how cool it was.
12:14
Well, I still have that bike.
12:16
Awesome.
12:16
At home.
12:17
Awesome.
12:17
And my boss bought it.
12:20
I raced it with my boss.
12:21
And then when I got it back, which is a bit of a story because the guy that's supposed to restore it did a runner and took most of the bike with him and I had to buy bits all over the world to get it back together again.
12:31
But I restored it back standard as I looked at it in the window of that shop.
12:37
Not as a race bike, standard.
12:39
Brilliant.
12:39
Yeah, I love it.
12:40
Terrific.
12:41
You have over time, you know, with your passion around motocross donations, sold off various bits of memorabilia to assist that program.
12:48
I'm so pleased that you've kept that.
12:49
We'll come to donations as we go here.
12:53
Was it the St. George Motorcycle Club?
12:55
What's the early club involvement for you?
12:57
And what happens here?
12:58
Because your dad was a little bit nervous about you doing kind of open races and things, wasn't he?
13:03
What transpires in the early part of your racing career?
13:06
Well, Dad said, no way, son.
13:08
You're not racing.
13:08
You're not going anywhere else.
13:10
You can ride up the backyard, but that's it.
13:12
Well, Arthur Blizzard, the late Arthur Blizzard, rest in peace, Arthur.
13:16
And Jan, beautiful people.
13:17
Oh, beautiful.
13:17
But Jan's around now.
13:18
She's very, very smart, still in the 90s.
13:20
Yeah.
13:21
Arthur went to dad and said, dad, look, we'll look after him.
13:24
We'll make sure he's got the safe gear on.
13:26
He's looked after blah, blah, blah.
13:28
And so that was the excuse that I needed.
13:30
So I got into some club racing first and it did really, really well in club racing.
13:34
And then they talked to me to letting me do an open event, an open dirt track event, which, which a C grade teams day, which we won the first ever event we went to.
13:42
And then it just went on from there.
13:44
Yeah.
13:44
And dad then had nothing to say.
13:46
But, you know, dad only went to two ever race meetings in my life.
13:50
Really?
13:50
Mum went to a lot.
13:51
Dad was – he said he was too nervous.
13:53
Really?
13:54
So it didn't worry me.
13:55
I just got on with it and had fun, you know.
13:58
But Arthur, correct me if I'm wrong here, I think –
14:01
He turned a blind eye in a good way, in a good way in the early part of those of your career there to enable you to grow and experience and so on.
14:09
And I'm really glad that you brought up he and Jan.
14:11
I mean, they're just part of the fabric of they've done so many great things in motorcycling, didn't they?
14:15
They certainly have.
14:16
They've been lovely people.
14:17
So tell me about what that enabled you to do because you got to throw your leg over a couple of bikes that were… Yeah, well, I not only threw my leg over some important bikes but also he got me racing at 15 and a half years of age instead of 16.
14:29
So he sort of snuck it in and maybe changed the dates here and there to get me going.
14:34
And that's what the guy who is in charge now…
14:38
You know, Peter Doyle, who's in charge of Motorcycle Australia now.
14:41
He's been on the pod.
14:43
Yeah, he's so good for the sport.
14:45
Peter was a mechanic with Neville Doyle back in the day when the factory Kawasaki team was with Anthony Gunter and Trevor Williams, what was my main competition back in the day.
14:54
So I've worked with Peter for years because then I went to America and I did some training with Matt Mladen over there, and Peter was the manager of that team as well.
15:03
They won seven USA Superbike Championships.
15:06
So Peter's a great operator, been from the start to the finish, knows how to do it, and MA is going so well at the moment with Peter in control.
15:14
helm there yeah can i come mate if i can to i often ask about the influence of heroes or people maybe that are star status at a significant moment in your life there is a yarn here that you share in the book around maybe the early 1970s perhaps 72 oran park the influx of some euros for a for a big race there and the likes of roger de costa and and others and you were wowed by that weren't you
15:40
I certainly were.
15:41
You know, I was a young boy and went up on the hill and sat in the bleachers.
15:44
Well, not even the bleachers at Orton Park.
15:45
Then it was on the dirt.
15:47
Like you'd have a rug under you.
15:48
You know how it is.
15:48
Yes.
15:49
And I just saw Joel Ribert and Roger DeCosta ride and they just blew away the Australian riders just badly that day.
15:57
And I went, oh, that's so good.
15:59
I want to do this.
16:00
This was when I was going to the Speedway all the time and watching the Jim Aries and the Bill Warners and the Johnny Stewarts and the Howard Revels.
16:07
And then I just started with two wheels and I want to do this.
16:11
This is me.
16:12
And with my mum's influence and my brother's help in the early days and St George Motorcycle Club giving a good, it sort of got me going.
16:19
And I didn't know I was any good.
16:21
I just rode.
16:22
And then I just, well, gee, I'm going pretty good here.
16:24
I might as well have a go.
16:25
And it just went from level to level, yeah.
16:28
Yeah.
16:28
Before we sort of venture more into the sort of adult part of your career, from a schooling perspective, I think you went to Lugano, then Peacurse.
16:37
Was it Peacurse High maybe that you went to?
16:39
But you only really had...
16:41
one job beyond high school the rest of your life has been everything to do with motorcycle racing and you i don't know whether you finished it but was it was it a an apprentice mechanic at a jaguar dealership tell me about that yeah we uh we specialized in jags and bmcs and my boss was bruce jones and bruce was an avid racer himself back in the day with his friend warren weldon who who was a legend of a driver as well and
17:06
And Bruce was, he and I were there.
17:09
He taught me a lot of things.
17:10
He taught me how to be clean, how to present things really well.
17:13
He was a great boss.
17:14
He really was.
17:15
But a little story about this is when I wasn't working on either an 1800 Austin or a Jag XJ6 or a V12 E-Type or whatever it was, all sorts of stuff.
17:27
And he would get me because the back rear engineer business had these jobs that they had to do.
17:32
And there was the multiples.
17:33
I'm talking thousands of a machining, putting a thread on, parting it off, putting a new bit in the lathe.
17:39
And I'd sit there bored as and I'd say to myself, I need to be better at motorcycle racing.
17:45
I want that to be my career.
17:47
This bored the hell out of me.
17:49
So it was one of the more motivational aspects that pushed me onto being a better person to do a better job at what I was doing because I was so bored doing a regular job.
17:59
And through my years of coaching the academy and the University of Motocross for years, I used to tell kids these things that, you know, you think that –
18:09
you know, you want to be a hero in the sport, but on the other side too, if you are got a boring job of a builder and hitting in nails all the time, that may not suit you.
18:19
So putting effort into your motorcycle racing, you know, it might be fruitful for you because very few people are ever that good at motorcycle racing.
18:27
There's only a few.
18:28
When did that, um, hit home to you?
18:30
You transformed the sport mode in so many ways.
18:33
And when we will discuss that, but, but,
18:37
Understanding the value of being professional, dedicated, disciplined athlete, is that a learned thing from your upbringing?
18:47
Is that something that competition taught you?
18:50
And how did you become that person?
18:54
Good question, but I think a lot of it came from my mother.
18:57
Did it?
18:58
Yeah, what she taught me, what she said about being truthful to who supports you and to hang in there with things.
19:04
And then I went to America in 1980 after I was Mr. Motocross back in those days, which was the best in Australia.
19:12
And I'd won Mr. Motocross for the second time and finished second to Anthony Gunter twice before that.
19:17
So basically I was one of the best with Anthony in Australia.
19:21
And both he and I went to America.
19:23
Good story, this one.
19:24
Went to Saddleback Park in Southern California, got my butt kicked.
19:28
Really?
19:29
Yeah, severely got my butt kicked.
19:31
So I finished these races and I've gone, wow, this is telling me something here.
19:36
I need to get my act together.
19:38
And I started reading books, learning about nutrition, hydration, psychology, and then watching what the Americans did because they were the leaders of the pack at that particular time.
19:47
Yeah.
19:48
They won multiple motocross of nations, all 12 in a row or something from that era.
19:52
And those guys were all really, really professional and good.
19:55
And I'd look at that, go to the races, and it just sort of grew on me.
19:59
And that's what I wanted to do.
20:00
And that's why I developed, I tried to develop Australian sport the way it has.
20:05
That's more than a fascination for you.
20:06
You enjoy that side of it, I know.
20:08
And we can cover a bit more of that.
20:11
In the 70s, you've brought up Mr. Motocross, which I love.
20:14
Let's go there, right?
20:14
So Amaru Park, I don't know what year, maybe 74 or early to mid-70s here.
20:20
You win a C-grade race there.
20:22
You come across Vincent Teserero for the first time, you know, a very respected...
20:26
promoter who you had a great relationship with um and and at the end of the day i think an opportunity arises for you to actually contest the main events here he gives you the opportunity i think to have a have a crack at this please tell me if i have this wrong 13th 10th 8th 5th unreal mate
20:44
Yeah, it wasn't too bad.
20:46
And at the start of the day, I won the 250 race.
20:50
Yes.
20:50
And some of the top Australian guys were in that race.
20:53
And Vince said, hey, we want this guy out there in the Mr. Motocross.
20:57
They put me from C grade to B grade that day so that I could ride the race.
21:03
And then I got those places that you said, so, yeah, I did pretty good on the day.
21:06
And this, you know, young boy in amongst all these experts, and I just had a go.
21:11
What did he see in you?
21:13
Well, he must have seen the speed that I had and other attributes that I had.
21:19
And maybe he never really spent much time with me until after that.
21:23
Because once I got on the next year, which was the Grace Brothers team, I was a member of that.
21:29
We would do in-store promotions around Australia.
21:31
I'd have to talk to the crowds.
21:33
And we did a lot of promoting of the sport in Australia.
21:37
radio stations like this tv tvs all sorts of stuff so it taught me is the early time to do it right and vincent was a man before his time yes you know i'm still a great mate of vincent's now and he's a he's such a good guy he thinks forward i wish he was still running a lot of the sport nowadays because i know it'd be better for it but unfortunately he isn't he in a promotional sense you know that connection that he had with
22:01
you know, either motorcycle dealers, brands, and companies that he was able to, I guess, entice into the game.
22:08
So it's in a period of nice or beautiful growth in a commercial sense too, mate.
22:15
I mean, brands like Triple M, where we are now, Grace Brothers, you've just mentioned, Pepsi, Toshiba, and more over that late 70s, 80s period come into the game, don't they?
22:24
Yeah, it was so good.
22:25
They had big names.
22:26
And Meyer was another one.
22:27
Yeah.
22:28
It was just amazing.
22:29
These names that you wouldn't see today that were involved in the sport really helped lift the sport up and helped with advertising, of course, and the radio and the TV.
22:39
And he would give everything back to them, you know, as far as clippings and newspaper clippings and things like that, which was what you did back in the day.
22:45
Yeah, yes.
22:46
And a copy of this, like, interview like this, he'd give that back to them because their name was mentioned and things like that.
22:50
So a different world today, that's for sure.
22:52
But, yeah, he was the man before his time.
22:54
Two-wheel game can be dangerous at times.
22:56
That's just the game you play.
23:00
Were there any kind of early wake-up calls?
23:02
Were there any little moments that you think back on and realize that were tough?
23:07
Or was that clean riding style, that professional clinical kind of style, was that something from the very outset that you had to do?
23:14
I never really got injured in the early days.
23:17
In 78, I went to Newmere because I raced in Newmere and Tohi just for fun at the end of our season.
23:22
And I broke my ACL and my left leg in 78, but I didn't really realize what I had done, to tell you the truth.
23:29
Okay.
23:29
And some people can't really function too much without the ACL, and some people can.
23:34
Well, I could, and I still could run and do everything with a fracture.
23:38
It's still gone now, and I haven't had anything done to it.
23:40
Really?
23:40
But that's another story.
23:41
We'll talk about two new knees that I need later in the story.
23:46
I'll be the bionic man soon with a new hip already and the two new knees.
23:49
But anyway, that's another story.
23:51
Mothers are going to be, I don't want my kid doing motor crossing this.
23:55
Anyway, that's another story.
23:56
So, yeah, I didn't have too many accidents over the years.
23:59
And still to today, I have not broken anything in my upper body.
24:04
which is pretty remarkable.
24:07
A couple of cracks in ribs through falling on things.
24:10
A lot of it's been mountain biking these days, e-biking, trying to be too young for my age, I might add.
24:18
But I put it down to a few things, Greg, and the one thing is to wear the protective gear, which today the boys, it's not cool to wear shoulder or body armour.
24:28
But now Alpinestars have got tech air for motocross.
24:31
So the airbags inflate if you hit the ground.
24:34
I wore that today.
24:35
You know, I didn't crash, of course.
24:37
Yes.
24:37
But I wore that today because it's such a good insurance policy.
24:41
If you get fired over the handlebars or you have a fall, it inflates and it protects the vital organs of the body and your shoulders.
24:48
Mm-hmm.
24:48
So they need to be on top of it these days, these young kids.
24:51
But back then, I wore all the best body armor that I could, the best helmets, of course.
24:55
I was always flexible.
24:57
And I learned that the first year in America, 1980.
24:59
I went to a gym, and that's what my book is called, No Easy Way.
25:03
Yes.
25:04
Because it was written in bold words on the gym.
25:07
Really?
25:07
Really.
25:08
And that's just stuck in my head over the years.
25:10
That was another bit of influential activity that I saw.
25:13
And I went, you know what?
25:15
That's very true.
25:16
You've got to work hard at what you do.
25:17
You do, yeah.
25:18
And that no easy way just stuck in my head for years.
25:20
And no matter what I did, I was racing bikes, cars,
25:24
you know, traveling Australia, doing motorcycle schools, leaving my family for six weeks at a time to do what I had to do.
25:30
No easy way is certainly when it comes to being professional, you can't have it always the good way.
25:36
There's no easy way suits it amazingly.
25:39
Very much so.
25:40
Can we come to the sort of late 70s around Mr. Motocross?
25:43
I mean, firstly, you bring up Anthony Gunter there a moment ago, Grunt.
25:48
was a, in kind of a good way, a nemesis, a great rival, but an amazing friend to you too, mate.
25:55
Great friend.
25:56
Much missed.
25:57
Yeah.
25:58
Unfortunately.
25:58
Have you got a memory of, a lasting memory of him?
26:02
Just Anthony was just a grit and determined sort of guy, a lot of guts and really put it on the line and,
26:09
So many races he beat me in where maybe the tyre was flat and he still was faster.
26:13
Crazy.
26:14
He sometimes would grit his teeth and just hold it on.
26:17
That's why they called him grunt because he didn't say much, but he grunted at you and did the job.
26:21
But we were great mates and it was a shame to see him lost through bowel cancer.
26:26
Yeah.
26:27
And, you know, I talked at his funeral and it was very sad, but...
26:30
We're all going to go at one time, so it's just the way it goes sometimes.
26:33
You had some amazing and very special days with him.
26:38
Can I illustrate what you've just spoken about, if you don't mind?
26:41
77, you are both in contention for the final of Mr. Motocross.
26:45
You win the final round, but Grunt takes the title, and I think he had broken bones in his foot that day or something too.
26:52
Is that right?
26:53
Yeah, yeah.
26:54
And in 79, I've got a 21-point lead going to the last championship at Orton Park, and he gets his factory RN370 Suzuki and blows my doors off in every race.
27:06
And, yeah, good on him.
27:07
You know, he did a great job, but, yeah, I lost that one in 79 because he was just too good on the day.
27:13
In the middle is 78.
27:15
You win your first Mr. Motocross crown.
27:18
And there were plenty of things to test you along the way too.
27:22
I mean, people talk about savouring some things.
27:26
I mean, your career results, Gourley, are unbelievable, right?
27:31
But is this one, because it's maybe the first and because of the challenges to get it, is that one that sort of sticks in your memory and your mind?
27:39
Yes and no, Greg.
27:40
It sort of was important because it was the first one and you worked towards it.
27:44
But like I said, in my early days, I was just sort of having fun.
27:47
I was just out there riding and I had this ability that I didn't realise that I had.
27:51
I could go fast on a motorcycle.
27:53
So there was people around me helping me.
27:55
So, yeah, it was really good.
27:57
And I went, okay, well, let's carry on.
28:00
Let's see what we can do in the future.
28:01
So it was good, but it's only one of many things that are very good to me.
28:07
Yeah.
28:07
Okay.
28:08
In the 80s there, I want to say in, it may have been 81, did you get your first works bike?
28:14
Yes.
28:15
In 80, tell me about that thing.
28:16
That sounds incredible.
28:17
It was one...
28:19
of a few or maybe the only in the country.
28:21
We only got one in Australia.
28:23
Two went to Europe and two went to America.
28:27
People like Brock Lover, Heike McCullough, they had the bikes.
28:31
And unfortunately, the bike was awesome as far as its design.
28:37
It was really trick to look at.
28:39
But unfortunately, the rear suspension didn't work too well.
28:42
And on a really rough track, I'd run the production bike with factory suspension changes.
28:48
Really?
28:48
And then on the smoother tracks, I'd run the factory bike because the engine was so awesome.
28:53
Gotcha.
28:53
It was a four-speed power valve.
28:55
And people who don't know what a power valve is, is this valve that goes over the exhaust port and gives a more torquey response like today there is with a four-stroke motocross bike.
29:05
So it was a really good bike.
29:07
And the next year we put that engine in a 250 frame because it was center port, the exhaust port was center, which the frame encompassed that to go out the middle.
29:16
And I did really good in 82 because of that particular engine in that bike.
29:21
And yeah, a legend bike, but there was, there's been very few factory bikes in Australia.
29:26
That was one of them.
29:27
I also had a factory 250 in 77 to ride at the Australian titles at Dargal.
29:33
And, uh, uh,
29:35
Kawasaki had the factory bikes that Grunt and Trevor Williams did.
29:40
There was the factory Suzuki that Anthony won the 79 Mr. Motocross.
29:44
But after that, there's not many factory machines that ever made it to Australia, apart from Wayne Gardner's practice bike.
29:51
That's another story.
29:52
Okay.
29:52
Me riding with Wayne.
29:53
He had a factory 500cc HRC thing at one stage.
29:57
What was that thing like?
29:58
A beast.
29:59
A beast.
30:00
Because you saw in your career, you saw the kind of end of the 500 motocross bike era in some respects, didn't you?
30:06
Oh, yeah.
30:07
Definitely, yeah.
30:08
It went out and four strokes came in.
30:10
And, you know, I was traveling Australia teaching motorcycle school, so I wasn't out there riding and racing at all at those days.
30:16
And I'd turn up and had a bit of a ride at some of the Thump and Nat races, but I wasn't really into racing at that stage.
30:22
It was my job and I had a family, had a mortgage.
30:25
So my job was to do the schools for Yamaha around the country.
30:29
And I was the first guy to do that, to get out into Australia after I got taught by a mate of mine, Lenny Williamson.
30:36
They had the Soft Earth Motocross School.
30:38
They invited me to one to be just an assistant instructor and a demonstrator.
30:43
And I got a bit of the joy of helping people.
30:47
I still have today.
30:48
I love to help people.
30:49
And I love to see the smile on their face.
30:52
that you help them and they go a bit faster or they present themselves at the race better as far as the placing.
30:58
And I see that in them, the smile on their face, and it brings back my memories of what I did back in the day.
31:02
So, you know, it's just like watching Australian Idol on TV last night, the winner, and just to see how they take that on and, wow, they can't believe it.
31:12
Well, I love that.
31:13
You know, it brings a tear to my eye sometimes.
31:14
I know that's really silly, but I love to see young people realise their dreams.
31:20
It's great that you bring up Len there a moment ago too.
31:22
I mean, for a time there, I think he was team manager for the Motocross The Nation squad, wasn't he?
31:28
And so on.
31:29
Did he not teach you quite a valuable lesson, maybe around toughness, around, you know, you were…
31:35
that precision we talked about before and the clean style that you had and so on.
31:40
But he was like, if you're going to go to places like the States or to whatever else, and you got to be prepared to bang bars and wheels here.
31:46
And I, did he teach you a bit of a lesson in that regard?
31:48
He did.
31:48
He used to come to my track at Menai, and we had a little bit of a motocross track there in the dirt track.
31:54
We talked about, we had the go karts on and he carved me up.
31:58
And he put me on the ground a couple of times.
32:00
Really?
32:01
And he said, well, you left yourself open.
32:03
You've got to cover that line.
32:04
And he taught me a lot about line selection and protecting your line.
32:08
So, yeah, he taught me a lot.
32:09
But to tell you who also taught me a lot, in the early days when I started racing motocross, I went off and did dirt track.
32:14
In those days, it was called short circuit.
32:16
And for Americans, it's flat track.
32:18
Well, those older guys in that particular era, they were amazing.
32:24
They were on the sliders, you know, the Speedway bikes, two gears in the gearbox, had a front brake on it, which didn't work that well anyway.
32:31
But they would use different lines and they would carve you up before they even looked at you.
32:36
You know, they didn't care.
32:37
It was hard racing.
32:39
They don't do it these days.
32:40
The boys don't do it at all.
32:41
You know, none of the specialist motocross guys,
32:43
ever do what I do what I did back then they don't diversify like I did but that's because there's more pressure on them from their sponsors to do one thing but those guys those old guys taught me so much and Anthony and I did a whole lot of that racing back in the day and and you know I managed to get a three Australian dirt track titles from those guys and good fun good fun but they taught me a lot about being a hard person
33:15
Craig Dack joined the Garage Library back in 2024.
33:19
After being around Craig and his CDR team at Supercross Broadcast over the years, Rusty had no idea that Dacker had kept some special machines from his own racing career.
33:30
I got my first bike and I got my last bike and they sit in my gym and every morning I'm doing, I sit up, I'm doing my weights or whatever, I have a look at the first bike and the last bike and just keeps it in perspective from where I've started or where I've come to.
33:45
He also talks about working with Chad Reed, running his own team now and much more.
33:50
Like Gally, the Kraydak episode is another great Aussie dirt bike racing story.
33:56
Search for it later.
33:57
Now back to Steven and Rusty.
34:00
When we talked before about the first Mr. Motocross title, did you keep the check?
34:05
I think, did you get a two and a half grand check or something?
34:07
Yeah, that's at home.
34:08
You kept that?
34:09
I still got it, yeah.
34:10
That's awesome.
34:11
Yeah, I still got it.
34:13
I've got rid of a lot of my memorabilia, because I've been raising money for our Motocross of Nations team by not keeping the money, but selling that stuff off.
34:20
Just whatever you want to pay for it, give me that, and that goes into the kitty.
34:23
Love it.
34:24
Because, yeah, I...
34:26
Motocross of Nations, I'll let you come into that.
34:29
But I started in 84.
34:30
I was the first one to say to Len, hey, let's go do this, Len.
34:33
And he had the motivation to follow it up, to chase it up because he's a steward at the time.
34:38
And, you know, I provided the motivation, but he did it.
34:42
We raised all the money ourselves.
34:43
We did that for 10 years between us.
34:46
And we did the whole thing before MA, then ACU took over and then started to do it.
34:53
But we did it for 10 years and just because we wanted to get Australia on the map.
34:58
And, you know, that was 42 years ago.
35:00
And you can imagine how elated I was a couple of years ago when we won the thing with the Lawrence brothers.
35:07
I had tears coming out my eyes.
35:09
It was just so special for me.
35:11
Let's come to that and to, you know, a little later how special those guys are.
35:16
To the commercial side of it, we talked about Vincent Tesserero there before.
35:20
Somewhere along the lines here, maybe it's late 70s, maybe it's early 80s, I can't remember, you get one of your first big contracts and it's around like the $40,000 mark or something or other, which back then was probably...
35:33
a lot to go motorcycle racing.
35:36
Good money from Yamaha.
35:37
Yes, that's right.
35:38
Did you, where are you in life at this stage?
35:41
Are you, you know, are you married or have you got your own home?
35:46
And how helpful was that in terms of A, the dream, but B...
35:51
getting financial reward for it too.
35:53
Yeah, well, that reward started really early and that reward stayed there all through the years of racing and into the coaching that he did right up to 2003.
36:03
That same monetary reward, although it wasn't as valuable in 2003 as it was when I first started.
36:09
But still, that's why Yamaha have been so good.
36:11
That's why I'm hanging in there with them.
36:13
But that was a really big help back in the day.
36:17
But it's important to me to...
36:20
You know, nowadays I've got a beautiful wife, Gay.
36:24
I've been with her for 47 years.
36:26
We had two kids, Sean and Alex.
36:28
Sean's got two girls.
36:29
Alex has got two boys.
36:30
Lovely.
36:31
They're three and two, and the girls are six and three.
36:35
What are you, mate?
36:38
Are you granddad?
36:39
Are you poppy?
36:39
I'm poppy.
36:40
Yeah, I'm a poppy.
36:41
Yeah.
36:42
You know, they're a lot of fun.
36:44
And the young boys, they're into their balanced bikes and all that sort of stuff.
36:47
And, you know, I never push my kids either.
36:50
I bought them motorcycles.
36:51
Sean came along to the schools that we did and rode and said, Dad, I just don't want to go.
36:57
It's fun, but it's hot and it's hard.
36:59
And I said, okay, son.
37:00
I said, okay.
37:01
No problem, mate.
37:02
It's not you.
37:02
It's not you.
37:03
I'm not a dad that wants to stand on the sidelines and yell at the kid when he comes in because he hasn't done any good.
37:10
That's not how you develop champions.
37:12
And the way you get champions is they want to do it.
37:15
Yes.
37:15
They need the want.
37:17
And I had the want over the years and I can see if my kids didn't have the want, no problem.
37:22
I'll support them in what they wanted to do.
37:23
What a great line, need the want.
37:26
That's a good little takeaway for some young writers here today, among others that I'm sure that you'll share.
37:30
Yeah, without that, you've got no chance.
37:33
No chance.
37:33
So just to sort of underscore what you're talking about around the...
37:38
the longevity, the commercial recognition, if you will, and so on.
37:42
In the book, I'm paraphrasing a little bit here, but I think this is a line from Vincent Tessera's contribution.
37:49
He talks around just how you and Grant helped significantly to kind of pioneer the sport in that phase.
37:57
You proved its legitimacy in the commercial arena and you really understood, gravitated and...
38:07
rolled your sleeves up and got your teeth into the promotional side, didn't you?
38:11
Yeah.
38:12
Well, I could see that was going to help the sport.
38:14
And not only was I training people at that time and also racing at a high level, but I could see the sport needed help.
38:20
And it still needs help today.
38:22
But that's why I tried to be as professional as I could.
38:25
I tried to talk as –
38:28
good as I could and sounded like an individual that knew what he was talking about.
38:32
And, you know, it was just important for us to get the business side of the sport going.
38:36
And in fact, another little addition to that, in the early 90s, the tax department in Australia deemed motorcycle racing as not a human endeavor.
38:46
What?
38:47
And sailing as well.
38:49
So I just started going to the Institute of Sport at that stage.
38:53
The door was opened by an ex-boyfriend.
38:58
He was from basketball, Henry Daigle.
39:01
He was controlling MA at the time, which hadn't changed to motorcycling straight at that stage.
39:06
And he got us into the Institute of Sport.
39:08
So we did testing down there.
39:10
So the testing that I did with Henry and the specialist in the Institute of Sport, we presented that to the tax department.
39:17
And they went, oh, okay.
39:19
Okay.
39:20
VO2 max of this, high heart rates, lactate levels of this.
39:25
Oh, you guys are sports people.
39:26
So then I changed that for riders from then on as far as
39:31
getting legitimate tax deduction.
39:33
Yeah, right.
39:33
Yeah, for our sport.
39:35
And the change that you help, I think, goes beyond that too.
39:39
So there's recognition at a, whatever, a government or administrative level, right?
39:45
But even in a public perception sense, and Vincent, I think, draws the parallel about how in the 70s it was probably, you know, like football jerseys and leather bike pants, you were about –
39:57
professional look, the safety you talked about before and so on, weren't you?
40:01
Clean jersey, you know, a nice cap at the presentation, speak correctly.
40:06
Yeah, it was all, and I think that came from mum.
40:11
Did it?
40:11
Yeah, definitely not dad.
40:13
Okay.
40:13
Dad taught me what not to do.
40:15
Okay, so the media stuff came, like we're doing now, that came easy to you, that was a learned thing, or you just loved doing it?
40:20
Yeah, no, it came pretty easy to me.
40:22
And I didn't, you know, Vince helped me along the way as well.
40:25
And so, yeah, it was just sort of something that fell on my lap and it was really nice to look back and say that it helped the sport.
40:31
We'll talk about Leeski because I've spoken to him on the phone before you came in today.
40:35
He reckons there was one win somewhere and you were maybe on the podium or on stage or whatever.
40:42
And to ensure that you never missed thanking the right sponsors, you had the boys ride all the sponsors on the pit boards.
40:50
So you could see it in the distance.
40:51
Exactly.
40:52
That was a great technique.
40:54
I had Steve or who were Frank Ponds, Steve Ashtonazi, my brother Dean, they had the lapboard flipped over backwards and I'd have my stickers aligned in the seniority of who pays the most so that I could just read it away and not forget anyone.
41:10
Yeah, it was great.
41:10
It was pretty easy instead of, you know, when there's 15 different people that help you, it's really hard to remember them all.
41:16
Yeah.
41:17
And I'm no Einstein, that's for sure, so I needed some help.
41:19
Well done.
41:20
You said you corrected me there too.
41:21
Thank you.
41:22
I think I said pit board as in a car racing thing was a lap board that they use.
41:25
Can I come before I get to Leeski to Dakar?
41:28
He's been on the pod with us too.
41:30
He talks about meeting you at Hungry Creek, I think, the motorcycle park there north of Sydney in the 1970s and the memories that you might have of him from back then.
41:41
I mean, his dad was insistent on doing some of your courses and things, wasn't he?
41:44
Yeah, he was.
41:45
And Craig was a young guy, really quiet, just a kid out of school.
41:51
Yeah, and I really befriended him.
41:55
And I could see that he had talent, so I was, oh, I'll try to help you.
41:59
And I really did mentor him a lot in the early days.
42:03
And he lived with a friend of mine called David Hirsch just down the road from where I lived at Cronulla, where I lived with my wife.
42:09
And we used to ride and train and do a lot of fun things together.
42:12
I took him to America a couple of times and stayed with Goat Brecker, a factory rider over there.
42:18
And just good mate, Craig.
42:22
And he's done so much for the sport too now.
42:24
You know, like whether I influence in that regard to carry on into the sport.
42:29
And I know I was talking to Todd Waters, who's in charge of Raceline and Factory Husky now.
42:33
And he told me the other day, he said, you've inspired me so much, Stephen, that there's life after finish racing.
42:40
Excellent.
42:40
I can do more.
42:41
Yeah.
42:42
And good on you, Todd.
42:43
You know, that's what we need.
42:44
We need people that are forethinking and going forward in the sport and developing aspects of the sport that can make the money and make the sport bigger.
42:52
Bring the skill set and apply it in a different area of the game if the competition aspect is over or winding down.
42:59
There's no reason you can't apply yourself in another area of the sport.
43:03
Dakar, you would, I think, help introduce him to sponsors along the way that helped him.
43:08
And then ultimately he ended up with you at Toshiba Yamaha, didn't he?
43:11
He did, yeah.
43:11
We were on the same team for a while, as was Jeff Leask in the 81, 82 era.
43:18
And, yeah, Craig was a great rider and developed into a really strong competitor.
43:22
And Craig won four Mr. Motocross titles like I did too.
43:27
He equaled my record, which was really good that we were both sort of so friendly and we both got that title.
43:33
Oh, yeah.
43:34
And then later on, Jay Marmont has also won four now, and also Dean Ferris has won four.
43:43
Now, Dean's back this year too.
43:45
If he wins this year, he's going to jump ahead of all of us and be probably the greatest as far as 500 CC or open class winners are concerned.
43:54
Concerned.
43:54
Brilliant.
43:55
Just on DACA, at this stage of your career, are you naturally –
44:03
team leader or mentor is a bit of that kind of coming in at this stage with, with DACA, with Lee ski and these sort of guys coming through.
44:10
Are you thinking like that?
44:11
Or you're just thinking about I'm, I'm competitor.
44:13
I've still got to beat you.
44:14
And just, you know, we get on pretty good when we, we, you know, take the helmet off or whatever.
44:18
What was the relationship like in that stage?
44:21
Back in the day, it was fine.
44:24
And with Jeff, I could see that he had a great package.
44:28
You know, Gary Benn came back from Europe.
44:30
He was an excellent mechanic.
44:31
He knew how to set up suspension.
44:33
The Honda was good at that particular era.
44:36
And Jeff was a young kid coming through and was very motivated.
44:39
Yeah.
44:40
And I'm a realist, so I could see that that package was going to be really, really hard to beat, which it was.
44:46
And the same with Craig a little bit later on.
44:49
Craig had good help, had good support around him, had a good motorcycle, had the want that really trained hard.
44:56
And, you know, I remember the early days going training with Craig and we'd be the sandhills at Coonel when there was sand at Coonel.
45:01
Sandhills, yeah, yeah.
45:02
When there was sand.
45:03
That's a different other story.
45:05
And we'd be running in there and I'd always smoke him and he'd go,
45:08
oh golly i'll never beat you and i said mate one day you'll smoke me don't worry and sure enough you know he is down the line my tongue's hanging out and he's leading me yeah just the way it moves on you know that's the way it evolves at least he tells a very similar story about runs that the pair of you did and and you know the competitive element in that and i think he felt like you could
45:32
understand your teammate a bit better, how far they could go, what their inner will was like.
45:38
Yeah, well, you can really develop that when you see how much they put in in their training, how much that's that want we talked about, I want to be good.
45:46
We can see that in someone.
45:48
You can see that very easily when you're around someone else
45:51
like that.
45:51
And I saw that in Craig and Jeff for sure.
45:54
I also saw that in Ray Vanderberg, who took the championship off me in 83 with a great ride.
45:59
I went into that with a 20 odd point lead too in 83.
46:03
And I could have won six of those things, but I missed out on two.
46:07
But anyway, it was good that Ray did really, really well.
46:10
And to come forward to last year, Motocross of Nations in America at Ironman track,
46:17
Ray, Jeff and I have got our arms around one another.
46:19
We've all got tears coming out of our eyes because we've just won motocross of nations again.
46:25
You know, it's so good to bring the boys back together.
46:27
And all three of you still, you know, whatever age you are respectively now, as passionate about it as ever.
46:35
To Jeff briefly, I mean, he talks about meeting you, I think, as a 12-year-old, would have been King of the Cross maybe in Western Australia there.
46:43
You were a senior.
46:44
He was a junior.
46:45
And he was immediately struck, even as a young boy like that, at the commitment, the kind of intensity from you.
46:52
And he tells a good yarn around a pre-season race in 82 at Nowra.
46:57
And he says you had to ride – it was an interesting format on the day.
47:02
You had to ride a 125, a 250, and a 500 on the day.
47:06
And he was chasing you in the two – or aboard the 250 in one of the races there.
47:11
And he'd watched you land from a particular jump.
47:14
And in that kind of very precise manner, you were landing in much the same place.
47:19
And he thought, right –
47:20
If he's always landing on the left, I'm going to get him on the right at some point.
47:26
And so he launches, but you didn't.
47:28
You went the other way on this particular occasion.
47:30
I think he landed on top of you and you both ended up in the dirt.
47:34
And you got pretty fiery there for a moment, I think.
47:38
I probably would have.
47:39
I don't remember it too well.
47:41
I would have went to his line because I could see that he was lining me up.
47:44
So you take his line on the last lap or near the last lap to block him.
47:48
But unfortunately, it ended in tears when he jumped on me.
47:52
The forward in the book is by Mick Doohan, and he talks about you inspiring a generation on how to compete at the very highest level, how you go about preparing to win, the training that we've discussed, the physical and the kind of mental conditioning.
48:07
You set a benchmark that...
48:11
hadn't been done before.
48:12
And I think in Formula One, they use people like Senna and Schumacher as key benchmarks in the last...
48:20
you know, 30, 40 years, whatever, of turning the game around.
48:24
And you did that here.
48:25
You talked about your mum, but where are you drawing the physical, you're reading books.
48:29
These are things from America.
48:31
Where are you drawing some of this stuff from?
48:33
Yeah, books from America, Gary Bailey's training.
48:37
You know, I knew Ricky Johnson, we'll talk to him a little bit, but I don't really know.
48:42
It just came from within that I could see what I needed to do and
48:47
And there was no AIS or Institute of Sport at that particular time.
48:50
There was no training venues.
48:52
It was just what I read about, what I had to do, and I hurt the knees.
48:55
So then I started cycling.
48:57
So then I got right into cycling and I do a lot of kilometres with road cycling, not so much mountain bikes.
49:03
There wasn't an equal mountain bikes back in those days.
49:07
I can't really answer that, Greg, because it just sort of evolved and I just learnt what I had to do and I did it.
49:13
And mum helped me a lot and my brother was always very professional with everything he did and that installed it into me that I had to do it that way.
49:20
And people around me, like my boss that I said, Bruce Jones, he was that way, he was very professional.
49:26
So I suppose all of that rubbed off on me.
49:29
to do the right thing and it still is today.
49:33
I still try to do the right thing today when it comes to all these aspects.
49:37
You've maintained that whole healthy life ethic or whatever you want to call it, right?
49:44
Neil Crompton sometimes in commentary uses a great line about peak of your powers.
49:48
Is there a year, is there a race season or something where you just felt like
49:54
Stephen Gore was at his very best.
49:56
Tell me about that.
49:57
Yeah, 82.
49:58
I had that factory engine, the 250 frame.
50:00
The bike was awesome.
50:02
I had Steve Eskenazi.
50:04
He's a mechanic.
50:05
Warren Willing was helping the year before.
50:07
Rest in peace, Warren.
50:08
Yes.
50:09
And it was just a year that I felt really comfortable.
50:12
I went back to America for the third time because I would go to America from 80 to 85 and
50:18
for a month to six weeks, spend all my own money to do it, just as that was my apprenticeship.
50:23
Okay.
50:24
I went there for training, learnt from the best.
50:26
Keep testing yourself, keep pushing yourself.
50:28
That's right.
50:28
And when I started, like I said, I was battling to get to the top 10.
50:32
When I finished in 85, I was racing at the upper level with all those top guys.
50:36
So I improved a lot over those five years.
50:38
And that was because of what I learnt there and what I learnt in myself and just got better and better and better.
50:44
So...
50:46
I think you've got to look and absorb and read and sort of – and have the want to do it, the determination and the want to get out there.
50:55
On the two-wheel side, mate, I mean, you've talked about the tally of Mr. Motocross wins.
51:01
There are Australian motocross, dirt track championships.
51:03
You have won the Fink Desert race.
51:05
Yeah.
51:06
There is World Masters Supercross in London, Nepean six-hour dirt track race.
51:12
You podium, I mean, I should bring this in here, you podiumed at the Castrol six-hour road race.
51:17
There are all these things that you have...
51:20
Well, it just probably shows that I can ride a motorcycle.
51:23
Cycle, yeah.
51:24
And no matter what it is, I can go quick, you know.
51:27
And one thing I didn't do was do enduros.
51:30
And you know why?
51:30
Because I didn't like working on the bike.
51:32
Really?
51:33
I think I got spoiled over the years that someone would work on the bike for me.
51:37
And I never really got enduros because I had to change my own tires and do all that sort of stuff.
51:42
I know that sounds really like I was spoiled, and I probably was.
51:45
But...
51:46
Anyway, but, yeah, the road racing was pretty special because I'd turn up the week before the Castrol Six Hour with Leathers and my four-face helmet.
51:55
Which was the Amarou Park here?
51:56
Always Amarou Park.
51:58
Yes, yes.
51:58
And I could get within about a second of the best guys.
52:02
We're talking the best out of Europe, the best out of America, you know, the Dunes, the Gardeners, all the top guys, Paul Feeney.
52:10
Wow.
52:10
I love that.
52:11
Paul Finney was one of the top guys back then.
52:13
And all those guys were very respectful, very helpful.
52:17
If I asked a question, that helped me out.
52:19
And that also embedded in me about helping the young kids because those older people were helping me.
52:26
And I...
52:27
I just, yeah, I think I only fell off that thing twice, and I shocked a lot of people how fast I rode that XS 1100 around there.
52:37
But that was just fun.
52:38
To me, it was fun.
52:39
I just had a go, you know, and I did pretty good at it.
52:43
And to win or to get onto the podium on the XS 1100 with Ron Bolden that year in the wet was quite an achievement.
52:50
I got a fifth another year also.
52:52
Yeah.
52:53
Yeah, as one of the guys tells me, he said, there'd be a lot of people who'd be very proud of your career, and I don't think much of it, because it was just something that I did, and it was fun at the time.
53:04
But when I look back, I think, yeah, I didn't do too bad there.
53:07
And quite honestly, I could have went on to bigger and better things with road racing.
53:11
Why didn't you then?
53:12
That's a good question.
53:13
I was hoping you were going to ask that, Greg.
53:14
Because...
53:16
Amaru Park and then Oran Park, it was dangerous.
53:19
The fences were right there.
53:21
And I had this self-belief to look after myself.
53:24
That's why I haven't hurt myself much over the years.
53:26
And so I never went there.
53:28
And I think if it was today and I had a go, honestly, I reckon I could run at a very, very high level if today was back then with the tracks.
53:38
Gotcha.
53:39
With the safety.
53:40
Yeah, with the safety and the bike.
53:42
I look at today and I go, oh, yeah.
53:45
That doesn't blow me out.
53:47
You know, I've been to MotoGPs and I watch all that stuff.
53:50
It doesn't blow me out at all because I reckon I could have done that at a fairly high level.
53:55
And would you believe that Jack Miller has been to one of my schools?
53:58
That's awesome.
53:59
Yeah, I went, this is a great story.
54:01
I'm down at the Bend one year just hanging out with Dan Stalfer and the boys in the Ducati and the Yamaha team.
54:08
And Jack's there and I, Jack, my son-in-law would really love a photo with you.
54:13
Can I get a photo?
54:13
I'm really nice to him, you know.
54:15
Yes.
54:15
Yes.
54:15
I am and I take the photo and he says, now, Gawley, he said, I want a photo with you.
54:20
I did one of your schools.
54:21
I went, really?
54:23
That's fantastic.
54:23
I'd forgotten all this.
54:25
How old would have you been, do you reckon?
54:26
Oh, I don't even know.
54:28
Yeah.
54:30
Must have been like early teens or little.
54:32
Yeah, it was.
54:32
It would have been probably 14, 15.
54:34
Okay.
54:34
I was in Townsville where he come from.
54:36
Yeah, so that was really cool.
54:38
Another one's Troy Bayless.
54:41
He did the Hungry Creek schools back in the day and he just loved it.
54:44
I still know Troy really well today.
54:46
I ride at his place sometimes and we hang out together a little bit.
54:49
So really nice to see that some of those guys actually, you know, I did some training with them back in the day and maybe some little piece stuck in their head that I helped them.
54:59
I would 100% believe that with both of the people that you've just rattled off, mate.
55:02
More than a little bit, I reckon, has been a takeaway.
55:11
That's the end of part one of my podcast with Stephen Gall, but we are not done yet.
55:16
There is a fabulous part two for you, which is scheduled for release just 24 hours after our first installment here.
55:24
We'll talk in that about his move into other forms of bike racing and the success that he enjoyed there, from desert competition and conquering the iconic Fink Desert Race to a podium at the Castrol 6-hour event.
55:36
circuit racing, moving into Speedway and a title win in speed cars or midgets, plus his vivid recollections of a crash in sprint cars and a deep desire to share the knowledge through an academy that became widely acclaimed, why he was the perfect person to help train the next generation of competitors, rewriting methods on and off the bike, exploring ideas other codes had embraced as his own sport
56:04
kept pushing, kept breaking new ground in a professional era.
56:09
It's quite the ride, and it's all ahead here on Rusty's Garage.