Barry Sheene

Barry Sheene
Barry Sheene winner
Nationality	British
Grand Prix motorcycle racing career
Active years	1970 - 1984
Teams	Suzuki, Yamaha
Grands Prix	102
Championships	500cc - 1976, 1977
Wins	23
Podium finishes	52
Pole positions	18
Fastest laps	20
First Grand Prix	1970 125cc Spanish Grand Prix
First win	1971 125cc Belgian Grand Prix
Last win	1981 500cc Swedish Grand Prix
Last Grand Prix	1984 500cc San Marino Grand Prix

Barry Sheene MBE (September 11, 1950 – March 10, 2003) was a British former World Champion Grand Prix motorcycle road racer.^[1][2]

Biography

Sheene was born in London, England the second child of parents Frank (resident engineer at the Royal College of Surgeons) and Iris. He grew up in Queen's Square, Holborn, London.^[3]

He became the British 125cc champion aged just 20, and finished second in the World Championships for that class a year later.^[2] Sheene won the newly formed Formula 750 European championship for Suzuki in 1973.^[4] A spectacular crash at the Daytona 200 in 1975 threatened to end his career, breaking his left thigh, right arm, collarbone and two ribs, yet he recovered and was racing again seven weeks afterwards.^[3][5]

In 1976 he won five 500cc Grands Prix, bringing him the World Championship.^[2] He repeated as champion in 1977 with six victories.^[2]

Sheene's battle with Kenny Roberts at the 1979 British Grand Prix at Silverstone has been cited as one of the greatest motorcycle Grand Prix races of the 1970s.^[6][7] After the 1979 season, he left the Suzuki works team, believing that he was receiving inferior equipment to his team-mates. He shifted to a privateer Yamaha machine, but soon started receiving works equipment. In 1981, Kenny Roberts was the reigning World 500cc Champion for the third time, and Barry Sheene, now on a competitive Yamaha, was determined to regain the championship. Ironically, Sheene and Roberts battled all season and let Suzuki riders Marco Lucchinelli of Italy and American Randy Mamola beat them for the top two spots. Roberts finished third and Sheene fourth for the 1981 championship. A 1982 crash largely ended Sheene as a title threat, and he retired in 1984.

Sheene was known for being outspoken in his criticism for what he considered to be dangerous race tracks, most notably, the Isle of Man TT course, which he considered too dangerous for world championship competition.^[1][8] He was a colourful, exuberant character who used his good looks, grin and Cockney accent to good effect in self-promotion, and combined with an interest in business was one of the first riders to make a lot of money from endorsements.^[3] He is credited with boosting the appeal of motorcycle racing into the realm of the mass marketing media.^[9] He also tried his hand as a TV show host, including the ITV series Just Amazing!, where he interviewed people who had, through accident or design, achieved feats of daring and survival (including the former RAF air gunner, Nicholas Alkemade, who survived a fall of 18,000 feet without a parachute from a blazing Avro Lancaster bomber over Germany in March 1944). Sheene and his wife Stephanie also starred in the low-budget film Space Riders.^[3]

He moved to Australia in the late 1980s in the hope of relieving some of the pain of injury-induced arthritis, moving to a property near the Gold Coast.^[3] He combined a property development business with a role as a commentator on motor sport, first at Nine Network with Darrell Eastlake, then moving with the TV coverage of the motorcycle Grand Prix series to Network Ten.^[3]

In later years, Sheene became involved in historic motorcycle racing.^[1] A little-known piece of trivia is that Sheene invented the motorcycle back protector, with a prototype model he made himself out of old helmet visors, arranged so they could curve in one direction, but not the other. Sheene gave the prototype along with all rights to the Italian company Dainese - they and other companies have manufactured back protectors since then.

He died in 2003 of cancer of the stomach and oesophagus, and is survived by his wife Stephanie McLean and two children.^[3][10]

Following reconstruction of the Brands Hatch Circuit in England for safety concerns after requests by the F.I.M., the Dingle Dell section was changed for safety, and shortly after Sheene's death the new section was renamed Sheene's Corner in his honour. The FIM named him a Grand Prix "Legend" in 2001.^[11] At the 2004 season, V8 Supercars Australia made a memorial medal, calling it the Barry Sheene Medal. A memorial ride from Bairnsdale, Victoria to Phillip Island is held by Australian motorcyclists annually, before the MotoGP held at the island.^[12]

Motorcycle Grand Prix results^[2][13]

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Barry Sheene

• Barry Sheene career statistics at MotoGP.com
• Barry Sheene at the Internet Movie Database
• Barry Sheene profile at iomtt.com
• Interview with Stephanie McLean on her husband, Barry Sheene
• Barry Sheene's Penultimate Race article at visordown.com
• Barry Sheene in Sports Illustrated article, June 19, 1978
• Barry Sheene - An Amazing Life at MCN.com, March 4, 2003

Books

• The Story so Far. 
• Marriott, Andrew. The Sheene Machine. 
• Scott, Michael (1983). Barry Sheene: A Will to Win. UK: Comet Books (softcover edition). pp. 223. ISBN 086379095X. 
• Leader of the Pack. 
• Barker, Stuart (2003). Barry Sheene 1950-2003: The Biography. UK: CollinsWillow. pp. 335. ISBN 0007161816. 
• Scott, Michael (2006). Barry Sheene. 
• Parrish, Steve; Harris, Nick (2007). Barry. 

Notes