Steve Hislop - Hizzy - The Autobiography of Steve Hislop

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF

STEVE HISLOP 1962–2003

HIZZY

with STUART BARKER

For Aaron and Connor Hislop – sons of a very special dad

Cover

Title Page THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF STEVE HISLOP 1962–2003 HIZZY with STUART BARKER

Dedication Dedication Dedication 1 Day Number One, Life Number Two 2 Shooting Crows 3 Off the Rails 4 Tales from the Riverbank 5 The Flying Haggis 6 The Burger Van Queue 7 Money, Money, Money 8 Girls, Girls, Girls 9 Bored 10 The Impossible Dream 11 A Day at the Races 12 The Champ 13 Sacked 14 Sacked Again 15 Swearing at Fairies 16 2002: A Race Odyssey 17 The Final Lap 18 A Scottish Hero Career Results Index Acknowledgements Copyright About the Publisher For Aaron and Connor Hislop – sons of a very special dad

1 Day Number One, Life Number Two

2 Shooting Crows

3 Off the Rails

4 Tales from the Riverbank

5 The Flying Haggis

6 The Burger Van Queue

7 Money, Money, Money

8 Girls, Girls, Girls

9 Bored

10 The Impossible Dream

11 A Day at the Races

12 The Champ

13 Sacked

14 Sacked Again

15 Swearing at Fairies

16 2002: A Race Odyssey

17 The Final Lap

18 A Scottish Hero

Career Results

Index

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

Everyone thought I was dead – except me because I wasn’t thinking at all.

I lay unconscious in the gravel trap at Brands Hatch with my neck broken in two places, my spinal cord twisted into an ‘S’ shape and with a fragment of bone impregnated in the main nerve to my left arm. It was one of the most horrendous-looking crashes anyone had ever witnessed – and there were more than 100,000 people at the race that day. Even the national newspapers hailed it as the worst crash ever seen on TV.

World Superbike riders Neil Hodgson, Colin Edwards and Noriyuki Haga all got tangled up at about 120mph going into the fearsome Paddock Hill bend at Brands Hatch during the year 2000 WSB meeting. Neil had clipped the kerb because he couldn’t see where he was going as all the other riders were so tightly bunched. His bike bounced back onto the track and started a chain reaction and I got caught up in the mêlée as Haga rammed my back wheel and Edwards took my front wheel away. The result was total carnage: there were bikes and riders tumbling everywhere, bits and pieces flying off the machinery and scything through the air and sparks showering down the track as metal collided with tarmac.

As my bike was rammed, I was thrown 15 feet in the air and started cartwheeling towards the gravel trap. My bike was spinning end over end and it slammed into my head twice – all 350lb of it – sending me tumbling even more spectacularly. It’s a good job it did too because, ironically, that’s probably what saved my life. The first smack it gave me knocked me out so I was unconscious as I tumbled and that meant my body was limp and relaxed. Had I been conscious and tensed up, I would probably have done even more damage to myself.

After doing four full-body cartwheels, I landed square on the top of my head with my feet pointing straight up in the air, as if I’d been planted in the ground by the celebrity gardener, Alan Titchmarsh. Then finally I tumbled over, came to a halt and slumped into the gravel, knocked out cold and lifeless as the dust began to settle and the bike finally came to a stop. The race was stopped immediately and the huge crowd that had been screaming and cheering just seconds before then, fell completely silent. Joey Dunlop had been killed in a race just one month previously and no one wanted to witness more tragedy at what should have been a fun day out. I don’t know what the millions of armchair fans watching on TV around the world thought but what did annoy me afterwards was that it took such a horrific crash to get bike racing onto the main news. Usually the sport is never considered important enough to be mentioned on TV news bulletins unlike football, cricket, golf, Formula One or tennis. It was only when I had such a horrendous smash that almost every country in the world ran a story on it. What a way to get famous.

But if it weren’t for the TV coverage, I wouldn’t be able to describe the crash in detail because I can’t remember it. The last thing I remember was feeling a thump when I was banking hard into Paddock Hill bend and that must have been when Haga hit me. Because the crash looked so bad and because I had landed on my head and wasn’t moving, everyone who witnessed it presumed I was dead. My girlfriend Kelly, who was watching on TV back home, was in hysterics and couldn’t get through to anyone in my team when she tried to call to find out if I was alive or dead. The Virgin Yamaha team wasn’t taking calls because they were too busy trying to find out if they still had a rider. Kelly had to wait for about two hours before she got through to someone who told her I was OK. At first she didn’t believe it and thought I must at least be in a coma, but someone finally convinced her that I was conscious and moving.

The first thing I remember through a foggy, dizzy haze was hearing a paramedic’s voice shouting, ‘there’s a good vein, stick it in there,’ as they immediately tried to stabilize me by hooking me up to an IV drip and an oxygen mask. Apart from that, everything was completely silent as the crowd looked on numbed and fearing the worst. There were paramedics swarming all over me and thankfully they knew to remove my helmet carefully with the aid of a neck brace because there was a risk of spinal injuries.

As I was stretchered off to the nearest hospital I started coming round a little and that’s when I felt a pain in my chest and thought I might have broken my back. I was also getting a prickly feeling every time a medic touched me but it turned out that I was just covered in thousands of scratches from the gravel as I tumbled through it.

Anyone who thinks motorcycle racing is glamorous only needs to experience one big crash to realize it’s not. The frequent injuries are bad enough to deal with but the undignified hospital procedures are just as bad. On this occasion, I was still feeling groggy when a doctor wearing rubber gloves approached me and that can mean only one thing. Sure enough, I jolted as he inserted a finger straight up my backside and had a prod around but at least he was kind enough to explain the theory he was putting into practice. Apparently, men have a kind of ultra-sensitive G-spot up there and if you hit the ceiling when the doctor touches it, you’ve got a broken back. I’d have thought most blokes would hit the ceiling anyway when a doctor shoves a finger up their arse, broken back or not but apparently I didn’t flinch too violently so the prognosis was good even if the examination wasn’t.