Stuart Barker - Niall Mackenzie - The Autobiography

With love for my mum, Amelia.1929-2002

Cover Page

Title Page Niall Mackenzie The autobiography Niall Mackenzie with Stuart Barker

Foreword

CHAPTER ONE Chip Shops and Railway Tracks

CHAPTER TWO Tractor Racing

CHAPTER THREE No Van, Man

CHAPTER FOUR Stealing Tomatoes

CHAPTER FIVE Watching the Washing Machine

CHAPTER SIX I’m Not Really a Welder

CHAPTER SEVEN Thanks for the Watch

CHAPTER EIGHT Stoney’s Return

CHAPTER NINE A Lucky Strike

CHAPTER TEN A Baboon on the Lawn

CHAPTER ELEVEN A Horse at the Traffic Lights

CHAPTER TWELVE Steak Instead of Spam

CHAPTER THIRTEEN It’s a Boat – It’ll Float

CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Dead Rat

CHAPTER FIFTEEN 10 Downing Street

CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Mackenzie Shuffle

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Like a Virgin

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Evil Twins

CHAPTER NINETEEN Pipe and Slippers

CHAPTER TWENTY World Domination

Career Results

Index

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

Five Times 500cc World Champion

1994-1998

Niall Mackenzie was one of the first people I got to know when I started Grand Prix racing with Rothmans Honda in 1989 and since then we’ve always had a friendly relationship. He was one of the few guys against whom you could race and then go and have a coffee with at the end of the day without any worries. It was good to have him and his wife Jan around the GP paddock and they were very popular with everyone.

Back then we used to do some training together and would often go out running, which was something I couldn’t do any more after I broke my leg at Assen in 1992.

In my first season, I sometimes used to ask Niall about the weather in the various countries in Europe. I was straight out of Australia and had never been to most of those places, whereas Niall knew his way around. Before my first GP at Spa Francorchamps, I remember I mentioned to Niall that the weather in Belgium wasn’t so flash and he replied that he’d never been in a dry Grand Prix at Spa in all the years he’d raced there! Niall beat me in the 1989 championship when he was seventh and I was ninth.

That season, and the next, we were often racing each other closely and he was always a very fair sportsman in the way he rode.

Over the years that we’ve been friends he has visited me in Australia and we’ve been out on boats together and spent lots of time just relaxing away from the Grands Prix.

Niall started GP racing a year or two before me and around that time there was plenty of strong competition with riders such as Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey, Kevin Schwantz, Wayne Gardner, Christian Sarron and others.

It was a really quality field in those days but Niall had a pole position, seven podiums, and a total of twenty-eight top five finishes between 1987 and 1993.

The results don’t always tell the whole story, but on this occasion they show that Niall was a very competitive motorcycle racer and Britain’s best rider in 500cc Grands Prix at that time.

Since then he has raced in a variety of championships at world level and in Britain, mostly on Superbikes, and not surprisingly, he’s always done well relative to the capabilities of his equipment.

Another of Niall’s strengths is his character. We all have our ups and downs in this sport, but Niall was one who enjoyed his success without getting too carried away with it and could also take setbacks in his stride. He’s a guy who always seems to bounce back.

Niall obviously enjoys riding and racing motorcycles, otherwise he wouldn’t have had the motivation to keep going for as long as he did. Motivation is everything if you’re going to have some success in racing; you really have to want to ride the thing, and Niall did that for many seasons.

I can’t think of a better role model for young British riders than Niall. He’s got talent, determination, and most importantly he’s a good guy. I’m sure this publication will give a good insight into how his career unfolded.

I’m fortunate to have Niall as a friend and I look forward to catching up with him again soon.

Mick Doohan

Australia, March 2002

I remember having a conversation with Wayne Gardner and Randy Mamola about how we all got started in bike racing.

At the time, the three of us were at the peak of our careers racing in the 500cc Grand Prix World Championships. Wayne had won the title in 1987, Randy had been runner up four times and I was a full factory rider for Honda, and had set pole position in my first ride for the team at the Japanese GP.

We were sitting around a campsite having a barbecue somewhere on the continent and their stories of biking childhoods seemed so exotic to me. Randy had been riding children’s dirt track bikes round purpose-built tracks all over California since he was about four years old and Wayne had been doing the same thing in Australia. I, on the other hand, made my two-wheeled debut on a knackered old scooter dragged off a scrap heap at the ripe old age of thirteen and didn’t even think about racing until I was nineteen. So I was wondering what to say when I had to reveal my racing pedigree because it sure as hell wasn’t going to stand up next to Wayne and Randy’s.

When Randy turned to me and said ‘What about you Niall? How did you get started in racing?’ I decided to lie. Instead of telling them how it really was, I concocted a story that I thought would make them laugh. I said that I’d been working for the electricity board in Scotland (which was true) when I got caught in a woman’s house doing a job dressed from head to toe in her underwear that I’d taken from her bedroom drawers. I added that I was sacked from my job and thought I might as well try my hand at racing bikes professionally since I had been thinking about it anyway.

Wayne Gardner erupted. He was actually crying with laughter. I still don’t know if he was laughing so hard because he thought it was a funny story or because he thought it was true. But either way, there’s still nasty rumours kicking around the paddocks of the world that I have transvestite tendencies and I still blame Wayne for spreading them so I think he probably did believe me. I suppose he had even more reason to believe my story after I dressed as Grand Prix racer Rob McElnea’s girlfriend just so we could get into an all night couples bar in Italy.

Just for the record, it’s absolutely not true – I’m not a transvestite. In fact, my wife’s clothes don’t even fit me.

But making up that story to raise a laugh was an indication of just how completely out of place I felt in the company of Grand Prix superstars like Wayne and Randy, even though I was giving them a good run for their money in the GPs at the time.

I simply couldn’t get my head around the fact that Wayne Gardner and Freddie Spencer were my team-mates or that I had become friends with people I’d only previously known from seeing on television. But most of all, I couldn’t believe that someone like me, who came from a small, unremarkable village in Central Scotland, could be mixing with the best riders in the world in the 500cc Grand Prix World Championship.

Everyone accepts that GP racers come from Italy, America, Australia or somewhere equally exotic, so being born in Fankerton seemed to rule me out of a career in GPs straight away. Somehow, it just doesn’t have the same ring to it as Modesto, California or the Gold Coast, Australia. In fact, my home town is so small that it’s not even listed on most road maps.