I DREAM OF SHEENIE* *AND SCHWANTZ...
It began when I was daydreaming at school.To while away the boredom I would draw pictures of a motorbike on the covers of my exercise books.
It was always the same bike with the same number 7 and the same DAF and Men Only logos. I couldn’t have told you what model it was; to me it was just Barry Sheene’s Suzuki race bike. Now I know it’s a factory Suzuki XR45 and that it’s incorrect to call any factory Suzuki racer an RG500: only the customer bikes are RG500s – factory bikes always begin with XR.
And the reason I know this is because I’m kicking down through the race-shift gearbox and twisting the throttle wide open on that very bike I drew so often on my school books: Barry Sheene’s 1984 XR45 – the bike he won his very last race on (the Scarborough Gold Cup). Sheene would, much later, take wins on classic bikes but this was the last bike he won on during his proper competitive career.
Two days earlier, I had ridden past Sywell Aerodrome in Northamptonshire and noted posters advertising the coming weekend’s Pistons and Props event, which promised hordes of classic bikes and cars with some aerobatics action thrown in. I decided I should go but that night I received a text from the editor of this fine publication asking if I was able to ride some bikes on Saturday. “What bikes are we talking about?” The answer I received almost sent me into
