Extreme SHEENE
It’s 45 years since Barry Sheene won his first 500cc world championship and he remains the last Brit to win the premier class Grand Prix crown. He also remains unique for many other reasons. After all, there are still no other GP riders who turn up in the paddock driving a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, none who are close friends with a Beatle, none with a wife who was the first full frontal nude model in the UK, and none who drill a hole in the chin bar of their crash helmets in order to have a cheeky smoke on the start line before a race. Valentino Rossi might be mainstream famous in his native Italy, but he was never front page news in the UK when he stepped out with a new model girlfriend or smashed himself to pieces in another high-speed crash. Barry Sheene was, and remains, a rider like no other, and that’s why he is still so fondly remembered and sorely missed.
Sheene’s fame rocketed long before his results did. In 1973 he hadn’t even begun racing in Grands Prix (he would win his first in 1975) or had his massive Daytona crash (also in 1975) that led to so much publicity, yet he was photographed by David Bailey for an article in Vogue magazine and also posed in just his underpants alongside a
