‘When we first went to Europe, I was just a stupid kid out of Australia’
THE FIRST TIME I MET REMY Gardner was in February 2011. I was in Australia to do a series of interviews with Aussie racing legends: his dad Wayne, Mick Doohan, Casey Stoner, Troy Bayliss, and the 1960s 500-cc GP winner, Jack Ahearn.
We arrived at the Gardner residence, perched grandly atop the cliffs overlooking Manley beach in northern Sydney, just as Remy returned from a swimming expedition, with surfboard and speargun in hand. Right away it was obvious — this kid enjoys action.
Remy and his dad had recently completed their first season of racing in Europe, commuting back and forth from Australia to take in rounds of the 125 Metrakit Mediterranean championship and a few other races. Remy, 12 at the time, had finished the series second overall, but when his dad said to me, ‘Remy wants to be a professional motorcycle racer — he visualises himself doing Moto2 and the rest,’ I must admit I thought: yeah, right.
Ten years later, Remy Gardner is right there: he won the 2021 Moto2 world championship and now he is moving on to the rest: MotoGP.
It has not been easy, though. Remy’s road to world-title
