In the olden days of 1981 there was no such thing as social media with instant uploading of images, short films and event results to the worldwide web using mobile phones. Perhaps a competitor or competitor’s friend might find a public phonebox and, using a fistful of small change, phone home and say how good, bad or indifferent the event was and add something about the rider’s performance. Word of mouth might spread the news to a few in the circle of friends back home but until the weekly motorcycle press hit the newsstands this was the limit.
It seems inconceivable to young people today how the world operated without virtually instant communication from almost all of the world but it did. For us enthusiasts, eager to catch the latest news in the world of motorcycling, it wasn’t a tablet which was the source but a tabloid. This was a traditionally produced newspaper where type was set, pages designed and perhaps the journalist responsible for the report may well have phoned the office and dictated the words to a secretary. Or if a typewriter and a fax machine could have been found perhaps this rudimentary form of electronic trickery used to send the words, not exactly speedy but it was what we knew.
In the decades before the Eighties journalists reporting on sporting events would rush their copy and film to airports or train stations by courier to be flown to airfields or trained to stations close to the publisher’s office, midnight oil would be burnt as film was developed, copy set and so forth to feed the need of us newspaper readers by the next Thursday. In this environment Neil Hudson’s rocky road to 250cc world motocross champion was played out. The highs, the lows, the incredulous ‘did it really happen?’ incidents which pepper motorcycle sport throughout a season.
Despite being billed as Britain’s best 250 MXer and having narrowly missed being 1979 world champion Hudson’s route to his 1981 success didn’t have the most auspicious start and being embroiled in a legal battle with his former team cannot have made it easy to concentrate on the coming season. As the New Year celebrations faded into the past and the UK came back to work in January 1981 MotorCycle Weekly carried a news report which drew a line under the turmoil for Neil and things were looking better. Ahead of the Somerset lad was a season of 12 rounds beginning in France at the end of March and ending in Holland in the middle
