PEOPLE
In the early 1950s the world famous Isle of Man TT was regarded as the pinnacle of road-racing and as a colonial boy Hugh Robertson Anderson dreamed of racing there and doing well.
All Anderson had to do was grow up, secure a job to buy a bike, learn to ride, then race it, become successful, quit his job, take a six week sailing to the other side of the world, learn the tortuous 60.718km course, and finish the race – hopefully in front of everyone else.
An inspiration to many, Anderson won it twice, a dream fulfilled, but he went on to much greater heights in track racing and motocross than even he could have imagined. Born on January 18, 1936, and raised on a New Zealand dairy farm, he played rugby league and worked in a foundry, then a coal mine.
From those humble beginnings he went on to win national grasstrack championships and gained many road-race wins. Only 17 years old, Anderson won every race he entered during his first off-road race meeting, and not long after, riding an eight-year-old bike purchased in pieces, he also won the first road-race he entered: an advantage of living on a farm were wide-open paddocks to hone his riding skills. One of Hugh’s ‘tricks’ was to lock up the front brake on grass and see how long he could hold the bike upright, some 50m being his best effort!
A multitude of wins on-road, off-road and gravel races soon followed, culminating in double Senior and Junior victories at the 1960 New Zealand TT and a one-way ticket to England, aged 24, to take on the world.
Anderson had a style all of his own and must be one of the first racers, anywhere, to hang his knee out, as witnessed in New Zealand in the mid to late 1950s. Three weeks after arriving in the UK, he qualified 4th at the Austrian GP, and finished 7th. Anderson won at Madrid, and finished 7th again at the French GP, then qualified 5th on his AJS 7R 350 at
