Coached To Success

Coached to success

AT LARGE

THE GERMAN ON THE FZR OBVIvously was a superb racer. Every time he’d get a clear sightline through a corner, he would attack it ferociously, throwing the Yamaha down until it seemed that sparks were flying off of everything below the gas tank. Being less than thrilled at the prospect of eating asphalt were I to misjudge, I'd back off with my GSXR750, and he’d gain a bike-length on me in those corners.

But every time we'd exit one of those more easily-read bends and the TT Mountain Course would again present itself as the seemingly endless puzzle it is, he'd slow just enough so that Ed either have to roll off or run into him. And while I was waiting fora safe place to pass him. I couldn’t help but wonder how an international-class roadracer of such obvious skill could be caught by a guy like me in the midst of the 1987 750 Production TT at the Isle Of Man (see “Isle of Man TT 1987: The Long and Winding Road,’’ pg. 40). The answer was obvious: I knew the course better than he did, even though he was not a newcomer and I was.

It wouldn’t have been that way had I not been trained for the course by my coach and mentor for the ’87 TT, Terry Shepherd. Left to my own memory and skills, I'd have been far behind the German, trying to eyeball the right line through each corner rather than connecting them in a single, uninterrupted strip of Manx pavement. This was the result of learning the right way, rather than the wrong way.

Shepherd's in-depth, insightful teaching cut through at least two or maybe three TT visits’ worth of fumbling around for me. It allowed me to go from lapping at 88 mph to 101 mph during TT Week without doing anything crazy or prohibitively risky on the world’s most difficult and dangerous road course. It also showed, in the most graphic terms, how backward most of motorcycle racing still is, by pointing out how few racers have their own coaches.

Training me was Shepherd's first experience with the task, and he—an acknowledged Isle of Man TT Master—couldn’t recall anyone else ever doing anything similar. Since the TT began way back in 1907, it seems to have been understood that a racer pays his dues on the Island by repeated visits, building experience until he knows the Mountain Circuit well enough to truly race on it rather than just ride around it at a high rate of speed.

The same curious attitude underlies most types of racing, when you come to think about it. There are some noteworthy examples of successful rider-coaching—Kel Carruthers taking on the brilliant young Kenny Roberts as a “pupil,’’ for instance—but these are the vast exception rather than the prime rule. We in motorcycling seem to figure that a lot of the sport lies in self-reliance; that a true racer teaches himself.

To me, with the hindsight of the ’87 yy and wjtj1 me just gett¡ng older, this seems absurd. What other sport expects its professionals to be self-taught? Certainly none of the high-visibility sports, from Olympic competition to football, would survive such a situation. Indeed, the institution of the coach is so firmly entrenched that no serious athlete can hope to advance without his own trainers or coaches.

We can see the first glimmers of hope that this might change in our sport. Years ago, Torsten Hallman began a motocross school for MX hopefuls, followed by numerous others in the ensuing years. And Keith Code’s ultra-successful Superbike School provides a useful jumping-off point for the would-be roadracers in today’s sport-riding crowd. These and the other rider-education programs (such as the MSF’s curricula and R.A.T.S.) also aid in raising consciousness among riders, telling them that getting better on a bike is too important to be left to your hormones. But these schools still do not even come close to approximating private coaching like that given a boxer or a tennis player or any number of other people who aspire to athletic excellence.

This won't change because somebody talks about it, in this magazine or elsewhere; it'll change when some rider (or group of riders) trained and coached by a master begins to race better than riders of equal talent on equal machinery. Then, even the densest riders will begin to realize that you can't teach yourself everything in a sport, that you need a coach if you hope to reach your full potential before you’re too old—or too battered—to do so.

Nowhere is this more obvious than on the TT Mountain Course in the Isle of Man; so much so that Terry Shepherd, after so successfully coaching me into a 101 -mph lap during my first TT. is considering adding professional rider-training to his formidable portfolio of racing services. It’s obvious that any serious International racer—from Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada, the Continent and, increasingly, Japan — could cut through much wasted time and effort with a Shepherd Isle of Man School. And, since so much of the progress in our sport has been spawned by the TT, maybe this example will spur the development of other schools, as former racers who might own Shepherd’s rare combination of racing wisdom and teaching ability distill their knowledge for the use of others.

We’ve been focusing on the development of racing machinery for a long time. It's about time we began the intelligent improvement of the riders. —Steven L. Thompson