Mike Hailwood: A Motorcycle Racing Legend

Mike Hailwood: A Motorcycle Racing Legend

THE CW LIBRARY

IT WOULD BE AN UNDERSTATEMENT TO SAY THAT MIKE Hailwood was one of the greatest roadracers in history. In 23 years of racing, he was a World Champion nine times, won 76 Grands Prix and was first to win three Isle of Man TT races in one week, thus becoming the stuff of which legends are made.

In Mike Hailwood: A Motorcycle Racing Legend, author Mick Woollett takes us from Hailwood's first race at Eng land’s Oulton Park in 1957, where he rode a 125cc MV Agusta to 11th place, to his final outing at Mallory Park in 1979, where he rode a Dunstall Suzuki but did not finish. The hard-bound volume is filled with more than 200 resplendent racing photos of “Mike the Bike.” Some are from Woollett’s archives, others are from B.R. Nicholls, a Cycle World contributor from the magazine’s early days. The amount of information here is staggering. Because the author was a close friend and admirer of Hailwood, he spares no details, even relating the frequency racer’s early crashes. (This come as a surprise to those who come as a surprise followed Hailwood’s career in the ’60s and ’70s, and who never witnessed this grand master make serious mistakes.) Indeed, few writers are better qualified to document Hailwood than Woollett. As a reporter for Britain’s Motor Cycle, he covered the Oulton Park debut, and as editor of Motor Cycle News (from 1957 until 1979), he was there for Hailwood’s last Isle of Man TT.

I also knew Hailwood, though I was never what you’d call a personal friend. I first met him in 1962 at Rosamond Raceway, now Willow Springs. He’d come to participate in the United States Motorcycle Club’s immodestly named USMC International Grand Prix. He rode a Manx Norton, and diced with the likes of John McLaughlin, AÍ Krupa and Sonny Angel, easily winning. He was, after all, already a World Champion.

In a post-race interview for the very first issue of Cycle World, I told him I’d seen him race at the TT in 1959, where he placed third in the 350cc class. Graciously, he gave this awed, fledgling American journalist a few kind words. Over the years, Hailwood would be unfailingly open and friendly with the motorcycle press, many of whom today remember him as a close friend.

The death of Hailwood and his daughter Michelle in a 1982 car accident is the sad ending to a grand tale. By that time he’d quit racing motorcycles due to injury, but he’d attained immortality of the kind bestowed on few of us. Permanently etched in my mind is the sight of Hailwood at the Isle of Man in 1967, riding the unbelievably evil-handling Honda Four. The beast was twitching violently back and forth, virtually out of control and trying its best to pitch him off as he plummeted down the hill toward the awesome bend at Creg-ny-Baa, braking furiously as the crowd lining the dirt banks waved him on to another victory. Now that, my friends, was Mike Hailwood, and racing at its best.

WooIIett has captured just that.

Joe Parkhurst

Mike Hal/wood. A Motorcycle Racing Legend, Mick Woo/jeff, 208 pages, $50; MB!, 729 Prospect Ave., Osceola, WI 54020; 800/826-6600; www.motorbooks.com