Simply put, the very nature of the game we call motorsport means that while many may be called, few are chosen.
Some say that motorsport is the ultimate crucible (defined as a place where, under incredible heat or pressure, different elements interact to produce something new) but that’s be a bit high-brow in this context.
What prompted me to write this column in fact was a bloke from Timaru called (hell I hope I get this right, because I’m going from memory, there was no Google or Facebook friends’ lists to scroll through back in the early 1970s!) Lance O’Connor.
Lance, again from what I can remember, was a milkman (boy?) form Timaru with an uncanny, otherworldly ability to ride a motorbike. I didn’t know him from Adam when he turned up at a winter round of one of the very first Southern Motocross Series with a newish (cantilever) Yamaha YZ250 or 490 (again, my memory is a bit loose on which one it was). But I made a point of finding out who he was when I saw how well be could ride the thing,
To this day the only other rider I have ever witnessed (first-hand anyway) who could make bashing and bouncing around a natural terrain motocross track look so languid, so poetic and so – to put it bluntly – easy, was MXGP World Championship race winner and series runner-up Josh Coppins…..and I shouldn’t have to remind anyone reading this column now good the Joshster is.
What made Lance’s appearance and performance at the gnarly, technical Tom McLeod’s track all the more special/bizarre/just plain odd was how unaffected the bugger was.
MX was huge back then and though there were no Torpedo 7s to buy the latest trick O’Neal or Fox riding gear from, even us so-called ‘swede-eaters’ (pretty much anyone from Gore, Winton and/or Invercargill) could rustle up a set of early Alpinestar boots and matching brand-named Honda (red), Suzuki/Yamaha (both yellow) or Kawasaki (green) riding pants and jerseys.
Not Lance. While I can’t remember what he wore on his feet I do remember his jersey…..because that’s what it was, a thick woollen (I think the term is ‘Fisherman’s knit) jersey. Probably the same one he wore doing his milk round.
At the time the top riders at our end of the country were the likes of Gary Goodfellow (now there’s another name to conjure with) and Trevor King from Dunedin, and a punk kid from Gore (now Winton) called Brent Scammell.
Lance didn’t stay around long enough to ever establish himself at their level though. What he did do was trade his YZ MX bike for an RZ Yamaha road bike…………and make much the same impression on me when I twigged who the bloke was riding the wheels off the thing at a road race meeting at Levels a couple of years later.
Gone (thank God) was the old Fisherman’s knit jersey but the insouciant, absolutely NFG (No F..ks Given) attitude was exactly the same. It was as if Lance had been born to ride motorbikes and anything else he did was simply filling up the space and time between race meetings.
As far as I am aware he didn’t run, go to the gym, read self-improvement books or even stretch before getting on his bike before a race. He might well have been a smoker (because most young blokes were back in the day), and knowing the crew he hung out with in Timaru at the time he would definitely have enjoyed a drink!
On a bike though he was sublime, the archetypal ‘ordinary boy with an extraordinary talent.’
So how come I seem to be the only person who remembers just how good he was?
The simple answer, is that raw talent is not enough. Not in motocross, not in road racing, not even in sports with considerably lower cost ‘entry points’ like running, boxing or athletics.
What you need are the 101 other things that go into making a modern-day sportsperson. Things like desire, commitment, drive, determination…………..and money.
Lance (if that indeed was his name) was hardly alone in having a hell of a lot of one (talent) but not much else of the others.
Arguably the most famous (infamous) example of driver who had the talent but not the temperament to get to the top (‘better than Senna’ is the epithet most commonly used to describe him) is Irish racing driver Tommy Byrne.
The subject of both a top-selling book, Crashed & Byrned, and a documentary Crash and Burn, Byrne, now 60 and living and working as an advanced driving instructor in the United States, was – by all accounts – an absolute natural behind the wheel, but the definition of a loose cannon off it.
Which sounds a bit like……hmmm, I’m sure most of us can come up with a list of seemingly star-crossed drivers (or riders) who have burst onto the scene in a hiss and road of flair, talent and chutzpah, then disappeared just as quickly.
Who – of those around at the time anyway – could forget the impact a certain Regan J. Morgan had on the very first Nissan Sentra GT Cup series? OK, I’m probably a bit biased because I was the bloke pulling the PR strings in the background. But believe me, Regan was the real deal, and I still rate him – in terms of pure ability – right up there with my next client, Scott Ronald Dixon.
Like Scott, he got to the States, too, but like Tommy Byrne, Regan’s extrovert personality was just too much for some people and he was never able – though to his credit he tried incredibly hard – to assemble the sort of supportive team around him that Scott’s Dad Ron did around his talented son.
That said, Regan J. Morgan had other skills. Like his ability to parlay partying with second-generation British racing driver Justin Bell after a Wellington street race one year into a job teaching advanced driving with Justin at his school in Florida. And while there meeting the Ferrari Cup-racing Russia entrepreneur who bought the motorsport.com website and needed a someone to run it…………..
Columns like this one are supposed to kick off conversations though, so come on, there must be literally hundreds of other uber-talented Kiwi drivers out there who – had the criteria been talent alone – might have made it to…..F1, Supercars or wherever.
I’ll start with some of the ones I know off, and you can add yours in the comment section below. One per decade starting with…..
The 1960s: Laurence Brownlie, a garage-owner’s son from Kelso in West Otago favourably compared to the great Jim Clark after early Tasman Series success before a tangle with Denny Hulme at Pukekohe effectively ended his career before it had even started.
The 1970s: Dexter Dunlop (pictured). Wellingtonian who bought Graeme McRae’s GM1…and lost everything when the car was burnt out in a trailer fire.
The 1980s: Kevin Ingram. Feilding driver who created his own car – not quite from scratch but work with me here – and dominated the ‘82/’83 championship……
The 1990s: Chris Hyde. Avon’s son, still remembered for putting the wind up then golden boy Craig Baird in an outdated Class 2 car at Wigram one year…
2000s: Dale Williams: Auckland panel beater who turned his hand from karts to Production Cars, V8 Touring Cars and finally the TRS with equal ease before deciding it was all getting a bit too serious…..
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