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The
1960's - Part 5 |
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| Ivan Mauger |
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| Born: 4 October 1939 Died:
16 April 2018 |
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| All the
above photographs are courtesy of the souvenir programme dated 22nd
April 2018. |
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The Mauger Family
2015
Statement |
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The
Mauger family say: This is a statement we released to the press today
(March 2015) regarding Ivan.
"Former world speedway & long track champion
Ivan Mauger OBE and MBE is being treated for Cognitive Aphasia, a
communication disorder." |
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The Mauger family are issuing this statement detailing the situation and
will be making no further comment. Ivan, who won six
speedway titles between 1968 and 1979, and long track crowns in
1971, 1972 and 1976, announced his retirement from public life
two years ago. He is receiving daily treatment at a Gold
Coast (Australia) nursing home, but still manages to enjoy time
with wife Raye, their three children, Julie, Kym and Debbie, and
longstanding friends and associates from within motorcycling and
the wider community.
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Meanwhile, collectors are warned to be wary of items of Ivan's equipment
and memorabilia being offered for sale. “It has come to
our notice that some unauthorised and unscrupulous people have
been making false representations so please take every care to
ensure any such offers are genuine and being made by authentic
sellers,” said Raye.
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The "Rough
Diamond"
Ivan's Own Photo Collection
Ivan In NZ
In 1956
More Of Ivan In The 1950s
Ivan & Raye Celebrate The First World Title In 1968
Ivan Helps Me With The Website! The
Famous Gold Bike Ivan's
Title Winning Machines
Ivan On A Two-Stroke Greaves
1963 The Maugers Arrive In
Newcastle
Mid 1960s at Newcastle
1965 My Leg In Plaster
Ivan Mauger's Newcastle Stats
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John says: Ivan told me,
when he was well, that he was very happy to help me
with the website. We exchanged numerous emails. He sent me
lots of his personal photos which I have added to this website and my
Defunct Speedway Website .
All of my effforts on the website relating to Ivan, Raye and family have
Ivan's approval.
Ivan and I continued to correspond until it became too difficult for him
due to his illness. I am honoured that my boyhood hero chose to
help me with my websites and I sincerely hope he responds to treatment
and is able to enjoy his time with his family despite the Cognitive
Aphasia. |
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| John says: After collecting many photos and stories shown
on this webpage, about Ivan's time with Newcastle. Ivan himself has
been in touch many times now. He has sent me loads of his private photos etc and has agreed that I can show the entire Newcastle chapter from his
Autobiography "The Will To Win". The book is great and you should buy it.
I am delighted to reproduce the chapter from his book under the heading "Rough
Diamond". The
book extract is copyrighted and belongs to Ivan and should not be reproduced elsewhere for financial
gain:- |
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| John says: I was emotionally |
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Ivan at Wimbledon |
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1958 |
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| Ivan & Rod Laver |
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| Courtesy of John Spoor |
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| Ivan rode at Rockhampton
Australia prior to coming back to Britain in 1963. Rod Laver was
born in Rockhampton |
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Ivan Mauger
The
"Rough Diamond"
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After Wimbledon and its plush stadium, such an eye-opener
for a teenaged arrival in 1957, Newcastle was something of a culture shock for a
new signing in 1963. The London we first encountered was still recovering from
the damage caused by the war years but in our view it was the most exciting,
vibrant city in the world. Newcastle upon Tyne, my new speedway base and
Manchester, where we set up home, were traditionally industrial northern cities-
only a couple of hundred miles or so from London but they may has well have been
light years removed.
Brough Park had history. It was one of the first tracks
to operate and the incomparable Johnnie Hoskins ran the place before and after
the war. However, it has always been basic rather than beautiful, a bit like
the city itself which for years had a reputation as being hard edged and
predominantly working class. At first sight it seemed a grey, unforgiving
sort of place and bear in mind during 1957 and 1958 I rarely travelled further
north than Coventry! The north east people though, are the salt of the earth and
once they have accepted you- and you have managed to understand the distinctive
dialect of the region-the Geordies are great. We have fond memories of a
six season association with the Diamonds which, after a few early irritations
had been ironed out, began so promisingly, and produced some great occasions for
the team and for me as an individual. It is a pity it ended acrimoniously,
thanks to a falling-out with the man who got me there in the first place.
The fact I left Newcastle in 1968 as a world champion, in
my opinion, was as much in spite of Mike Parker as it was because of him. In
the end the place was not big enough for both of us, although from the distance
of time it is easy to think I possibly was a part of the problem as he was.
Raye and I will always be grateful to him for bringing us and our family to
England and Newcastle. When we were last in the UK in 1958 nobody in speedway
had heard of him, but in the years we were away he had made a big impact.
Originally a midget car driver, Mike opened several tracks in 1959 to run
composite speedway and car meetings, and was a leading light in the foundations
of the Provincial League the following year. The man helped change the
landscape of British speedway, and as such was one of the architects of a
revival which could not have been better timed from my point of view. Very much
due to his powerful influence and that of a few others- Trevor Redmond and Reg
Fearman among them-the number of British tracks doubled virtually overnight, and
signalled the start of speedways long journey back into the sunshine.
Parker was the new leagues chairman and operated at
Liverpool, Stoke, Middlesbrough and Bradford in 1960. His interests continued
to expand, among them Wolverhampton and Newcastle, whose 1962 team included Gil
Goldfinch one of my former Plough Lane colleagues, and Ivan Crozier an old
friend from Christchurch with whom I had ridden in Adelaide. It was Ivan (Crozier)
who encouraged me to contact Mike Parker and at the same time Ivan encourage
Mike to give me a go.
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New tracks meant fresh opportunities and a whole new blast
of enthusiasm was running through the sport, especially at this level. All was
not so good with the National League, with the traditional big track promoters
doggedly clinging to past glories but seemingly challenged when it came to
finding a new formula to invigorate a competition which by 1963 was down from
the 10 teams of 1958 to just 7. The league was still being dominated by
most of the big stars who were around 5 years earlier. By contrast the
Provincial League contained plenty of names I remembered and recognised,
although a few of them I thought would have improved to such an extent that I
couldn’t live with them.
The Provincial League had 13 tracks. The Diamonds, after
finishing bottom in their comeback year 1961, had climbed to ninth in 1962 and
the locals were hanging out for further improvement. It was against this
background that our family unit, now five strong, undertook the boat trip via
the Italian ship Castle Felice to Southampton. We took the overnight sleeper
train from Adelaide to Melbourne to board the ship. With three active
youngsters in tow barely old enough to understand what was happening but
inevitably caught up in the excitement of it all, we were reading for a new
beginning.
Before getting to meet Mike Parker in person, we were met
off the boat in Southampton by Eddie Glennon (Eddie died in a car accident in
July1968, returning north after a meeting at Newport where he held the promoting
reins on behalf of the Mike Parker organisation.) Eddie was Mike’s right hand
man. He managed various Mike Parker teams and was a very popular and generous
personality. Eddies first connection with Mike Parker was as secretary of
the Manchester Midget car club. Over time we were to discover that Eddie was a
great foil for Parker, who was widely regarded as a tough operator and often
gruff with it.
The Parker base was in Manchester, he owned a lot of
property in Whalley Range, and had accommodation for us to rent. Even though it
was so far north of London and the people and places with whom we had become
familiar on our first visit, and was about a three and a half hour drive to
Newcastle, the distance was not something we considered a drama. But when
we finally arrived at 101 Upper Chorlton Road, most of the arrangements he had
laid on were less than ideal. The flat turned out to be a tip, an ex-GPO van
provided in the deal obviously had seen better days and a promised bike wouldn’t
pull the skin off a rice pudding. Still the big one was that Mike Parker
had offered a team place and coughed up all the expenses for Raye and I and the
three kids to get to England. For that I agreed to ride for him for a minimum
of two seasons on whatever the normal start and points money was in Provincial
League.
Because I had signed a contract with Wimbledon for both
1957 and 1958 I was officially on their retained list. When I started to win
quite a few championships in Australia and there was occasional publicity in the
speedway magazines that I wanted to go back to England, that probably was the
only reason Ronnie Greene kept me on the Wimbledon retained list. Mike
Parker had quite a battle with the Speedway Control Board over who owned my
contract. But he had a much stronger personality and level of determination
than any of those guys at Belgrave Square. They were no match for his powers of
persuasion so he got me released without any problem.
We were on a high, just getting a chance to come back. The
accommodation was something which could be fixed up. Being located in
Manchester was fine as there was reasonable access to all of the tracks. And
while the bike he provided was extremely second-hand – Bill Andrew had used it
the previous year – I was so grateful he brought us to England, that situation
didn’t bother me too much. We didn’t really have too many bad words over
the car and bike except to tell him that if he wanted me to actually arrive at
the track and start scoring maximums I couldn’t do either using the bike or the
car he provided, so I soon gave them back to him.
My first appearance for Newcastle was at Middlesbrough on
Thursday, April 11, and the Bears were all over us, winning 51-26 with Eric
Boothroyd scoring a maximum and Johnny Fitzpatrick, another rider I remembered
from Wimbledon second halves, 10. After three scoreless rides, my first
points came in Heat 11 when I ran a second to the 18-year-old Eric Boocock, with
Ivan Crozier third.
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My home debut was four days later, against Wolverhampton.
It was my first sight of the 361-yard Brough Park circuit and at a quick glance
it resembled the shape of Wembley, my recurring theatre of dreams. No dream
started here though, as the bike packed up in my first ride and next time out I
trailed in behind Tommy Sweetman, another one-time Wimbledon second half
opponent. Then things got better and two heat wins later I was starting to
feel more confident. Newcastle picked up their first victory of the season and
it was clear to me that on proper equipment the way forward was going to be
better still. Long-term, the biggest plus on that initial home meeting was
within the first half-hour when I met Gordon Stobbs, who was a track raker. He
and his wife Margaret started going to away meetings on their 500 BSA and Gordon
later became my full-time mechanic – he was with me until I retired at the end
of 1985. They became great friends of all our family and have visited us
on the Gold Coast in Australia. Raye and I stay with them when we are on our UK
northern trips and even in recent times Gordon has come to help out at some of
my training academies. Over many years Gordon was absolutely the most loyal
mechanic in speedway. He knew my moods, likes and dislikes and he got to know
if I was going to win a meeting or just do some experimenting for future
meetings.
We could go to a track in Europe for the first time and he
would attend to the gear ratio, the wheel base, ignition settings and other
details which were accurate 9 times out of 10. Gordon usually got to those
cities several hours before me and one of his jobs was to make sure we got rooms
on the quiet side of the hotels. All of this was way in the future though,
and at this early stage I needed a good machine before I needed a good
mechanic. I asked a few people including Ted Brine at Wimbledon if they knew
where there were any good bikes for sale. Ted said his brother Cyril had retired
and he was selling his bike.
That was enough for me. With Rolf Von Dor Borch I jumped
into my newly purchased £100.00 Bedford Dormobile- It had 3 rows of seats and
space behind for a couple of bikes, tool boxes and all the other gear- and went
down to Wimbledon to buy the bike for £125.00. The payback was immediate.
Next Monday I got a maximum, Newcastle disposed of Edinburgh in the Northern
Trophy and my heat 5 win over Wayne Briggs was in a new track record time.
A decent machine meant I could start doing the business on track, and there was
another boost for the family (especially Raye) when we moved next door to 103
Upper Chorlton Road, where the accommodation was bigger and better. We stayed
there until we went to New Zealand at the end of the 1968 season.
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When the league matches started, my form just kept on
improving, and for most of the next few months I was around the top of the
averages. At Brough Park in particular I had the measure of most riders and no
less pleasing was finding the ability to go to away tracks and win races on a
regular basis. In 24 league meetings there were 13 maximums and an average
of 10.80. This was enough for me to be top of the Provincial League averages in
my first season. I held the Silver Sash match race title for a couple of
months. The team improved steadily too. In the end 6th place
was the best we could do, although just one more win and we would have finished
in second spot behind champions Wolverhampton.
Given the lack of interest from National League promoters
when I made it know that I wanted to come back to England, It was quite funny to
have several of the scrambling to use me as a fill in rider- Oxford, 4 times,
Southampton twice and even Wimbledon on a couple of occasions- and then fielding
suggestions they would like to take me on board the following year. I took
great delight in telling them all to get stuffed. In those 8 National
League and KO Cup appearances I scored 59 points at an average of 7.37 including
11 for Wimbledon at Swindon where Peter Moore beat me in my last race to spoil
my chance of a maximum.
Every man and his dog it seemed wanted to have a say about
whether I should be allowed to ride. It was the same sort of argument and
debate repeated years later when riders like John Louis, and most recently young
Australian prospect Darcy Ward, were top of the pile in the lower division and
scoring big points as a rent-a-guest for a succession of teams in the top
flight. Several additional opportunities came my way in Provincial League
select teams booked to ride on National League tracks. I even beat Peter Craven
in my first race at Hyde Road. The Belle Vue riders were handicapped and
started 10 yards back but that could be an advantage as it carried more momentum
at the first corner. Peter was beside me at the first turn but I found better
grip on the exit and rode away from him to win a fraction of a second outside
his track record. A few weeks later I scored paid 7 from 4 rides to help
Oxford beat the Aces, a result that threatened to spoil their charge for
championship honours.
In another source of controversy, not that any of us took
that much notice of it at the time, Mike Parker was starting to flex his muscles
in what would prove a long running battle with officialdom. He was warring with
his fellow Provincial League promoters over his signing for Wolverhampton of
Rick France from Coventry.
There was increasing talk of operating outside the
jurisdiction of the Speedway Control Board, threats of a breakaway. Most riders
were aware of some of it, but few had any idea how the relationship between
promoters and the governing body was about to fracture so dramatically.
Of course I kept an eye on what was happening in the National League, and was
sad when Ronnie Moore broke his leg in a crash at Plough Lane. Ronnie was one
of the “big five” – Briggo, Peter Craven, Bjorn Knutsson and Ove Fundin – were
the others who were doing it the hard way starting every race of a handicap at
that stage. Ronnie’s accident occurred in a last heat decider in May when
Bob Andrews and Swindon’s Martin Ashby came off in front of him as he was trying
to make his way through the traffic. Before the season was over Ronnie had
announced his retirement, for the second but not the final time.
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The worst accident of the year (1963) though, was a fatal
one – Peter Craven, riding for Belle Vue at Edinburgh in a challenge match in
September, collided with the safety fence trying to avoid the fallen George
Hunter. He never regained consciousness and died four days later in hospital.
It rammed home the dangers riders face every time they get on a bike. Everybody
accepts speedway is dangerous and there is always the potential to get hurt.
But little Pete against whom I had raced in Adelaide only a few months before,
in an inter-league event at Hyde Road in April and at Middlesbrough later in
that season, was such a huge star, and yet such a good bloke, it was shocking to
think he had gone.
The Provincial League Riders Final at Belle Vue on
September 28th started with a 2 minute silence for Peter who had died
4 days earlier. It was a sombre way to go into one of the biggest meetings of
the year. For weeks I had been building myself up to prove I could do the
business in the league’s showpiece occasion. Normally I was as healthy as any
young bloke, and fitter than most because I took physical training and
conditioning pretty seriously. But in the days leading up to the PLRC I was
feeling very ordinary, suffering bad headaches for the first time in my life. I
put that down to some kind of tension going into the big meeting. The last
thing I needed on the night was a mini-riot, stirred up by riders who took
exception to the 24 heat formula. The traditional 16 rider, 20 heat world
championship format was ditched and instead 2 dozen riders contested the meeting
taking 4 rides a piece, with the top 4 scorers qualifying for a grand final.
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Nothing revolutionary about the format in more recent
times, but it was an innovation which did not please the purists and threatened
to go pear-shaped when 5 riders tied on 9 points. Jack Kitchen of Sheffield and
I were safely through to the decider with 11 points each from our 4 rides.
George Hunter, Ross Gilbertson, Ray Cresp, Clive Featherby and Maury Mattingley
were locked together. After a lengthy delay it was decided to put all 5
into a run-off – At least Hyde Road was big enough and plenty wide enough for an
extra rider at the starting gate. Gilbertson and Hunter duly joined us in the
final, and my chances looked shot when I drew the worst gate. However, it was
Hunter who turned out to be the unlucky one. He made the start but packed-up at
the beginning of the second lap, allowing me to take the lead which I held to
the chequered flag. Many people in the full stadium gave me the reception
that often goes the way of a fortunate winner, but the massed ranks of Newcastle
fans didn’t care and nor did I. It was in all respects a champion feeling.
A couple of hours later I was much the worse for wear, and
not because of any celebration. After the meeting a group of us went back to a
pub in Bolton where the owner was a friend of Newcastle rider Jack Winstanley.
Mike Parker, Eddie Glennon and most of my Diamonds team mates along with our
wives. I had an extra strong headache by the time Raye and I arrived and the
owners took us through into their lounge where I lay on a couch and was not
involved in any of the celebrations out in the bar. The owner called a
doctor but before he bothered to come out to see me he’d had a few beers in the
bar so obviously he didn’t think there was anyone seriously wrong. Raye was
sitting in a chair next to the couch and he looked at her and asked “does he
take any drugs”. Raye said “The only thing he takes is Glucose in the
orange juice I mix up for him at the tracks and then he takes vitamin tablets
that you buy from the chemist”. Anyway the doc was convinced I was on some kind
of drugs and he left us and went out to the bar and started drinking a few more
beers.
When we got home I was in a bad way. Raye has always had
medical books and when she looked up my symptoms she decided I had meningitis.
First thing in the morning she walked down to Dr Friedlander, our family doctor
who was a couple of blocks away. Fortunately he came to see me immediately and
called for an ambulance to take me to the Monsall Hospital in the middle of
Manchester. They promptly put me in an isolation ward and I was there for over
a month, missing all of the remaining meetings of the 1963 season. It cost me a
lot of money, a KO cup final appearance against Cradley Heath and more besides.
For several weeks I was so far out of things it was not until later that the
full impact of it all hit home.
Dr Friedlander and the doctors at the hospital told Raye it
would take up to a year to get rid of the symptoms and that she should never let
me get tired. By this time it was mid November and Raye made me go to bed about
9pm every night. It was winter anyway and it was not until well into the New
Year (1964) I was able to go into the workshop and tinker around with my bikes
for a few hours at a time. Fortunately Guy Allot, who had been forced to retire after
suffering serious injuries when he fell off the tractor/grader during a victory
parade at Sheffield, was getting into engine preparation and tuning. It was
reassuring to know he was working hard to get my motors prepared for season ’64.
I started on my recovery, training and running at the
Manchester YMCA where the facilities included and indoor track. It took a long
time before my health was anywhere close to what it had been, and a night in the
pub with Rolf did not speed my rehabilitation. He thought he was doing the right thing by getting me out
of the house to unwind, but a couple of beers knocked me flat again. Raye was
not at all amused. With the season a few weeks away, there was another huge
cloud on the horizon. The Speedway Control Board (SCB) tried to coerce Mike
Parker into moving Wolverhampton into the National League, accelerating a
long-running dispute into open war. There was talk of strike action, the Provincial League
promoters voted to operate outside the official channels, and the SCB warned
riders they would be suspended if they rode on unlicensed tracks
Most of the Provincial tracks were attracting excellent
crowds and there was great racing because most of the boys had a lot of
ambitions, whereas the National League numbers had been on the slippery slope
for several years. West Ham moved up to the NL, replacing Southampton, but in
spite of the quality in the top division the quantity still wasn’t there. They
simply did not have enough tracks or offer sufficient meetings to appeal to a
lot of riders. The bottom line is that Mike and the other PL promoters had
a meeting with the leagues top guys at Cradley Heath a couple of weeks before
the start of the 1964 season to tell us they were going to run “black” and
without being licensed by the SCB. That meant we would not have licenses. But,
they assured us that it would all blow over before that season’s world
championship qualifying rounds. I wanted to believe what we were being told. I told Mike
that I owed my loyalty to him because he had brought me over while there had
been no contact or response from the NL promoters such as Ronnie Greene at
Wimbledon and Charles Ochiltree at Coventry, who had never even answered my
letters. To shore up the arrangement Mike voluntarily offered what
was at that time quite a good guaranteed prize money arrangement for each
meeting which I accepted and gave him my word for two seasons. Later we realised there was very little intention of
linking up with the SCB. The PL promoters were doing well financially without
paying license or permit fees and did not have anyone outside their group
telling them what they could or could not do.
The first year Mike would often drop in to see me. He
rented the upper floor at 81 Upper Chorlton Road, he (and Eddie Glennon) had
offices on the ground floor and my workshop was out the back. He knew I had tea
on most of the day. But from about May 1964 he rarely looked in – The promised
truce had not materialised and he knew I was angry after being misled. Nevertheless I had a great time in 1964 starting with 10
maximums in 11 Northern League matches; only a fall at Glasgow cost me a perfect
record. I was top of the PL averages, defended the Silver Sash against all
comers from May to September and again won the PLRC at Belle Vue at the end of
the season.
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What very few people knew was quite often I had to have a
sleep in the afternoon. I left home a couple of hours early to go to Newcastle
each Monday and had an hour or so flat out on the couch in the speedway office
before just about every home meeting. There were a few changes in the PL with Stoke, St Austell
and Rayleigh all gone from the previous year, but new teams Sunderland, Glasgow
and Newport. The arrival of Sunderland promised a fresh local derby
rivalry but the Saints, who signed new Aussies Jim Airey and Gordon Guasco,
operated for just a few weeks before closing down. The two Aussies went on to Wolverhampton who immediately
became a serious threat, bracketed with ourselves and Hackney – who had Colin
Pratt and Roy Trigg – as likely honours challengers.
As far as we were concerned, Newcastle would be the team to
beat. Brian Craven had retired, but the returning Bill Andrew, the jockey
turned racer from Palmerston North, was a decent replacement, Goog Allan was
another recruit from New Zealand, and the signing of veteran Ken Sharples after
Sunderland closed gave us an added edge in the second half of season 1964.
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Fans who had been watching for years reckoned these
Diamonds had enough about them to bring a league title to the club for the first
time. I hardly put a foot wrong, although there was one memorable
time when Ivor Brown, who dished it out but appeared to regard himself as
untouchable, did get the better of me and hung me out to dry when Cradley Heath
came to visit Brough Park in June 1964. He was my challenger for the silver sash but hardly put in
any effort. In the second half final I warned Mike Watkin and Bill Andrews to
stay out of the way in the first corner. Ivor ended up going through the pit
gates. From a personal viewpoint my league and KO Cup results
could not have been much better – 293 points from 23 matches, an average of
11.49 and 15 maximum scores.
Newcastle was an unforgiving circuit, usually on the rough
side, and we made the most of it as a home track. We also had the ability to
win six out of 11 away from home, finally clinching the championship with a
49-29 home win against Edinburgh. In the end we had a three-point margin over
Hackney with the rest way behind. Celebrations in the north-east went on for days and at the
end of the week, winning the individual title at Hyde Road for the second year
in a row was another highlight. After dropping a point to Roy Trigg in my first race, and
another to former Adelaide rival Charlie Monk (Glasgow) in Heat 12, I finished
on 13 and needed to beat Charlie in a run-off for the championship. As we were the only riders with a figure above 11 for the
season, it seemed a fitting result. I would have been disappointed with
anything less, but it was a tough night. Belle Vue was packed, the meeting attracting more fans than
any other at Hyde Road that year. The atmosphere was brilliant, although by all
accounts thousands of fans were angry when programmes sold out an hour before
the start. The point was not lost on those who were following the
continual split between the ‘official’ National League and the ‘black’
Provincials. The Speedway Control Board suspended Belle Vue’s licence after
they staged the PLRC, but relented a few days later, shortly before all parties
were to meet in the first step towards reconciliation.
It took many weeks in the off season, a great deal of
wheeling and dealing. When everybody had given their input the Shawcross Report
into the state of speedway eventually brought together all the feuding factions. All of this was still in the melting point when the season
ended but this time I was determined not to let anything get in the way of my
preparations for the following year and my world championship ambitions. Raye and I and the kids again stayed in England that
winter. Julie and Kym were established at school and doing well and we wanted
to have five or six months quality time in one base during the winter to get
really organised for the following season. In addition I had made the conscious decision to start my
year’s preparations on January 1 – an ideal time to start a new campaign – and I
have always kept to that plan even today.
I was in my workshop for a few hours most days during
November and December, just cleaning things up and starting to make a plan with
Guy Allott as to what we should do with engines and so forth the following year.
Not being able to ride in the championship rounds had
occupied a lot of my thoughts in the weeks after the end of the season. When
Mike Parker eventually got around to coming in to see me shortly before
Christmas it probably was the first time he and I ever had hard words. He was a
very strong-willed person and so was I and that made it inevitable we would have
our problems sooner or later. He started off by telling me his plans for the formation of
the British League, which meant the National League and Provincial League
amalgamation was going to happen. He was keen to talk about a new deal but I
wasn’t ready. It was good to know the two competitions were coming together but
I had fulfilled the two years agreed. He and I both fully understood that there
was no loyalty now after his lies in 1964.
Mike was such a visionary for speedway and one of the first
people who could see a league join up had to happen. He was more forceful and
had a stronger personality than any of the other promoters and that was a huge
factor in how the British League (BL) got started. – Just as he was one of the
first group who had a vision for the Provincial League (PL) a few years before.
But I knew that I was coming from a strong bargaining position. I told him that as one of the hot properties in British
speedway, after cleaning up the PL in 1963 and 1964, I figured I could ride for
just about anyone I wanted to. By staying loyal to Mike and the PL I had wasted
a year of world championship rounds. In that instant I could not have cared
less whether I rode for Mike again or not. Discussion stalled at that point so
I locked my workshop door and went home.
Raye and I discussed everything for a week or two. We had
made many friends up at Newcastle and we loved all the people; they were great
supporters and very friendly, as they are today. I really wanted to stay there
but on my own conditions. We decided upon exactly what I wanted no matter who I rode
for in 1965, Newcastle or anybody else: good guaranteed money, better transport
vehicles, better bikes and better accommodation. Only then did I go back to the
workshop. When Mike next came in he asked me if I had calmed down and
asked if I still wanted to ride for Newcastle. I said “yes, lets go up to your
office and I will tell you what the deal is.
I started by telling him to make the tea and provide the
chocolate biscuits. We sat in exactly the same place as we had done 10 months
before when he called me in to tell me that the PL promoters and riders were
going “black” and offered me the financial guarantee to continue with him in the
PL that year. I told him I could not forget how all his reassurances
about the dispute being settled quickly had been shown to be false. I again
said I could ride for whoever I wanted to and in particular Belle Vue, who had
made no great secret about wanting to get me to Hyde Road from the first time I
had been on their track. After I had outlined all the conditions Raye and I had
worked out he was silent for quite a long time and I was determined not to speak
until he did. People in Newcastle had told me Mike was desperate for me to ride
there particularly in the first season of his brainchild the BL. I also knew he
had done some deals with other promoters when he was trying to get the new BL
started, and Maurice Marshall, the Chief Executive Officer of the entire Belle
Vue complex, was top of his list.
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It followed that Mike did not want to get into a fight with
Belle Vue over me so I told him I would ride for Newcastle home and away and
open meetings for a guaranteed £100.00 a meeting plus double travel money. Any
challenge matches I could negotiate with the promoters for a higher guarantee.
Any individual meeting at home I kept whatever prize money I got plus the
guarantee.
That was good money in them days. Briggo, who was world
champion in1964, only got £35.00 for open meetings. But I didn’t have any doubt
I was worth that sort of money to Mike Parker- not that I expected him to
immediately agree. Anyway, after a while he said that was too much and no club
in the UK would pay that much and also he wouldn’t give me a transfer to another
club.
I was wise enough to know at that stage that Mike’s
ambitions of being the chairman of The British Speedway Promoters Associations (BSPA)
or the number one promoter in the British League with several tracks would play
a part in his thinking. All the other promoters wanted me to be in it and Mike
had upset so many people any arbitration court in the RAC would defeat him. I gambled on the fact that his ego would not allow him to
be publicly defeated so I was confident that he would come up with my requests.
After about an other half an hour of silence during which time Mike made more
teas, he said he thought I was completely ungrateful after he had brought my
family over in 1963 and I should reconsider. My reply was that I had fulfilled my loyalty in riding two
seasons for him which when I made the agreement and committed to that loyalty
never included never included being excluded from the world championship for one
of those seasons (1964).
Mike could sense I was determined and also at that time I
thought he was figuring out he was going to tell the people at Newcastle that I
was leaving. After a while he told me to come back the next day. When we got together again we haggled and compromised a
bit, part of which I didn’t get any travelling money at all! But obviously he
had cleared his thoughts overnight and done his sums because we did the deal
there and then. The prospect of earning £100.00 several nights a week was
quite attractive as the average UK wage was in the region of £13.00 and petrol
was less than two bob a gallon. As with every deal I made with Mike, all it took was a
handshake and he paid every penny.
As the start of speedway’s new era dawned and everybody in
the UK was getting very excited about the formation of the British League, I was
as jazzed up as anybody. For two years in the Provincial League things had gone
extremely well for me. My results were consistently good, my confidence was
high. The drama of meningitis behind me – although never forgotten – I felt I
was ready for the challenge. Plenty of people had doubts about how the former Provincial
League guys would fare up against the gun riders who had been stars in the
National League. Among them were those who seemed to take a delight in
reminding anybody who would take notice that Ivan Mauger and all the rest of
them had everything to prove, because none of them had cut it in the big time. And it was true. But thanks to several years of
increasingly tough competition, to a greater or lesser degree all of us were now
serious contenders. If the biggest criticism to be levelled against us was that
we lacked experience, well now was the time to bring it on! At least I’d had the benefit of racing against some of the
star names before coming back to England and handling myself more than
adequately. I knew too that I was a far better all-round rider than say, two
years before when the Newcastle adventure kicked off.
My analysis of the teams for the new British League was
that the overall strength would not be that much greater than the Provincial
League had been. Of course the big stars like Briggo, Nigel Boocock and company
would present a whole new challenge but they were only one man in a seven-man
team. What remained to be seen was whether good domestic form
could be carried over into the world championship rounds. After being dudded
out of the opportunity to compete in 1964, this was a high priority.
It was good to be able to get into detailed planning for
the months to come, although it was not the case for all the riders who were
going to be involved in the new set-up. There were pay disputes, threats of
tracks shutting down and various other loose ends to be resolved before the new
British League lurched into action.
When all the talking and argument was over, Coventry, one
of the traditional big guns, met Cradley Heath, one of the ex PL-clubs, and
14,000 people turned out at Brandon to give the bold new era a fantastic start. Newcastle were one of the later-starting tracks but we had
a challenge match at Sheffield and I kicked off my season with 13 points. Then
there was a gap of more than a week before Newcastle were due at Wolverhampton
on Good Friday.
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Ivan May 1963
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In between times I had a very bad bout of flu which put me
in bed for a few days. But of course Mike Parker wanted me to ride at Monmore
Green – another of his tracks – so against my better judgment, I got out of bed
and went. You can ride with injury, and put up with the pain, but I
wasn’t thinking clearly because of the flu. In my second ride I rode a lazy first corner, came down,
and Gordon Guasco ran over my left foot and broke my ankle and leg really badly. It wasn’t Gordon’s fault and you couldn’t say directly that
it was Mike Parkers fault, but the bottom line was for the second year in a row
it looked as if my world championship hopes were in huge trouble through trying
to help out.
There was so much more besides. As holder of the silver
sash, which I had successfully defended for weeks in 1964, I was keen to hang on
to it for a while. There was talk of my being nominated to challenge Briggo for
the golden helmet, the most prestigious match race championship in speedway
There was a test match series coming up against The USSR, history to be made and
I fancied my chances of getting a run in the series too.
As a speedway rider you have to accept there is a
possibility all the best laid plans can be wrecked through injury. All forms of
racing have that element of risk attached, which can be minimised by engaging
the brain before twisting the throttle. But by its very nature, motor sport is
dangerous, as the warnings in all the programmes and posters used to say. That
is precisely when injuries made a mess of my 1965 season. Doing myself serious damage was shattering in more ways
than one. In over 8 years I had never had worse than a bit of concussion in
1957 and broken ribs in 1958, but this was something else. The most immediate single consequence was the way it made a
mess of my hopes in the 1965 world championships. Carlo Biagi speedways miracle
doctor did patch me up any number of times over the next few months to help me
through the qualifying rounds, then the British Semi-Final but my hopes of
getting through to a Wembley final was pretty much doomed.
Carlo had almost legendary status because of his work at
Peel Hospital, near Galashiels. In 1982 he was awarded an honorary fellowship at
the Royal College of Surgeons a tribute normally reserved for distinguished
international visiting surgeons and almost unheard of for a surgeon at a small
hospital such as Peel. In 1990, he was presented with a MBE at Buckingham
Palace for his services to Orthopaedic surgery.
After missing 16 meetings in the first couple of months of
the season, I managed to get some reasonable results but the BL proved to be
tougher for the Diamonds than might have been imagined. Newcastle were good enough to win 14 and draw 1 at home but
managed only 2 away wins in 17 road trips, at Edinburgh and Long Eaton in my
first few weeks back in action.
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 Bill Andrew had gone from 1964 replaced by the returning
Brian Craven. After my Good Friday crash, Mike Parker talked Brian Brett
(Pictured) out of
a short-lived retirement, and then had to battle other tracks to hold onto him
after I was fit to come back.
Mike won that fight and for a spell with Brett and myself
in the team the team strung together some consistent results before injuries
struck again. In the end 12th place in a British League of 18 teams
was the best we could do and seven of the teams who finished behind us in 1964
now jumped ahead of us in the table. Former National League clubs West Ham,
Wimbledon and Coventry made the running for the big prizes.
I managed to be 0.01 ahead of Bretty in the averages when
the line up was announced for the first (1965) BLRC which was allocated to Belle
Vue after their earlier success with the PLRC. This was the one last chance I had
to salvage something from the year and my only time at Hyde Road in 1965. It
also was the start of a sequence of tremendous occasions which signalled the end
of the UK season 1965.
Most riders loved the space and speed of the track, they
enjoyed the atmosphere of the old Zoological Gardens which for so long were a
massive attraction in the north west of England, and the buzz created when a
full house packed into the stadium was very special. I hoped for something good with which to sign off, and won
my first race, but fell next time out, again aggravating the ankle and collected
5 points from my last three rides. Briggo blasted through the field with 14 points collecting
his first of what turned out to be six consecutive title and my mid table
scoring just about summed up my year.
In spite of all that, everyone in Newcastle was
complimentary about the way we had tackled that first British League campaign.
At the end of season function at the Newcastle Mayfair Ballroom (Now demolished)
1600 turned up and made my night by presenting me with an illuminated scroll to
acknowledge my efforts. I even managed to have a civilised end of season
conversation with Mike Parker. The speedy upshot was an agreement on another
two year deal with improved terms and built in price indexes rises.
For the first time in more than 2 and a half eventful
years, our family set off for a trip to New Zealand – our first by plane. We
flew via San Francisco and Fiji. I hadn’t intended to ride much, but those intentions lasted
only a few days. Promoter Russell Lang persuaded me to ride on the Saturday
night programme at Templeton. I was keen to build up my fitness and just as a kid years
before, went off to Rapaki Hills to do some running. But after a few sessions I
was getting terrific pain from the ankle.
It turned out that I had been pushing myself so hard that
the screws in my ankle had bent over and were rubbing against the bones. Dr
McFarlane, a specialist in Papanui Road Christchurch told me it was best to have
the screws removed and that turned out to be a painless and simple operation.
Within a fortnight I was back in action and building up for
our return. After falling sick (meningitis) at the end of my first season with
Newcastle, struggling for fitness the following year, and having 1965 bighted by
injury, it was desperately important for me to go through and entire English
season with a clean bill of health. At last in 1966 I managed that. In the British League 1966 I upped my average by Half a
point from 8.93 to 9.46, I scored my first 7 ride maximum of 21 points at Poole
in a KO cup match, and it was a much improved year for Newcastle. Only one home defeat, some decent results on the road, with
Peter Kelly and Brian Brett – despite some injury problems- doing a good job and
a hard-working supporting cast, helped us pin down 5th place.
It was no accident that my good form in the BL, and
selection for the World Team Cup and GB teams, also coincided with the first
consistently successful world championship campaign. Winning the European Final at my first meeting at Wembley,
and qualifying for my first world final, were achievements I would happily have
settled for going into that year. At last I felt I belonged and proved that I could go well
in the very highest company. It had been years in the making, and everything
started to fall into place. Good for me and good for Newcastle. But it also provoked another argument with Mike Parker.
While the disappointment and deception of 1964 still rankled, this was the
beginning of a bigger rift which ultimately meant a parting of the ways would be
inevitable.
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Photographs Provided For
The Website
By Ivan Mauger
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The photo used on the cover of this
programme came from the Newcastle Speedway History Website. Ivan says it was taken in 1964
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Aranui New Zealand
In 1956 |
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Aranui New Zealand in 1956. I was 15
then and told the steward I was 16. You had to be 16 to get a Speedway licence.
That was the first fib that I ever told! It says 1957 but it was 1956 |
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Ivan In The
1950s |
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| Ivan in the 1950s. I hope someone told him he had a flat
tyre at the front! This picture was taken in the late 1950s that
is well before he came to England for the second time (1963) to link up
with the Diamonds. The young guy in this picture was probably
dreaming that he could go on to emulate his countrymen Ronnie Moore
(twice a world champ) and
Barry Briggs (4 times world champ) and his boyhood hero Australian Jack
Young (Twice a Champ). He emulated them all and kept on winning, yes he did that, eclipsing
the three world champions. |
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Ivan's First Appearance As A Diamond
April 1963 At Brough Park
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| Mauger Gating Talent |
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| Ivan was great at psyching out
the opposition and referees too. He would often take his time in
coming to the starting gate, slowly roll up to the tapes and keep moving
slightly until the tapes went up but more often than not he just reacted
more quickly than other riders and usually was ahead going into the
first turn. |
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World Veteran Riders Association In
March 2009 |
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| This one was taken at the World Riders
Association in March 2009. It has my Mechanic Gordon Stobb. My engine tuner for
the Speedway and Long track Guy Allott, Guy tuned all my engines from half way
thru in 1963 until I stopped riding in Feb 1987.Wilfried Drygala who has been my
European Manager since March 1966. And Norrie Allan who done most of the
Continental work for me. |
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Raye And Me After
The
1968 World Final |
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Raye and me after the 1968 World
Final. Raye has got the Diamonds badges on her coat. John says: She must have been a fan of
yours Ivan!!
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This Is Me With The Winged Wheel
In
1968
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My 1968 Jawa,
World
Championship
Winning Bike
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I only had the one sponsor Valvoline.
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My
All Time Hero Jack Young & Promoter
Kym Bonython |
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But I got a lot more sponsors, see above picture.
Taken with my all time
hero Jack Young and the Promoter Kym Bonython who paid our Air tickets from
Christchurch. I rode for Kym from Nov 1969 until we left in Jan 1973. When
I was World Champion in 1968 I done a meeting for him completely free |
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Ivan At Newcastle
In
1964
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| Bill Andrew, Russ Dent, Mike Watkin, Mike
Parker, Goog Allan, Ken Sharples, Peter Kelly, with me on the bike. |
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September
1963
Ivan & Raye
Provincial League Riders Final
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| Ivan is pictured throughout this
website with many trophy's but a league riders win is a bit special.
Raye must have spent a lot of time polishing! Newcastle Promoter
Mike Parker poses with the Maugers. |
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I Rode The 1000cc Vincent Combo On
29th
Nov 1968 |
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I rode the 1000cc Vincent on 29th
Nov 1968 at Ipswich in Queensland and that was a 510 Yard Track. I am
driving in this photo
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Ivan On The Wall No!
Not The Wall
Of Death |
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| Ivan on top of the world (A wall
actually!)
Do you know who the other guy was
John |
| George Winstanley says: Hi John. Thought I'd put
you out of your misery! The guy with "Ivan on the wall" is Les Waine. He was the
landlord of the pub Ivan went to with my dad, when Ivan fell ill the following
day! Nobody would have got that. |
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This Photo Is From When I Started My
Son Kym At Newcastle
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Youngster's
Ivan
& Raye |
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Raye was 13 and I was 14 and a bit
when this was taken
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Ivan & Raye "Tying The Knot" Back
Home In
New Zealand
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The site of
their wedding destroyed by earthquake! Ivan says:
It was started to
be rebuilt after the big one on 4th September 2010. But the big
one on 22nd Feb 2011 destroyed it completely.
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Riding A
1929 Douglas |
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I rode a Douglas at the Lockeren
Memorial in Oct 1970.
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Kym Mauger
1986
New Zealand
Long Track Champion |
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My son Kym Mauger: 1986 New Zealand
Long Track Champion at Claudelands in Waikato NZ.
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Those Winged Wheels |
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I got the Winged Wheel to keep.
Don Clarke and George Casey made a speech after I won it in 1969 to say If I can
Win it 3 times on the trot they would give it to me. But it was to be when I won
it 5 times that they gave it to me in Nov 1977. if any of your readers are
interested go to my web site
www.ivanmauger.com and they will see it as it is in the Canterbury Museum
.Also my 1968 Bike will go to the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. It will have
the very same stand and a glass case as the 1979 bike has.
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| John says: As a speedway fan from
1961 to now. I feel the World Championship trophy should always be
a winged wheel, maybe a bit smaller than Ivan's trophy? |
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| New Zealand All Blacks Rugby Team |
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"The above photo shows the ALL BLACKS
flag. I support them and go to most of their games. Put that in the
1960s. That's All for now John. Ivan"
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Ivan Accepts The Website, Says He likes It & Helps Me With It! |
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John says: I have waited a year before adding many
pictures of Ivan to the site as I wanted nothing but the best possible shots of
him and a lot of pictures I could have used had copyright issues over them.
BUT....Ivan has now been in touch following a conversation he had with his
friend and mine, Dave Gifford (Giffy also has his own page on this website) and today Ivan's own pictures are shown
above and below with his permission. Thank you Ivan (the
site now has it's pictures of the master!). If you read this Ivan then why
not type up some more text to go with them?
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My All-time Favourite
Ivan Mauger
Picture |
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A typical Spencer
Oliver shot going into the first corner with a massive crowd in background. |
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Ivan has been in touch, he says: - |
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Hi to all the Newcastle fans. |
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Raye and I will always be grateful to Mike Parker for bringing
us and our family to England and Newcastle in 1963.The 1963 season was very
good and I won the Provincial League Riders championship in my first year for
Mike and the Newcastle fans. We won the PL League for the fans in 1964 and I
got the PLRC again so 1964 ended on a great note for Newcastle Speedway. I
knew all the rows Mike and the other PL Promoters had over the winter of 63/64
with the Speedway Control Board. That row concerned the National League tracks
insisting Wolverhampton as winners of the PL championship in 63 move to the NL
in 1964. |
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At that time there were 14 tracks in the PL and all attracting
excellent crowds and there was great racing because most of the PL riders had
huge ambitions, in contrast in the NL there were only 7 and none of them were
getting good crowds because the racing was boring in that league.
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Bottom line is that Mike and his other PL Promoters had a
meeting with the top PL guys at Cradley Heath a couple weeks before the start
of 1964 to tell us they were going to run black and without licences from the
Speedway Control Board. That meant we also would not have licences. They
assured us that it would “all blow over before the World Championship Q/rounds
began" Later we all realized that they were lying and they never intended to
link up with the SCB. They were all doing well financially without paying
licence or permit fees. |
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That in a nutshell is when Mike and I started to fall out and
it compounded when he would not let me go to Practice for my first World Final
in 1966 and the same for 1968.Add to that the fact that both Mike and me had
very strong personalities so we were bound to fall out sooner or later. That
was when I put in the transfer to Belle Vue but if the Newcastle Promotion had
changed I was happy to stay with Newcastle to the end of my BL career but
contrary to opinion I never ever fell out with Mike over money. He paid myself
and all his riders what was quite good money for that period and Mike never
owed any of the boys money. |
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I have to say that Mike was one of the Promoters who got the
Provincial League started in the late 50s and was the person most responsible
for the formation of the British League during the 64/65 winter. That was when
Speedway really took off and was great for the next 20 years or so. Speedway
really needs another Mike Parker who was never afraid to tell the
authorities and the other Promoters exactly where they were going wrong and
what they should be doing to get it right. Mike was also very much a visionary
and knew where he wanted the sport to progress. I accepted all that but I
still needed to get away from him. |
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 However, despite my occasional arguments with Mike I really
enjoyed riding for Newcastle ,the fans there were great and Raye and I still
have a lot of friends there. Within the first couple of meetings in 1963 I met Gordon Stobbs. Soon after
meeting him, Gordon and Margaret started to go to away tracks to help
me. Later Gordon became my full time mechanic and was my main Mechanic until I
retired in 1985.They are great friends of all our family and have visited us
on the Gold Coast in Aussie. Raye and I stay with them when we are on our UK
northern trips. Gordon was absolutely the most loyal mechanic in Speedway, he
knew my moods, dislikes, likes etc and he got to know if I was going to win a
meeting or just do some experimenting for future meetings. We could go to a
track in Europe for the first time and he would put the gear on, the wheel
base, the ignition settings etc etc., for me that was accurate 9 times out of
10. Gordon usually got to those Cities several hours before me and he made
sure we got rooms on the quiet side of Hotels. In the last few years Gordon
has come to my training Academies in the North. Gordon was most certainly a
plus from my Newcastle years.
Gordon
left with
my
European manager Wilfried Drygala after I won the 1976 Long Track
World Final at Marianske Lazne in Czechoslovakia.
Jack and Eileen McClurey became very good friends, Bob Hall
who ran Lowrys Shell garage was a great help to all the team and also Les
Cummings. Bob came with us to my first World Championship win in Gothenburg in
1968 so it was very much a combined Newcastle effort.
The years I spent at Brough Park were great. The Geordie fans
were encouraging to all the boys and we all could feel it. There was great
team spirit in the 60s and the Stadium was always full on Monday nights. Eddie
Glennon was an excellent Team manager who had a rapport with all the boys. The
team changed a bit from 1963 until I left at the end of 1968 but there were
several who were in all those years and we quickly accepted any new guys.
The Evening Chronicle used to have a special
edition every Monday with two back pages. They used Spencer Oliver’s
photos and Sam Brook
done the write ups. Then Tues Morning there was half the back cover. Spencer
would go home after the meetings, develop his photos and take a selection to
the Chronicle before 1am and Sam would do the story.Tom Graham Snr was Mike's right hand man in Newcastle ,George
English Senior and his Wife Joan with Jack Hewlett ran the supporters club,
Ivan Stephenson was the Pits Marshall.
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| Those were great days for Newcastle. Even today the first
results I look at in the Speedway Star are Newcastle’s meetings, Then Belle
Vue. Then it used to be Exeter and Hull. sadly Hull does not look like
starting again but hopefully Exeter will be away again in 2010. |
Best wishes from Raye and myself and our family to all the
Fans, Promoters, officials and the riders.
Ivan |
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| It's Behind You Ivan! |
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Sunday
Mirror Presentation Of This Winged Wheel,
To Keep |
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Gordon Stobbs
(right)
and my UK manager Peter Oakes at a function at the Sportsman club in London in
Nov 1977 when the Sunday Mirror presented me with the World Championship
Winged Wheel to keep to mark my 5th World Championship. |
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| More from Ivan:- |
| Ivan (Mauger) sent me an email for
the Website which is reproduced below: - |
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My
first bikes during my time with Newcastle..
Mike Parker booked my
family on a return Boat trip to Newcastle in April 1963. My very first meeting
was at Middlesbrough on 11th April 1963 (That was the first Time I had ever
ridden for Newcastle) I scored 2 points on a bike that Mike Parker gave
me. It was an ex-Bill Andrew bike.
I managed to fix the
bike up and rode it in a challenge v Wolverhampton on 15th April 1963 and I scored 8 points. I
gave that bike back to Mike Parker and bought one of my own. I got a Bike from Ted Brine as Cyril Brine had just retired. I knew Ted
did Cyril’s bike in the Wimbledon Workshop from my riding there in 1957 and 58.
I knew how fastidious Ted was at that time. The bike was a good one. |
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Maximums..
Then I started to score Maximums. I scored 24
Maximums and had an average of 11.10 over the 1963 season. 46 Maximums in 1964 and I
scored 11.91 average. |
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The "Blacked" breakaway season 1964..
In 1964 we rode “black” in the
Provincial League. Mike and his other Promoter colleagues had us down to
visit Cradley
Heath and told us that it will be all over by the time the SCB got around to
doing the World Championship rounds that were in June, but they were
liars!!!!!!!!!!. They did not want the SCB to do it as they had their own little
patch and did not want the SCB to have anything to do with the PL in 1964.
John, you can take whatever you like out of my book ROUGH DIAMOND
for your websites. It has a lot of
what I had to say about missing a BLACK year. Over the Winter Mike was starting the British
League. In the formation of the BL that Mike wanted to front. Morris Marshall
the CEO of the entire BV complex was top of his list, but Morris Marshall was
not interested in the BL. You can see that story in ROUGH DIAMOND.
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| My 1960s Earnings..
I got 100 quid a meeting when most workers
were getting £13 a week, and I was riding sometimes up to 5 nights a week and
sometimes 6. I did that until 1968 at Newcastle.
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My Newcastle British League averages are as follows:- |
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| 1965
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I Averaged |
8.90 |
When I had my ankle crushed at Wolves on
Good Friday
|
| 1966 |
I
Averaged |
9.92 |
|
| 1967 |
I
Averaged |
9.86 |
|
| 1968 |
I
Averaged |
11.49 |
|
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| Thanks and regards. |
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| Ivan Mauger OBE MBE |
| PS Brian Craven and Ivan Crozier have passed
away. Ivan |
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Ivan & His All-Time Speedway Hero
Australian Jack
Young |
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Ivan says: I posed with with my all
time hero Jack Young for the above photo's. Kym Bonython was also in the
left hand photo.
That was Jack giving me the Trophy after I won my last ever race on 1st Feb 1987
in Adelaide.
Cheers Ivan |
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"Speedway King"
The Ivan Mauger Story
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General front view of exhibition
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| Ivan has given permission for me to display these pictures from
his museum display in Christchurch NZ. Thanks go to the 3 directors of the museum namely:
Anthony Wright, Director: Lesley Colsell,
General Manager Museum Programmes:
Stephen Ruscoe,
Exhibitions Manager.
If you want to see more check out Ivan's
website
www.ivanmauger.com. |
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Profile of World Long track record holding bike. HZ Godden Engine in Hagon Frame
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Ivan's 9 Individual World Championship winning race
jackets.1968-1969-1970-1972-1977-1979 World Speedway Championships and
1971-1972-1976 World Long Track Championships
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| Ivan's Gold Bike |
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2016 Ivan Mauger's Gold-Plated
Bike
Sold To NZ's
Canterbury Museum |
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|
The Triple Crown Special, my gold Jawa
bike
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| Ivan is of course a New Zealander
and when it was decided to sell his most valuable item the "Gold Bike"
the sale was won by the New Zealand Canterbury Museum. The
Museum says: The story of the world's greatest speedway rider Ivan
Mauger continues today (August 2016) with the Canterbury Museum
purchasing his 24 carrot gold-plated motorbike and other
memorabilia. |
| John says: I believe Ivan's bike
plus memorabilia realised 1.7 million NZ Dollars which I have
translated to around £900,000 pounds sterling, (I hope my math's
are right). The items may have reached more in an open auction but
the Mauger family were keen for the items to stay in New Zealand. |
| Canterbury Museum's chairman
Michael McEvedy said the Mauger Family have generously sold the
collection to us "For much less than they may have received on the open
market" Ivan's "Triple Crown Special motorbike, which he used to
win his third consecutive World Speedway Championship in 1970 was gold
plated as a bet between some speedway entrepreneurs. They agreed
to gold plate Ivan's bike if he won the triple crown which he did and so
his bike was gold plated. The bike will now be preserved for ever by
the Canterbury Museum. |
| Mauger's glittering "Triple Crown
Special" Jawa Speedway bike which he rode to his 3rd consecutive World
Championship Title 46 yrs ago as I type, His 3rd win was in 1970.
The bike was afterwards Gold-Plated as the result of a bet. His
Friend in the USA George Wenn had an associate Ray Bekelman who owned an
electro-plating company. The legend goes that they would gold
plate his bike if he won the World title for the 3rd time, the rest is
history. Ivan kept all of his world title winning machines and has
sent me photos of them which are on my two websites this one
www.newcastlespeedwayhistory.co.uk and
www.defunctspeedway.co.uk |
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Ivan Mauger's Famous Bikes
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The following bike pics are shown with Ivan's permission they
are part of the Ivan Mauger Australian Museum which you can visit here
www.ivanmauger.com
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| Early 1960s ESO |
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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1963 Rotrax
JAP |
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The photo was taken by Wright Wood at Sheffield in the mid 60's. |
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Who can
forget this man and this bike too. The white mudguard and black Kiwi
emblem must have struck fear into the rest of the world's top riders because
they would have been looking at this rear mudguard almost every time he rode
against them! |
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| 1963 Rotrax
JAP |
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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| This is the actual bike shown in the above
black and white picture For me it was the "trademark" Ivan Mauger machine check
out Ivan's other famous bikes below: - |
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| 1968 ESO (Jawa) |
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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Ivan has been in touch. He
says: I am sending you a photo of my 1968 Bike, (see above). I had hoped
to restore it before Raye and I did our usual trip to London in June 2011.
We got back in late Sept 2011 from
California but were very busy. We went down to Adelaide for the Ivan
Mauger tribute night on 29th October 2011. Then we went to the
Melbourne Cup with our good friends Kath and Jack Walker. Then we spent most of
November 2011 in Christchurch. We got back on 4th Dec 2011 and that was
when I finished the bike.
My
1968 Bike will go to the Sports Hall of Fame in Dunedin and it will have the
stand and glass case as the 1969 Bike If any of your readers want to see it,
go to my website
www.ivanmauger.com
John, you are
welcome to put my photo of my 1968 Bike on your Website. I am now restoring my
1969 Bike. I will send you a photo when I get it finished. I have done all
the others so do not know why I left the first couple of bikes to last?
John Says: When you finish the bikes you will have to get yourself a new hobby!!
|
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| Longtrack
JAWA 1972
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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| 1977 JAWA |
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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| 1979 JAWA |
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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| 1994 Antig/Godden Longtrack
Machine |
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| Kym's Winning Bike |
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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| Jim Airey's Jawa |
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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| Gordon Guasgo's
JAP |
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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1961
Moto Cross
Champion |
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Ivan says: Hi John. This
is me when I won the South Australian 250cc Moto Cross Championship for 1961.
I also won the South Australian Moto Cross championship on a 500 cc in 1962.
Then we left to go to Newcastle in Feb 1963. Cheers Ivan
John says: Moto Cross's loss was Speedways gain
The bike was a British Greaves a 250cc two stroke which would be slow compared
to Mauger's speedway machines.
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1963 The UK Dawn
Of Ivan Mauger
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|
Phrases like "living legend","
the greatest ever" and "simply the best" have been used about
many riders but they all apply to "Ivan the Great or The Galloping Mauger". He was born
in Christchurch, New Zealand and first came to England in the late 50's.
Wimbledon gave him some rides in 1958 but didn't spot the potential he had. He was
more famous for his mispronounced (Mawger) surname then than for his riding and went
back to NZ. Mauger (pronounced Major) was brought back to England by Mike
Parker on the recommendation of 1962 Diamond and fellow New Zealander, Ivan Crozier and he took his place in the Diamonds side of 1963. Ivan quickly
replaced the Diamonds star man Brian Craven as the darling of the Brough Park
terraces.
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Ivan With Newcastle Manager
Eddie Glennon
in 1963
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger |
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| 1963 & Two Ivans In The Diamonds
Team |
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|
Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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This Newcastle 1963 photo with my
good friend Ivan Crozier, who told Mike Parker about me which led to me signing
for the Diamonds. Ivan Crozier (now deceased) was probably the main reason I ended up at
Newcastle. |
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| 1963 Ivan Shows The Rest How To
Make The Gate |
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|
Bob Andrews has emailed me in a light-hearted debate about Ivan rolling
at starts, sparked by a video clip he saw of Ivan coming from the back. |
|
Bob says: Hi John, I
once passed someone, about 1961 I think? Might have been Bert Harkins? Ha. Ha.
When I first rode at Newcastle, the "starter" used to get the visiting riders
(like me) to come up to the tape and stand still, then Ivan would come up at
about 10 mph. and keep going. (and win) Me being a fast learner, would do that
at my next ride, but it was deemed a false start. That is how Ivan had so many
maximums in his early days. Mind you the "Ref" used to wear a Newcastle scarf.
Bob (old but
reliable) Andrews. 26th August 2005
|
|
John says: Thanks Bob for shattering my memories of Ivan!!
It would be great to hear from any Referee from the era, I remember them holding the
tapes longer when Ivan was in a race. It was a battle of wits for a Ref to
catch him out! I will bet they went home happy if they forced him to break
the tapes eh?
|
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| Ivan At Brough Park In
1963 |
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 |
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| In 1963 the Diamonds wore the big
diamond without a border which looked great as almost all riders
wore black leathers |
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Ivan Winner Of A
World
Championship Round |
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 |
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| Ivan Wins a world championship round. Charlie Monk is on the right. Can
you name the other rider please?
John |
Jack Hides says: I am almost certain that the other
rider shown above is Roy Trigg of Hackney, wearing an old Hawks 1964-65
body colour
Ivan says this was 1963!
Terry Kirkup says: The rider with Ivan Mauger and Charlie Monk on your web
site is Roy Trigg. |
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1963 Provincial
Riders Championship |
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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The 1963 Provincial Riders
Championship from left is me, Jack Kitchen Sheffield 2nd and Ross
Gilbertson Poole 3rd. The girl was the Miss Edinburgh Speedway.
The driver is Vic Gooden who was team manager of Great Britain for my first trip
to Poland in 1965. |
| John says: All those cups and other
trophies. Ivan at the end of his career would have needed a
warehouse to store them all |
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Ivan Mauger 1964
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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|
This 1964 Newcastle photo was taken
with another very good friend, Goog Allan. I had known both Ivan (Crozier) and
Goog for several years in New Zealand and Australia before meeting up with them
in our Newcastle days. |
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|
John says: I remember Ivan lodging with the next door neighbour of my
cousin who lived in Heaton, Newcastle. Hey Ivan do you remember an
11 year old pestering you over the fence?
|
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Mid To Late
1960s |
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| The Diamond race jacket changed.
The later jacket had the white border and who else is better qualified
to model it than Ivan Mauger, see below, John says: personal taste but I
preferred the older jacket without the border. John says I have
seen hundreds of photos of Ivan Mauger but the picture, below taken by R
Spencer Oliver is amongst the best speedway photos I have ever seen.
The photo is excellent but then you have to know the subject Ivan Mauger
was on the verge of greatness. Also it shows a jam packed Brough
Park and everyone's eyes were on Ivan sailing along in front. |
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 |
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| Q: Who is that with number 3 on his back in the
picture shown above?
John |
|
A: Dave Rowland suggests that the number 3
rider above is Bill Andrew. Can anyone confirm that? Another email
suggests that Bill Andrew only wore number 3 twice and only Ken Sharples made that jacket his own during 1964. Another 60's fan advises
Peter Kelly wore it twice, Goog Allen twice and Morrie Robinson once. So
was it Bill Andrew? let us know if you recognise the rider
John |
| John says: The number 3 guy looks
to big to be Bill Andrew to me! |
|
In the above picture, the 3rd bike along the
line shows what appears to be a brake drum on the front wheel and as the
following picture shows the same bike ridden by Russ Dent then bike number 3
above belongs to Russ. |
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The
1964
Provincial Riders
Championship |
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
|
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The 1964 Provincial Riders
Championship from left is Roy Trigg Hackney 3rd,Charlie Monk Glasgow
2nd and me. |
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1965 And Still At Newcastle
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Ivan quickly got to grips with the Provincial
League (2nd Division) and by the1964 season he was winning his races by a mile.
1965 saw Newcastle become founder members of the British League and Ivan the
Great was one of the reasons why the Diamonds became that years league
champions. He was a devotee of the British JAP engine and he broke track
records on his JAP everywhere he rode. Then he changed to ESO and was even
better.
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1965 My Leg In Plaster |
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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This 1965 photo is when I rode with
my leg in plaster to do the World Champ qualifying rounds in 1965. I did
not have a boot on, only the plaster and we made an oversize steel shoe to go
over the plaster. It hurt a lot in the three rounds and semi-final but I was
young and ambitious then. In the photo I am having a bit of a struggle with Dick
Fisher from Belle Vue. |
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|
John Skinner says: An excellent photo which shows the
plaster clearly. I remember going home after watching you ride
with it and told my dad. We had a big argument about whether you
were mad or not!!! But you survived. Big shame about that
injury as you may have landed your first world title that year.
Who knows what might have been. Modern regs. would not have allowed it I suspect. |
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Ivan Mauger says: I was not mad, just young
and ambitious and ready to put up with pain!! You are correct in modern
times the boys are not even allowed an Aspirin if they have a headache
before a meeting as it is deemed an outside assistance. I had lots of pain
killing injections while riding in plaster. I also would not have won both
Speedway and Long track World Champs in1972 as I had broken scaphoid in my
left wrist and broken bones in my right wrist and before and during both
Finals I gave myself pain killing injections between my fingers on both
hands. My Doc, who was the Belle Vue Doc showed me how and gave me a bag
with syringes, etc. in 1965 and again in 1972. |
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1965 Newcastle Team
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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The Newcastle Team photo taken at Sheffield by Wright Wood. Year unknown, can
you say what year this was
John |
Keith Dyer says: The team photo in part 5 (Mauger) is 1965.The clue is
Brian Craven and Ken Sharples, the only year they rode together was 1965.
John says: Ok Keith I will name the team now, 1965 L to R Mike Parker, Mike Watkin, Russ
Dent, Ken Sharples, Goog Allen (absolutely true: my mother called him "Goo
Gallen" she wasn't a big speedway fan!) Brian Craven and Eddie Glennon and Ivan
Mauger astride his Rotrax 1963 Jap. |
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| Giffy & Ivan Brough Park Pits Other Two Unknown |
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Courtesy of Dave Gifford
|
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| John says: Dave Gifford, Mike Watkin (in woolly hat)
Ivan Mauger Newcastle 13-9-65. |
|
Giffy has been in touch about this picture.
I named the guy in the hat as Mike Watkin, Giffy says it is not Mike Watkin in
the hat but one of the track staff whose name I do not know. The other guy is
Ronnie Ferguson, a mate of Ivan's from Edinburgh. |
Ivan says: It is Ronnie
Allan, not Ronnie Ferguson in the photo with Giffy and I.
I met Ronnie Allan the first time I went to Edinburgh on 22nd April 1963. Ken
Cameron from Melbourne boarded with Ronnie and Norrie Allan’s Grandmother. Soon
after Ronnie came down to our house in South Manchester for holidays. Later
Norrie became my mechanic and did most of the European meetings from 1977 until
I retired at the end of 1985. But for any important meetings Gordon was there
also. Norrie did the Ivan Mauger 30 year jubilee series in Australia in 1984/85
and New Zealand in 1985/86. Ronnie later became a SCB referee and still is today.
Cheers Ivan |
|
Kev Ash says: The guy in the woolly hat is definitely not Mike Watkin.
It is my father Albert Ash. |
| John says: Albert Ash is still alive and kicking and I have
asked his son Kev for any memories his dad has of his time working at Brough.
Watch this space! |
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| 1966 Ivan Still At
Newcastle |
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Ivan, Gordon Guasco,
Brian Craven &
Dave Gifford
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At A Packed Old Meadowbank
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Courtesy of Dave Gifford
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Ivan In His Iconic
Speedway Pose |
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| Ivan Mauger is the only Newcastle rider to
date, actually
to bring the world title back to Brough Park whilst still a member of the Diamonds
he did this in September 1968. Ivan and promoter Mike Parker had differences
that they couldn't settle (not about money), So Ivan's ambitions led him to leave Newcastle at the
end of 1968 for a bigger club Belle Vue. Ivan's Career took off again at
BV and he went on to win four more world titles. The rest is as you say "History"
and could fill this page all by itself. |
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1967 And Still At Newcastle
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Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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| Ivan on the winners tractor ride
at Belle Vue. He says:
The first photo I am particularly
proud of (says Ivan). I was the first ever winner of the Peter Craven Memorial
Trophy at Belle Vue in 1967. |
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Presentation Of The
1967
Peter
Craven Memorial Trophy |
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|
Courtesy of Ivan Mauger
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|
This photo with Brenda Craven, Peter's widow, was
taken at the first ever Peter Craven memorial meeting and Brenda made the presentations. |
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1968 And Still At
Newcastle
|
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|
Fresh faced youngsters Ole Olsen and Ivan Mauger, they went on to dominate world
speedway. Ole was a protégé of Ivan's and when Mauger left the club and
signed for Belle Vue Ole stepped forward and filled the enormous gap left by Ivan
moving on at the end of 1968.
|
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| Ivan & Giffy at Old Meadowbank? |
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| No! It was Coatbridge |
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Courtesy of Dave Gifford
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Ivan Mauger chatting to mean and moody Dave Gifford at Old Meadowbank
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| Peter McCann says: 'Ivan and Giffy
at Old Meadowbank' should be Ivan and Giffy 'at Coatbridge' |
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| Ivan's Trophy Count |
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More silverware, Ivan after winning yet another trophy, his
house must have been full of them
|
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| Ivan On His Trusty
JAP |
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Ivan on his trusty JAP,
compression ratio so high it needed two pushers to bump it into life. I don't know the year
or the track
John
|
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Dave Train says: Ivan is
at Old Meadowbank
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| Ivan Back On Track
2003 |
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These pictures were sent to me by Dave
Gifford and show Dave and Ivan and Ivan with Ian Hoskins, they date from 2003.
I presume as both Giffy and Ian live in NZ that the pictures are from a NZ track.
These pictures show Ivan 40 years on from signing for Newcastle way back in
1963.
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A 1960s Rarity
A Colour Photo Of
Ivan
At Brough Park |
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Well no! not from the 1960s!
Ivan says: The colour photo was 1975 at Newcastle's re-opening, when I did
match races with Jimmy McMillian. I put my black leathers on and my Diamonds
vest for the occasion. I also got the track record, I think 65secs on a two
valve Jawa with narrow rear tyre.
34 years later the average time is 65 seconds and that is with modern machinery
(laydown 4 valve technology) The all time Brough Park track record is 61
Seconds by Sean Wilson, then the track was altered and Kenneth Bjerre clocked
62.1 this is reckoned to be the current track record. But! Kenni Larsen
bettered that, he did 61seconds in 2010. It was great to see Ivan
riding at Brough in 1975. Great that you dressed for the occasion
Ivan! |
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Ivan Chilling Out Before
Commencing Racing |
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This Is The
1966
Newcastle Team |
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|
Photo
Courtesy of John Robson
|
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|
This is the 1966
team. The riders from memory are:-
Mike Watkin,
Brian "Pommie" Brett, Alan Butterfield, Ivan Mauger (on bike), Russ
Dent, Peter Kelly and someone whose face I just don't recognise! Help me out
there someone please.
John |
|
Dave Gifford tells me the rider on the far
right was Kiwi Graham Coombes Giffy says he sadly passed away some years ago. |
| Ivan Mauger says he was sitting on Graham's bike in this photo |
| |
| Mike, Alan and
Russ were locals and very popular with the fans. Pommie Brian Brett was a
Londoner who was signed to cover for an injury to Ivan. He was so
good he was kept on when Ivan returned to action. I remember him
quitting at a relatively young age to concentrate on a big time window
cleaning business. Peter Kelly was from the Manchester area. I think and he did a great job for the team. He
often beat the best in the world around Brough. Ivan during this period
became the "Match Race" specialist. He held the Silver Sash and
Silver Helmet where he took on the top scoring opponent in every match in a
series of match races. Everyone got used to Mauger winning and if he slipped to
2nd once in a match we considered he had had a bad match. |
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Picture
supplied by Pauline Percival
|
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Another shot of the 1966 team with the crowd
all around the stadium: left to right: Peter Kelly, Mike Watkin,
Brian Brett, Russ Dent and Alan Butterfield, Graham Coombes, Ivan Mauger.
|
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| Giffy Looming Large
With His Mate He Calls "Sprouts" |
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Ivan Mauger's Newcastle Stats
|
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| Season |
Competition |
Matches |
Rides |
Points |
Bonus Pts. |
Tot Points |
Match Ave |
|
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|
| 1963 |
Provincial League only |
|
|
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|
|
10.70 |
|
|
|
|
| 1964 |
PL Northern League & KO Cup |
34 |
142 |
405 |
5 |
410 |
11.55 |
|
|
|
|
| 1965 |
British League & KO Cup |
20 |
79 |
161 |
12 |
173 |
8.76 |
|
|
|
|
| 1966 |
British League & KO Cup |
36 |
158 |
375 |
13 |
388 |
9.82 |
|
|
|
|
| 1967 |
British League & KO Cup |
36 |
166 |
377 |
10 |
387 |
9.33 |
|
|
|
|
| 1968 |
British League & KO Cup |
36 |
160 |
447 |
2 |
449 |
11.23 |
|
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| Overall an average of 10.23, amazing considering
his injuries. |
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|
These figures were supplied by my friend Keith Dyer a
life long fan and a devotee of cycle speedway too, our cycle speedway website
can be found at
Cycle
Speedway In the North East
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Mike Watkin, Goog Allen, Alf Wells, Ole Olsen,
Dave Gifford, Alan Butterfield with Ivan Mauger on his Bike
|
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| John Skinner says: I enjoyed the
few years when Ivan was fit enough to correspond with me. we exchanged
dozens of emails. My websites now contain many comments in
Ivan's own words and some of his and Raye's personal photographs. Thank
you Ivan and Raye and good luck for the future. |
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|
To continue Newcastle's Speedway History click
1970's |
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Home: |
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The contents of this website are © and should not be produced
elsewhere for financial gain. The contributors to this website
gave the pictures and information on that understanding. If anyone
has any issue or objections to any items on my website please email me
and I will amend or remove the item. Where possible credit has
been given to the owner of each item. |