they were quite relaxed about me using the hotel grounds to practise riding whenever I could. The house also backed onto a limestone quarry and chemical works, which was just like an extension of the playground for me and Richard and my schoolfriend Philip McCammond on our BMX bikes.
Philip is an absolute legend, a lifelong friend, and he introduced me to this other playground down the road, which happened to be his parents’ farm. Our two families were inseparable. Lorraine, Philip’s mother, was like my second mum and Richard also became best friends with Michael, Philip’s younger brother. With them living on a farm, it made riding motorcycles on private property much easier as well.
One night, when Dad and Philip’s dad Gary were working on the bikes at our house in Kilwaughter, me, Philip and his bigger brother Christopher ventured out of the garage and wandered up among the trees of the hotel where we saw a couple basically dry humping the life out of each other. We started laughing, but it got less funny when the two of them suddenly broke off, especially when we saw the expression on the fella’s face. They chased us down through the woods and Christopher and I managed to get back to the garage, but Philip wasn’t so quick and they caught him by the scruff of the neck.
It was the first time I’d seen Dad properly rear up and he charged out of the garage with this big lump hammer, shouting, ‘If you don’t let him go, I’m going to hammer you!’ The fella let go pretty quickly and started running very fast in the opposite direction.
There were some stables at the hotel, which belonged to my dad’s Uncle Noel, and I remember Richard got a horse once when he was drifting in and out of bikes. He was a funny old nag with a glass eye that we called Flash. Much to Mum’s horror, Richard, Philip and I used to climb aboard Flash and ride him, without any training or technique, just to see how fast we could go and how high we could get him to jump.
Once, probably after the parents had all had a few drinks, it was suggested we should build a proper motocross track on some rough ground in one of the fields on the farm. So, our dads got a local guy with a JCB to come in and we gave him a good idea of what we wanted. He put together a really cool track for us, with double jumps and tabletops and everything you’d want for a little motocross track.
When I wasn’t riding I was at home watching motocross videos. I would devour anything: Supercross re-runs, training videos, Grand Prix races, any kind of racing. I would watch them over and over on repeat, studying them in as much detail as I could, looking at race starts, the different techniques of individual riders, how they rode inside or outside corners, through ruts, how they took jumps and whoops.
Apart from motocross, I remember watching Kevin Schwantz in 1993 and 1994 doing his thing in 500cc GPs because my dad was always a fan of his. I used to make tracks out of anything that happened to be lying around to race my little model of his Pepsi Suzuki.
As soon as I climbed on that little Italjet, I knew I never really wanted to be anywhere else. But while little kids grow, motorcycles don’t, so it wasn’t too long before I was riding a Yamaha PW50, which was as iconic back then as it is today. I remember mine vividly – white plastics with a bright red seat and displaying race number 17. I spent day after day riding the bike around the garden at home and at the McCammonds’ farm.
I was desperate to start racing myself. It happened that the final round of the 1993 British Youth Motocross Championship was coming to Ireland’s famous track at Desertmartin, a tiny village in County Londonderry not far from Cookstown. The track is one of the best in the world and has hosted many world and British championship races.
We applied for a wildcard for the 50cc race – a one-off entry rather than entering for a whole championship. A low-profile junior club meeting would have been a fine first race but, no, we were jumping straight in at the deep end. To my six-year-old eyes, everything in this paddock was huge. It was full of swanky 30ft motorhomes and big sponsored teams from the national series. And there was us in our little white van and a PW50.
The 50cc class at that time featured a mix of standard bikes like my PW50 and tuned machines that were more like a real race bike with a proper motocross chassis – bikes like LEMs and Malagutis, which were much better and faster. I lined up at the start on my little standard bike with what felt like the pressure of the world on my shoulders because I wanted to do so well.
I’d been riding for two or three years by then, with coaching and encouragement from Dad, so I was comfortable on the bike. I’d been watching Dad racing and often winning for as long as I could remember. I was always aware of his nerves in the build-up to a race; he’d smoke a bit more and go into himself. Suddenly, this was me racing – my dad was watching me, and I could sense he was nervous as well. I knew it was a really important moment: there was Granda’s prediction to fulfil. I wasn’t scared though; I just knew I had to do a good job.
I memorised all the names and race numbers I was lining up against, even though I’d never met them. I was surrounded by about 30 noisy little two-stroke bikes with riders blipping throttles and creating this huge noise of anticipation and clouds of blue smoke that just seemed to hang in the air. Lining up at the gate, I was sure I was going to get smoked by all these bigger kids on their impressive bikes, but Dad was telling me not to worry: they could only score points in their modified class, while I would be competing in the separate class for standard bikes like my PW50. It was like the independent class we have today in World Superbikes and MotoGP, a race within a race.
In some ways, there’s not much difference between me lining up then and now. Nervous, but focused and a little detached – like the lights are on but no-one’s in. I was trying just to concentrate on doing my best, like my dad had told me. I sat and waited quietly.
Motocross racers start in one straight line held by metal gates which all drop together when the starter is ready. I just stared at this gate, waiting for it to fall so we could get going.
Suddenly, there was this howl of 30 throttles being snapped open to maximum revs and we all took off. This was it, I was racing and heading for the first turn, trying not to hit any of the other riders but it was all pretty chaotic. I got through the first few turns and slotted into some kind of rhythm.
On the third lap, I rode through a puddle and got water in the electrics. The little temperamental PW just stopped. I sat in the middle of that big puddle in floods of tears. Someone had to come and get me off the track before the other riders came round again. Afterwards, Mum and Dad told me everything was OK but, for a long time, it wasn’t.
When the tears had dried and I’d calmed down a bit, I couldn’t wait to have another go.
CHAPTER 3
I was still only six when Granda died, aged just 67. The night before the funeral, his open coffin was in the house and, even though the kids weren’t encouraged to go in, I wanted to see him. He didn’t look any different to me; he just looked peaceful. The next day there were a lot of tears flowing from my dad and his family; it was the first time I saw adults cry, but maybe it was because my grandfather had looked so normal the night before that I just carried on playing with my friends.
I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but Granda had a high profile in Irish racing and made a big impact with his sponsorship. Even now, Irish racing fans from the 1980s or 90s are always happy to tell me what a grand fella my grandfather was. He’s certainly a massive part of what made me a racer, which really started to get going that year.
After that first wildcard ride at Desertmartin, we managed a few more open track sessions so I could study puddle-avoidance
