Ivan Mauger: The Man Behind the Myth

For my dear and fun-loving Tilly, my Aunt Hilda, who is in her 100th year. I only hope I’ve inherited her genes!

I never set out to be unpopular, but if winning is unpopular I would take winning every time.

Ivan Mauger, World Speedway Champion

1968, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1977, 1979

Charm is scarcely the prerequisite of champions.

Ian Wooldridge, award winning sports journalist, Daily Mail

To be … a World Champion you have to be extremely ruthless and determined. It is a very dangerous, very difficult, very tough job, and that degree of ruthlessness has to be there and sometimes it shows itself.

Max Mosley, former president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), motor sport’s governing body

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to all these people for their assistance and also in obtaining illustrations:

Bob Andrews, Robert Bamford, Jim Blanchard, Neil Burston, Alan Clark, Scott Dalosio, Brian Darby, Jeff Davies, Eddie Garvey, Bert Harkins, Ron Harper, Jim Henry, John Hipkiss, Tracy Holmes, Mike Hunter, Norman Jacobs, Mike Kemp, Bruce Kent, Dave Lanning, Steve Luxton, Tony Macdonald, Debbie Mauger, Bill Meyer, Jarek Pabijan, Mike Patrick, Bruce Penhall Museum, Ian Presslie, Deborah Sigalos, John Somerville, Barry Stephenson, Ray Wilson.

The author also wishes to place on record his appreciation to Michelle Tilling of The History Press for her patience and forbearance during the preparation of this book.

Contents

Title

Dedication

Quotes

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Foreword by Martin Rogers

Richard Bott

John Cook

Pete Smith

Bob Dugard

Chum Taylor

Brian Havelock

Con Migro

Mike Lee

Jason Crump

Phil Crump

Neil Street

Ronnie Moore MBE

Tony ‘Hawkeye’ Hurren

Richard Clark

Ian Belcher

Guy Allott

Barry Briggs

Tony Briggs

Ken Wrench

George Major

Debbie Pritchard (née Mauger)

Armando Castagna

Ray Wilson

Freddie Williams

Norrie Allan

Gordon Stobbs

Margaret Stobbs

Brad Oxley

Jim MacMillan

Peter White

Julie Mauger

Mark and Bernard Robinson

Colin Pratt

Dave Appleton, HMP Stafford

Tony Lethbridge

Ove Fundin

Joe Owen

Leigh Adams

Trevor Mauger

Bob Andrews

Peter Oakes

Pam Oakes

John Berry

Hans Nielsen

Deborah and Dennis Sigalos

John Davis

Bill Walsh

Kelly Moran

Ole Olsen

Peggy Crozier

Scott Autrey

Philip Rising

Len & Andrew Silver

Tony Olsson

Anders Michanek

Jim Hone

Mike Bast

Doug Wyer

Mark Loram

Malcolm Roe

Carl Askew

Reg Fearman

Egon Muller

Jim Lynch

Graham Drury

Gunter Sorber

Bert Harkins

Bill Elliott

Nigel and Cynthia Boocock

Eric Boocock

Malcolm Simmons

Nigel Pearson

Bruce Penhall

Tore Kittilsen

Dave Lanning

Jerzy Szczakiel

Jim Shepherd

‘Sudden’ Sam Ermolenko

Peter Adams

Peter Collins MBE

Peter York

Richard Greer

Rick Miller

Richard Frost

Tony Rickardsson

Rod Colquhoun

Dave Gifford

Bill Gilliham

Iain Potter

Brett Tucker

Nigel Bower

Allen Trump

Alan Brett

Tony Steele

Allan Batt

Ian Hoskins

Dave Jessup

Graham Brodie

Tracy Holmes

Chris Morton MBE

Kelvin Tatum MBE

John Burley

Bengt Jansson

Trevor Hedge

Gareth Rogers

Alan Hunt

Bernie Leigh

Ronnie Allan

Vaclav Verner

Mike Patrick

Wilfried Drygala

Neil Evitts

Mike Hunter

John Davidson

Raye Mauger

The Statistics

Plates

About the Author

By the Same Author

Copyright

Introduction

When contemplating writing this book, The Man Behind Myth, I first had to contend with … Ivan Mauger. He wasn’t too keen on the title for a start, because ‘everything I have ever done is out there for everyone to see’. And he had positive ideas about what illustration should appear on the cover.

Because of his reputation – sometimes fearsome – I thought it would be an interesting exercise to try to find a definition of the word Mauger. In Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary there is this:

Mau´ger: In spite of; in opposition to.

… and in the Complete Oxford English Dictionary:

maugre, mauger: ill will; from Old French maugre, literally: bad pleasure

There have also been literary quotations about the name. For instance:

Of which maid anon, maugree hir heed

By very force, he raft hire maydenhed

That is from Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale. (It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? Because it is well known how saucy Chaucer can be). Even Shakespeare was moved to write, ‘This mauger all the world will I keep safe.’

All of which, thinking about it, pretty well covers the contrasting and contradictory personality with which speedway and the rest of the sporting world has had to deal.

That being so, one of the difficult aspects of this project was gathering material and persuading people to tell me things. There were many, many people within the speedway world, and also many without it, who were ready and eager to praise the man who, at his best, like Caesar, emperor-like, bestrode the sport.

There were also many others who came to bury him, not to praise him. As with Shakespeare’s Caesar, the knives came out and some spat venom at the very mention of his name. So … no change there then.

But the really difficult part was selecting what to include and what, regrettably, had to be left on the cutting room floor through a restriction on the number of words. So, my apologies to those who patiently put up with my persistence and answered my requests, only to find that their contribution is not here.

Ivan Mauger is a sporting icon about whom there seems to be nothing equivocal. You love him, respect him, admire him maybe … or you hate him, despise him perhaps. It’s all there in black and white, like his trademark chequered helmet and saddle and the whimsical chequered bow tie he wears on special occasions, betraying that there is, lurking beneath the sometimes dour exterior, an impish and sly sense of humour.

Question: ‘Where did you get that chequered bow tie, Ivan?’

Answer: ‘I had it specially made.’

That is the essential Ivan Mauger. It is perhaps only a minor detail, minuscule even, but he knows what he wants and, by giving his attention to such minuscule details, he not only goes out to get what he wants, he does get what he wants. Mostly by fair means.

The specially made bow tie.

By that I do not mean to imply Ivan Mauger did not adhere meticulously to the highest sporting traditions and the regulations as laid down in the speedway rule book. I can only relate an incident when one well-known and established international speedway star took an interest in the progress being made by my son Christopher, who was at the time in the Hackney junior team.

‘You’ve got to cheat at the gate,’ he told Christopher, who replied, ‘I don’t want to do that.’

‘Why not?’ said the well-known and established international speedway star, ‘everyone else does.’

In this attempt to reveal the man behind the myth there are a myriad examples, such as the bow tie incident, of the dedication, determination and attention to detail that has made Ivan Mauger unique within his chosen sport. There are two that for me really illuminate his true character. The first is a story told by my journalistic friend Richard Bott.

Ivan, said Richard, was a showman with a collection of multi-coloured leathers. But for the Wembley World Final in 1972, the master tactician wore an old pair of jet black leathers bought second-hand from former British Champion Eric Boocock some six years before. Why?

‘When I go to a World Final,’ Ivan explained, ‘I go to score 15 points – not to look spectacular or entertain. Normally, with my brightly coloured leathers, my rivals only have to glance to know where I am. Black leathers are less conspicuous.’

In those black leathers, he said, he ‘looked like a Russian’. Now there were six Russians in the 1972 Final, but none rated as a possible World Champion, so there was a good chance his rivals would not consider another rider in black leathers a threat, and it would then be easy for the ‘other’ man in black to make the most of such a cunning strategy. The disguise appears to have worked – it was Ivan’s fourth title win in five years.

You know the old thing from cowboy films: black hat = bad guys; white hat = good guys? You could say that was a ‘black’ story. There are lots of ‘white’ stories here too, and here is one. It concerns an Ivan Mauger speedway training school at Berwick in about 1982. It was very early in the year, just before the start of the new season. On the second morning of the school we arrived at the track to find it was more than ankle deep in snow. Everyone thought, ‘That’s it. No racing today.’

But it didn’t put Ivan off. He was determined to honour his commitment to his trainees and, with a makeshift snow shovel, set about leading a team of volunteers to clear enough snow to get bikes on the track. In less than two hours the track was fit to ride on and training went ahead.

I have to confess that, right from the start of this project, Ivan was extremely co-operative. He supplied a comprehensive list of 92 contacts, not all of whom responded to my requests for contributions which, naturally, was only to be expected.

It was not always a pleasant or straightforward task. In one instance I was even threatened, by a person who knows Ivan well, with action (what sort was not specified) if I so much as mentioned his name in the book. By no stretch of the imagination could he be described as an Ivan Mauger fan – and he knows who he is. There have been many others, of course, from high-powered officials in the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) to racing rivals, business associates, speedway promoters, team managers, referees, team-mates, mechanics and journalists, right down to the ordinary terrace fans, one of whom wrote to me from one of Her Majesty’s Prisons, who have been only too willing to tell their tales, stories, anecdotes and reveal their memories – not in every case complimentary.

Speedway has held me enraptured since my schooldays in 1946. But I first became aware of the name Ivan Mauger during his ‘second coming’ in the early 1960s which coincided with a period when I was not able to see speedway often because I was on the staff of a national morning paper. It meant working mostly at night when speedway meetings took place and I couldn’t get there.

The sport had gone through one of its periodic attempted suicides but, phoenix-like, had then risen from the ashes of the blazing dispute between the Establishment, the Speedway Control Board (SCB), with its old ‘legitimate’ National League, and the ‘pirate’ Provincial League headed by that speedway buccaneer Mike Parker. The result was the new British League and the name I kept reading about, who seemed to be generating all the headlines and hogging the limelight, was Ivan Mauger.

Throughout my 65-year association with the sport of speedway racing I have always been careful never to become close to any rider. Maybe you have heard the old hackneyed rhyme about newspaper hacks: ‘You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God, the British journalist. But seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to.’ Well, I did not wish to be accused of that. I did not want to have my ability to do my job – to report objectively on speedway, and the people in it – compromised.

I was severely tempted when I met Ivan at Coventry in August 2011. I had arranged to give him a special audio tape I’d made of historic speedway moments. I had discovered that his interest in the history of the sport is just as keen as mine. At the same time I wanted to buy a copy of his new autobiography The Will To Win. At first neither Ivan nor his wife Raye wanted to take the £20 note I offered. But I insisted and said, ‘If I don’t buy a copy I’ll be compromised.’

Then I reminded him of the night in 1979 when we were all sitting in the stand at Hackney watching a meeting. My first book on speedway, The Story of the World Championship, had just been published and Ivan said to me, ‘I’ve just bought a copy of your book.’

Flattered, I said, ‘Oh, if I’d known you wanted one I’d have brought one and given it to you.’

‘No.’ he said. ‘You can’t write books and not have people pay you for them.’

I’d turned the tables on Ivan Mauger. So I asked him if he remembered that incident at Hackney. He hesitated momentarily, then said he did. And, as I knew he would, he then accepted my proffered £20 note, immediately handing me the exact one pound and a penny change.

Astute … and organised, that’s Ivan Mauger. But here, I should confess that on one occasion I was a guest of Ivan and Mrs Mauger – Raye – at their waterside home at Runaway Bay on Australia’s Gold Coast. They are extremely kind, generous and entertaining hosts. I have stood beneath the crystal chandeliers, admired the glass cases full of FIM gold medals, touched the Gold Bike and sailed with Cap’n Ivan on his impressive boat – a Monaco-style yacht more like. We spent an evening discussing the sport and he invited me to go through his collection of speedway photographs.

So I think I know ‘Ivan the Terrible’ well enough having experienced him in his Jekyll and Hyde environments – at home, and at speedway tracks in various parts of the world over many years.

The Man in Black … Ivan and Raye, Wembley 1972.

I have seen Ivan Mauger lose his temper only once. It was at one of his training schools on a miserable winter’s day in Scunthorpe. Ivan had told the trainees that no one should go out onto the track until he said so, and one of them, full of youthful enthusiasm, disobeyed him to go roaring off on his own. When the lad returned to the pits he was met with a thunderous reprimand from Ivan, which I’m sure he remembers to this day. It was the only time I have ever heard Ivan raise his voice in anger.

You cannot mention Ivan Mauger without also acknowledging the woman behind the myth, Sarah Raye Mauger, who is English – born in Carlisle. ‘A very clever woman’, according to their great friend and rival, the triple World Champion Ole Olsen. She has always been steadfast in her belief in, and support for, Ivan during even the darkest of their days – and there have been some very dark days.

Raye has been kind enough to contribute to this book, ‘Change grammar, errors and condense it if you so wish. Please let me see how much you will use, etc. before I rubber-stamp it. I wish you all the best in your endeavour with your book, and that it may be a great success.’ I did what she asked and, apart from the odd comma or two, I changed nothing because it was just not necessary.

Raye wrote, ‘Everybody has their own idea about the identity of the real Ivan Mauger.’

I am not sure whether Ivan and Raye will unequivocally enjoy reading every one of those ideas reported within these pages. Most they will. And, well, here they are … 

John Chaplin, 2012

Foreword

by Martin Rogers

‘Tough, ice-cool, obsessive … Yes, but now he’s let down his guard – the twinkle in his eye is the giveaway.’

Former speedway promoter, international journalist and the co-author of Ivan Mauger’s autobiography, The Will To Win.

Not a lot of people know this, but Ivan Mauger OBE MBE and speedway’s all-time most decorated rider is a funny guy. He has a keen sense of humour, doesn’t take himself half as seriously as his long-time image suggests, loves 1960s and ’70s music, is the identikit type of sports nut for whom cable television might have been invented, and knows his way around a good wine list and a cordon bleu menu.

Rogers: in on the joke.

If a quarter of a century of professional excellence still defines the essence of the man, the past 25 years have coincided with a personality makeover of surprising proportions. During his years of world domination Ivan certainly wasn’t the most approachable character. He could, and routinely did, win almost everything – except popularity contests.

There is something about being outstandingly good at your chosen speciality which can be terribly daunting to mere mortals; and that, of course, was part of his game plan. He never has suffered fools gladly, for a long time was intensely suspicious of the motives of people who sought to get close to him, and he certainly didn’t allow many of his contemporaries a great deal of insight into his inner workings. ‘I didn’t care if people liked me,’ he said. ‘If you want to win races and titles, it’s no bad thing if opponents feel a bit intimidated.’

For all that, like him or not, few speedway folk have given Ivan anything less than the respect his stunning consistency warranted. And, since he packed away his competitive on-track urges for the last time, many have come to view him in a much more sympathetic light, to bathe in the warmth of his company. In numerous unsung instances, folk have had reason to be grateful for the sensitivity with which he and his wife Raye have given their time, support and consideration.

Former rivals fallen upon hard times, in poor health, dire financial straits, or other misfortune have benefited from acts of generosity and understanding, none of which sought or indeed received what would have been entirely justifiable publicity. All the stuff that made the headlines has been faithfully recorded, but what separated Ivan from most of the riders up to and beyond his retirement was an approach which gave new meaning to the term ‘professionalism’.

The Giveaway …

An almost ascetic lifestyle, a tough training regime, attention to dietary details, an ice-cool temperament, a quest for mechanical perfection bordering upon the obsessive – it’s pretty standard stuff for today’s Grand Prix giants but was confrontational and far from the usual back in the 1960s and ’70s.

When he trained with Manchester City Football Club, for example, Ivan wanted to do what the footballers did; when he contested the made-for-television Superstars show he amazed onlookers with the intensity of his physical effort. Borrowing something from the British public school ethos, he prefaced major championship meetings by taking a freezing shower minutes before the tapes went up – to concentrate the mind and sharpen the senses, he said.

To witness him these days in the company of a Barry Briggs, Ove Fundin or Ole Olsen, yarning and finding hidden humour in those super-competitive days of old, is to see a man quietly amused by the memory of how intensely serious it all was way back when. It’s been a different deal since he settled on Queensland’s sun-drenched Gold Coast in 1987, with the water lapping at the back door, the ocean a 5-minute boat or jetski ride away, family members dotted around adjacent suburbs.

In retirement, while rarely inactive, and still in love with speedway and his contacts in the sport, Ivan at last has let down his guard and allowed the lighter side of his personality to shine through. After decades of eating on the run (albeit healthily) he now values the opportunity to sit down and enjoy the simple pleasures of a good meal and a glass or two, an indulgence sporting jetsetters rarely manage to savour. If he can get to watch his beloved All Blacks win, it’s a perfect day, not that Ivan’s interests begin and end with the game closest to the heart of most New Zealanders – he takes a keen interest in cricket and rugby league, as any bona fide resident of Australia must, and is most entertaining when he volunteers his own highly personal analysis of what’s what.

Impressively though, this isn’t an old soldier gone to seed. He still cuts a neat, trim figure and – especially since at last finding the time to have an operation on an ankle he smashed in a long track crash a mere 28 years ago – scurries around with as much sense of purpose and enthusiasm as a man half his age.

Just because he’s Ivan Mauger there remain those in awe of his reputation who won’t ever allow themselves to succumb to a charm offensive. For them he’s still the hard-nosed, steely-eyed superstar who lives in his own personal bubble. To know him, which has been a pleasure and a privilege for many years and especially so since he laid out the welcome mat for my wife Lin and I as new arrivals in Australia in 1988, is to be in on the joke. The twinkle in the eye gives it away.

Richard Bott

‘If he lost a race