Memories: Foggy at Fifty

Today – 1st July 2015 – is Carl Fogarty’s 50th birthday. We’ve been reminiscing a little in the office today…

Here’s a little story of ‘Men Behaving Excellently’ – and probably the greatest Foggy pic ever!

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When New Year dawned in 1998, with it came news a bike racer from Blackburn, Lancashire had been awarded an MBE.

But the origins of the gong – and Britain’s infatuation with blood red superbikes – stretched back five years earlier, to 1993 and Carl Fogarty’s first year as a factory rider for Ducati.

He’d already taken a new lap record on a Yamaha at the TT the year before – one that would stand for seven years – but that was before his factory ride, when a racer might be expected to routinely risk his neck on the roads to put food in his belly.

Nor was it the 11 victories he was about to take in WSB ’93 (still not enough to take the title against the more consistent Scott Russell) that marked the measure of the man.

It was his determination to race the NW200, a race his new employers neither knew nor cared about, in only his second outing on his new works wheels. Foggy had a grudge against the superfast NW circuit, having led races there seven times but never won. Ducati indulged him, on the promise he would never suggest it again.

He rewarded them with two flag-to-flag wins (the firm’s first in the event’s 64 years), and with his new lap record in the headline race, completed his personal set of street-circuit world records – Macau, TT and NW200.

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Tony Hoare – MCN Consumer Editor:
This has been on my MCN desk since my mate, Andy Bourne, gave it to me to wish me luck in my new job. That was in 2001, so I guess it must have worked. 

(ED: It doesn’t look like Tony has moved it since then either!)

 

Happy 50th Birthday, Carl George Fogarty, MBE.