Barry Sheene

Barry Steven Frank Sheene (11 September 1950 – 10 March 2003) was a British professional motorcycle racer and television sports presenter.

Sheene was born off the Gray's Inn Road, Bloomsbury, London, the second child of parents Frank, who had been resident engineer at the Royal College of Surgeons, and was himself a former competitive rider who retired in 1956 and an experienced motorcycle mechanic.

and Iris.

He grew up in Queen Square, Holborn, London, where he learned to ride a motorcycle at the age of 5 aboard a homemade minibike built by his father.

Before entering road racing Sheene found work as a messenger and delivery driver.

Sheene's father had developed a close, personal relationship with Don Paco Bultó, the owner of Bultaco motorcycles, after meeting him in 1959 while attending the Montjuïc 24 Hour endurance race in Barcelona.

Frank Sheene was one of the first proponents of the two-stroke engine that began to dominate the smaller capacity classes in the mid-1960s.

Bultó began to supply the Sheene family with his latest motorcycles.

As a young boy, Sheene first interest was in off-road motorcycle trials however, he soon found that he enjoyed speeding between trials sections rather than the trial itself, and decided that he would be better at road circuits.

Sheene had no plans to become a motorcycle racer, instead he focused on learning the art of tuning two-stroke engines, which were difficult to master unless a person was prepared to dedicate considerable time in a workshop learning the intricacies of the engines.

After a racing career stretching from 1968 to 1984 he retired from competition and relocated to Australia, working as a motorsport commentator and property developer.

However his father noticed that he was a naturally talented rider and he was entered into his first race in 1968 at the age of 17 riding a Bultaco motorcycle.

In his first race at the Brands Hatch Circuit, he suffered a crash when the engine on his 125cc Bultaco seized.

Undaunted by the experience, he mounted his 250cc Bultaco a few minutes later and finished in third place in the 250 class.

Returning to Brands Hatch the following weekend, he would score his first victory.

Sheene then stopped racing to become the race mechanic for British privateer Lewis Young, who had entered his Bultacos in several European Grands Prix races.

His experiences from attending the European races seemed to ignite Sheene's interest in becoming a motorcycle racer.

Sheene was not a keen school student and had an aversion to authority figures, so he began to see motorcycle racing as a possible career path.

He sometimes would skip school and attend practice sessions at nearby Brands Hatch circuit.

In 1969, Sheene began wearing a crash helmet with an image of Donald Duck on the front of his helmet to stand out from the crowd.

The helmet design would remain his trademark throughout his racing career, as well as his racing number 7.

He drilled a hole in the chin piece of his crash helmet so he could smoke a cigarette while waiting on the starting grid for a race to begin.

Sheene made a big impression as an eighteen-year-old in 1969 when he rode a Bultaco to place second behind Chas Mortimer in the 1969 125cc British Championship, and then dominated the 1970 125cc British Championship.

Articulate and charismatic, Sheene was the first motorcycle racer to harness the power of mass media to transcend the sport to become the best-known face of British motorcycling during the 1970s, parlaying his fame to gain commercial endorsements from outside the sport including television advertisements for Brut cologne.

Fluent in several languages, he had a cheeky, cockney persona that matched his talent as a racer and endeared him to thousands of race fans.

Sheene was also a strong proponent of race track safety, and was one of the first competitors to object to racing at the notoriously dangerous Isle of Man TT street circuit.

He recognized his value to race promoters as a gate attraction and used his influence to force race promoters to increase rider safety.

He also placed third in the 1970 250cc Championship aboard a Bultaco.

His father Frank served as his mechanic.

A position he would hold throughout Sheene's racing career.

In 1970, Sheene and his father borrowed £2,000 (£36,720 in 2023), to purchase a twin-cylinder 125cc Suzuki RT67, a former factory racing team motorcycle campaigned by Stuart Graham in the 1968 Grands Prix and in selected 1969 events.

Although it was an expensive purchase, the ex-factory race bike helped to launch Sheene's international racing career.

He competed in Grand Prix motorcycle racing between 1971 and 1984, most prominently as a member of the Suzuki factory racing team where he won two consecutive 500cc World Championships in 1976 and 1977.

Sheene first met two-time American champion, Gary Nixon, in 1971 when Nixon was a member of the American team competing in that year's Transatlantic Trophy match races.

The Transatlantic Trophy match races pitted the best British riders against the top American road racers on 750cc motorcycles in a six-race series during Easter weekend in England.

The two racers bonded and developed a lifelong friendship.

Sheene's 1977 title remained as Britain's last solo motorcycle world championship until Danny Kent won the 2015 Moto3 championship.

However, Sheene is still the last British champion in the premier class.

A cigarette smoker since the age of nine, he favoured Gitanes cigarettes with a heavy tar content, which would later contribute to his death from cancer in 2003.

In 2011, the F.I.M. inducted Sheene into the MotoGP Hall of Fame.