The race that Barry couldn't win

BARRY Sheene always did things his way - or not at all. So when doctors told him he had incurable cancer and he needed an operation that would have left him bedridden, he didn't flinch. He told them to go to hell.

"They took me into a side room, sat me down and said I had cancer of the throat and stomach. Then they said I needed an operation that would have left me unable to walk or even hold my head up. When I said no, they replied: 'But some of our patients are still alive three years after the operation' - as if that was good!"

Barry Sheene was more than just a motorcycle racer. His good looks, cheeky Cockney charm and fighting spirit made him motorcycling's first millionaire. For a time in the late 1970s he was one of the most famous sportsmen in the world.

He appeared on television advertising "the great smell of Brut" aftershave with Our 'Enery Cooper and his car racing contemporary James Hunt. Later he branched out into television presenting and became a regular on Just Amazing, an ITV Saturday tea-time show.

He had an international model girlfriend who became his wife, and usually arrived for business meetings in his own helicopter because flying allowed him to pack more into the day. He won the 500cc world motorcycling championship twice and almost certainly would have added a third title had bad luck not intervened.

Remarkably, he remains the last Brit to have won a Grand Prix in the sport's blue riband class. But, ironically, Barry Sheene won't be remembered so much for his triumphs on the track as much as the two crashes that defined his career. One, at Daytona in 1975, launched his quest for Grand Prix glory; the other at Silverstone in 1982 that effectively ended it.

The Daytona smash was caught on camera by a Thames Television crew who had flown to America to film a documentary on the young London-born racer. As Sheene accelerated off the famous banking, the engine of his Suzuki burst its back tyre, spitting him over the top at 170mph. He broke his forearm, collarbone, a couple of vertebrae, some ribs and his legs. When he came round in hospital the first thing he did was ask for a fag.

The resultant TV documentary showing how Sheene battled back to fitness catapulted him to stardom. Suzuki responded by extending his contract to ride its RG 500 bike in Grand Prix at a time when the Japanese machine was just starting to come good. Sheene repaid Suzuki's faith with the world championship in 1976 (the same year as James Hunt became the Formula One world champ) and in 1977.

Despite his success, Sheene's relationship with his employers was often prickly. If Barry thought his bike wasn't performing he'd be the first to tell the world's press that it was "crap". Once he deliberately rammed his bike into a wall because he was fed up with it. Another time he blew up a toilet block with several cans of petrol when the authorities refused to build better facilities for riders' wives and girlfriends. And, when bosses said he couldn't ride the works 500cc Yamaha until it had been fully developed by his great rival Kenny Roberts, he stormed outside and told waiting reporters: "As far as I'm concerned Kenny Roberts couldn't even develop a cold on his own."

The crash at Silverstone in 1982 almost ended his life as well as his career. At the time Barry was lying second in the world championship and looked good for another crown. He'd soldiered on with sub-standard machinery for months on the back of a promise that, one day, he would get the pukka "works" Yamaha that would give his championship challenge real impetus.

He got the bike at Silverstone. Lacking development time and struggling to catch Roberts, he had to make every minute of practice time count before the British Grand Prix. Cresting a hill at 160mph he ploughed headlong into the wreck of a slower machine lying in the track. The resultant impact was devastating.

Steve Parrish, fellow racer and friend, saw the smoke rising from the back of the circuit and immediately feared the worst. "I thought he was dead," said Parrish. "When the rescuers got there he was just lying in the track. He looked like a rag doll that had been thrown up in the air."

Sheene's legs had been pulverised by the smash. They were literally held together by his racing leathers. When doctors cut the leathers off they found his lower legs attached by the tendons and hardly anything else. His little finger had been trapped by the brake lever and exploded out of his glove with the force of a bullet. It was never recovered. En route to hospital Sheene woke up. He begged doctors not to amputate his legs and told his family not to give permission until the plastic surgeon who rebuilt him in 1975 had been informed.

Surgeons spent eight hours realigning his bones. Two inch pillars of stainless steel, two five-inch plates and 26 screws later, he had two legs once more. Six weeks later he returned to Silverstone riding a Yamaha RD 350 LC road bike again.

Bionic Barry - as he was now known - was more popular than ever with his public but the Japanese factories would scupper his hopes of winning that third title. Forced to carry on with substandard machinery, he called it quits in 1985. The year before he had ridden an old Suzuki to a series of top six finishes demonstrating that he still had the will to win.

After a short dalliance with touring cars and truck racing he emigrated to the Australian Gold Coast. Did he want to go? Probably not. Barry always said he was British and proud of the fact but the cold weather played havoc with his bolted-together joints.

Despite his good looks and lithe frame Sheene was a heavy smoker who did little exercise during his racing career. The first time we met - at Scarborough's Oliver's Mount circuit where he won his last race - he stepped off his bike and opened with: "I'm dying for a smoke. Has anyone got a fag?" His was a smokers' cancer and the doctors' diagnosis last summer was grim. They begged him to accept professional treatment. Without it there was no hope.

So Sheene began the most difficult race of his life with his doctors telling him that without their help it was one he couldn't win. Still he approached it in typical style: "I don't want to have chemotherapy. Anybody I've ever known who's had it has been basically completely destroyed. I can't let someone put a drip in my arm and inject me with poison."

But Sheene wasn't about to curl up and die. He investigated every alternative therapy. First it was a diet of beetroot, Chinese cabbage, carrot and radish juice. Then, when that didn't work, he underwent microwave therapy designed to zap the cancer. Sadly, last month he was told that hadn't done the trick either.

Never one for ducking the issue, Barry's last words to his fans were typically forthright. This month's Bike magazine - the biggest publication of its type in the UK - carries an apology from Sheene that his regular monthly column is missing. He'd decided to take a break, he says, because: "My mind has been on other things just lately. I honestly haven't been thinking about motorbikes and it's better not to do a column than to do some boring, half-arsed load of shit."

Barry Sheene may have been many things but boring he certainly wasn't.