Foggy

by Carl Fogarty

  It was Tuesday, 19 August, to be exact – and that number’s jinx was to strike again on a fateful day for my career …

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nineteen

  The accident happened after just a couple of practice laps. We had put some old slick tyres on, which I had found in the garage and which probably hadn’t been used for about three years, so their grip must have been pretty poor. I was coming out of a fast right-handed double apex corner, a long sweeping bend, and probably travelling at around 100mph. I lost the rear end and knew straight away that I was in big trouble. The track sloped away as you exited the corner and that made the drop from the high side even greater. I remember nothing about landing; I just closed my eyes and hoped for the best. When I opened them again, my right leg was definitely not the right shape.

  My first instinct was survival. I dragged myself off the track and into the gravel, in case anyone else rode round the corner and smashed into me. When I reached the gravel, staring at this thing that used to be my leg, I was more confused than worried. I could see the new angle of the bone through my leathers. Modern leathers are reinforced to improve protection but the things that I was wearing were so flimsy they were almost see-through, although I did not realise that the bone had broken through the skin.

  It slowly started to sink in that my leg was broken but I could not work out exactly where, because the pain had not kicked in and I was still trying to get acquainted with the new outline of my leg. Another rider stopped, and then quickly rode off to fetch help. When the ambulance arrived, I was starting to feel dizzy and sick through the pain, but they clamped some gas and air over my nose and mouth and I drifted in and out of consciousness at the track’s medical centre.

  At Crewe Hospital, I was still just about aware of what was happening and was told that I had a compound fracture of the femur, the biggest bone in the body. By this time my dad had heard the news and had driven straight down from Blackburn. My girlfriend, Christine, had also arrived. Everyone looked so anxious. And, when I overheard one doctor say that he didn’t think I would walk on the leg again that year, my spirits sank even lower. One minute I had the world at my feet, the next I was in this mess. I was put under general anaesthetic before the job of repairing the break got underway that night. A pin was inserted through my shinbone so that the femur could be kept stable in constant traction. When I came round, I was flat on my back, with my leg straight up in the air and tied to weights on either side to keep it still. I could see the pin through my shin and thought, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’

  For a few days, the leg was the least of my problems. My body had reacted to the hammering it had received and, in protest, had decided to stop me having a shit. This is not an unusual thing for riders to suffer after the shock of a bad fall. My good mate Jamie Whitham had similar problems after his fireball crash at Brno in the Czech Republic in 1999. Unluckily for him, his bladder also shut down and he had to have a catheter tube inserted. Now that’s a pain that I just cannot bear to imagine. But my own little, growing problem was refusing to go away, no matter how hard I squeezed or how many prunes I ate on top of all the other fruit.

  After day five, it felt like I was five months pregnant and, when the doctors finally offered an artificial solution, I jumped at the chance – despite the obvious drawbacks. While having tablets shoved up my arse was bad enough, I wasn’t prepared for what came next. There was a loud rumble before my bowels became an instant food blender. Before I could do anything, the bedpan was full to overflowing and I was almost drowning in the stuff. When two attractive nurses started to wipe my arse, I just wanted to die. It was so embarrassing.

  After a week or so, I had recovered enough to be moved to Ward 5 of Blackburn Royal Infirmary where I spent another seven weeks – a shy young man in a strange place, sharing his pain with a bunch of old blokes who were constantly wheezing and coughing. I had a steady stream of visitors, and was kept stocked up with cans of Moosehead lager to help me get off to sleep. Nobody told me that I wasn’t supposed to drink while I was pumped full of antibiotics and I think it must have played a major part in the later problems with the leg.

  When the time came to leave hospital, it felt kind of strange. The ward had become my new home and the move back to my real home signalled the start of a long hard drag back to fitness, during a winter spent largely watching racing videos. I didn’t seem to get a lot of medical support or guidance, just the occasional session with a physio to try and regain full movement of the knee joint. I was too lazy and too stupid to realise that I needed to be out exercising or riding a bicycle. I was just desperate to start riding again, and to pick up where I had left off before the accident – as the rider everyone else had to beat.

  The aim for the 1987 season was to compete in the European championship, so we bought two new 250cc Hondas, helped again by Dave Orton. Nobody knew much about the bikes and, as it turned out, we should have played safe and stuck with the Yamaha. The first race was in Jerez and I fully expected to get back on a bike and blow everyone away again, without having done any preparation or testing.

  We travelled to Spain early, via the ferry to Santander, to take part in an unofficial practice day and, after a few laps, I didn’t feel too bad. Then two guys, who I had been blitzing the previous year, Nigel Bosworth and Rob Orme, flew past me with their bikes on their sides. I knew straight away that I no longer had the confidence to ride a bike at that angle. I was okay with left-hand corners but did not have enough mobility in my right leg to take right-hand corners properly. I tried taping foam onto the seat, to make it more comfortable, but failed to qualify by four seconds. I was devastated and it crossed my mind that I was washed up at the age of 21. Something had to be done.

  I visited orthopaedic specialist Nigel Cobb, the guy who rebuilt Barry Sheene’s leg, in Northampton. He told me that, instead of knitting cleanly back together, the break had slipped a bit and was preventing full mobility. The only solution was to break the leg again, so that it had a chance of healing properly. There was no way I was going to go through all that again, so I ignored his advice and tried riding a cycle with a block attached to the pedal to try and force my leg to bend further.

  The next round of the European championship was at Donington, and Dave Orton turned up to see how his investment was faring.

  ‘How are we doing champ?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorry, Dave, I failed to qualify,’ I admitted.

  He looked stunned. It was now clear that the European championship was a waste of time and we decided to return to smaller British races, in a bid to rebuild my confidence and regain fitness. The next race was at Scarborough on an anti-clockwise road circuit with slower corners, which was easier on my leg and I won both the 250cc and 350cc races there.

  But that weekend was more significant for another reason. I was in a packed pub called The Cask during the races, when a girl who looked like a cross between Pamela Anderson and Madonna made eye contact from the other side of the room. That was as far as it got, though. She was gorgeous, but I didn’t think much more of it. The day I got back home, the phone went. It was a female voice.

  ‘Do you remember a girl in Scarborough wearing a tight pink top?’ the voice asked.

  ‘Yeah! I think so,’ I replied, not wanting to commit myself at that stage.

  ‘Well, that girl was me,’ she said. ‘My name is Alison.’

  Bloody hell! I nearly fainted. I didn’t have a clue what to say. It was very easy to talk to her, though, and over the next few weeks we spoke loads of times on the phone. I had already started rowing with Christine and we were probably starting to drift apart. And I was by now a lot more confident with girls, and much more aware when they were showing an interest in me. Alison was determined to continue her interest!

  My first race in Ireland was the popular North West 200, against the likes of Irish hero Joey Dunlop. In England, I had almost been forgotten after missing the end of the previous season. I was a nobody again. In I
reland, it was incredible how many people were showing an interest. I was signing loads of autographs and even a couple of small television companies wanted interviews.

  The races turned out to be huge confidence builders, not because I started winning again, but because I crashed in both 250 races. The first fall was at a slow corner, but the second was much more dramatic. I flew over the front of the bike like Superman and landed on my right leg. I stood up gingerly and put some light pressure on my foot, to check nothing was broken. Dad was furious because the bike was mangled. ‘You can’t keep crashing on these circuits and getting away with it, boy,’ he warned. But I was happy just to be walking, despite the huge swelling on my knee, and I felt a lot happier approaching the TT.

  That week in the Isle of Man also proved to be important, because I spent two full weeks on a bike and my leg was feeling a lot more comfortable. I rode well to finish fourth in the 250cc and found that I could pass most people at the corners but, because our bikes were so bad, they would come back at me on the straights. Back on the short circuits of the mainland, the results started to pick up and I was feeling something like my old self. Yet there were still two or three corners on each track where my foot would scrape the surface, because I couldn’t pull my leg far enough back out of the way.

  Returning to Scarborough, I had my first ever ride on a superbike, an awful 750cc Yamaha. Someone had tuned the engine a little bit, but otherwise it was just a standard bike – the chassis and shock hadn’t even been changed. The result was not spectacular, but the difference was huge. For the first time in ages, I felt comfortable riding a bike. And when I went back to 250cc races in a series called the Super 2, for bikes up to 350cc, this was lodged in the back of my mind, despite the fact my mind was on other things.

  It was no surprise when Alison turned up, because it had become clear from our phone conversations that something was bound to happen sooner or later. My only problem was that Christine was at the meeting and she had already spotted Alison and me chatting a few times. During a break in qualifying, I noticed Alison in the crowd so I told Christine that I was going to watch another race and went up to Alison instead.

  Suddenly from the corner of my eye, I was aware that Christine was heading for us with a face like thunder. ‘Shit!’ I whispered. ‘Christine’s coming. Pretend I’m not talking to you,’ as I edged further along the barrier looking as guilty as sin. Christine parked herself slap-bang in the middle of the two of us and, to avoid a scene, I trudged back down to the paddock. I was now on dodgy ground, though. It was clear to Christine that Alison was a rival.

  Alison arranged to meet me at the British Grand Prix at Donington, while Christine was in London trying to trace her real dad. During that time I fell head over heels and could not get enough of her. We even shagged in the toilet of our caravan, and then spent the night before practice in a motel. It was no wonder I didn’t even qualify. I was shagged out. It was blatant, and pissing everyone off big style. My mum and dad were both annoyed, although they were not the types to confront me about it, and my sister could also see what was happening. I have never confronted her, but I know that it was my sister who grassed me up to Christine during the following week.

  On the Friday night, I turned up at Christine’s house as though nothing had happened. Christine was dressed up and ready to go out, so there were no immediate signs that anything was wrong. She let me inside and closed the door. By this stage I was beginning to sense that something was the matter. It might have been the steam coming out of her ears.

  ‘You were seeing someone else at Donington,’ she blurted.

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about? No I wasn’t.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me Carl,’ she shouted. ‘Someone has told me all about it. I cannot believe you’d do that to me. You disgust me. Get out of my house now, I’m going out with my mates.’

  I was halfway through saying ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, what have I done wrong?’ when an iron flew past my chin and clattered into the radiator behind.

  ‘Yeah, all right, but it meant nothing,’ I sheepishly admitted.

  ‘Oh! It meant nothing, did it? I’ve probably got AIDS from that slapper,’ she screeched while I was being pushed out of the door.

  ‘No, you won’t get AIDS …’ My words were met by a slammed door.

  Dumped. I was devastated.

  Two weeks later, I saw Christine out with another bloke at a nightclub called Lydia’s. It did my head in and I made a right fool of myself.

  ‘Please come back, please,’ I pleaded, trying pathetically to kiss her.

  ‘It’s all over Carl. I don’t want to see you any more. You blew it. I want to be friends because I’ve known you for ages, but that’s as far as it goes now,’ she insisted.

  I moped around for a couple of weeks, by which time it was all pretty much forgotten and I was on the look-out for something new. It was around that time when one-night stands seemed easier than proper girlfriends. It tended to happen in places like Ireland or at the TT, when you would cop off without really knowing their names. If I was away with my cousins, especially Chris, who is a fairly good-looking bloke, one of us would always score – usually him! And, if I hadn’t struck lucky, it was just as good watching him messing around in the back of the van.

  Despite having failed to qualify for the British Grand Prix, I won the first of a five-round British championship, at Mallory Park. Then there were two more victories at Scarborough before the next round of the British championship at Silverstone, on 19 September.

  Yes, that’s right, the 19th. You can guess the rest. All my major crashes up to that point had featured that number and, for years after Silverstone, the tension was unbearable whenever I had to race on that date. It’s for that reason that I have never ridden a number 19 bike, as I am very superstitious. For obvious reasons I would never carry number 13 on the bike. But there is also another number, 22, which I would not ride under any circumstances. Two of Dave Orton’s previous riders, John Williams at Dundrod and John Newbold at the North West 200, were killed riding bikes which carried the number 22. Dave specifically asked me never to ride another, as he felt the number was jinxed.

  It was pouring down at Silverstone and I was lying third, but starting to catch the second-placed guy. Coming up to the first turn I slid off in a fairly routine wet weather fall. It appeared so harmless that I tried to stand up, until I noticed that the leg was pointing in the wrong direction again. My tibia had snapped like a twig at the point where the pin was inserted following my first accident. The area around that hole had become infected, weakening the bone. I tried to remember the lessons from the previous year, to try and control the pain by relaxing and taking deep breaths. It didn’t work.

  At Northampton Hospital, the doctors first tried to knock a steel pin down the bone from top to bottom, with the aim of getting me back on my feet and riding again within a few weeks, which seemed crazy. Despite drips pumping me with antibiotics in both arms, my body rejected the pin and they had to take it out when I fell ill. When I came round from that operation, all their metalwork was on the outside of my leg as the surgeons had built a huge frame to hold the shin stable. They had also scraped away the infected bone, and that seemed to do the trick.

  Alison had heard that I had been injured and travelled from Nottingham to visit me – with her brother! I was stuck away on my own in a small side room next to the main ward, with my leg in traction following the operation, and to say I was surprised to see her was an understatement. To say I was pleasantly surprised by what happened next was an even bigger understatement.

  The conversation was a bit boring because her brother was in the room, so Alison asked him if we could have a few minutes alone. I presumed she had something important to tell me. But it’s rude to talk with your mouth full! For no sooner had the door closed, than her head was under the sheets and she was giving me a good noshing. Nurses were walking past the window and had a perfect view into the room.
I caught the eye of one young student, who knew exactly what was going on, and looked very embarrassed. That was not something that bothered me at that precise moment. To be honest, I was in agony because my infected leg had just snapped in half. But, if this was my reward for being brave, I wanted someone to break my other leg. It lasted for about 10 minutes and all the time her brother was waiting patiently in the corridor. She didn’t hang around for long and I only ever saw her one more time, when she set more new standards.

  The scaffolding on the leg stayed on for more than three months and, when people saw me walking towards them, they turned green and ran in the opposite direction. It weighed a ton and, after the soreness subsided, I became an expert at accidentally banging into people on purpose!

  Ironically, it was removed a few days before I bumped into Michaela Bond …

  CHAPTER FIVE

  World Champion

  It was early December 1987 and I was out for a night on the town with a few mates to cheer myself up. The pins had only recently been removed and the leg was still sore.

  We were in a pub called The Woodlands when there was a tap on my shoulder. I had never seen the girl before in my life. ‘Might be my lucky night,’ I thought.

  ‘Do you remember Michaela Bond? She used to be a good friend of your sister. She says you are a tight git and she wants you to buy her a drink,’ said the girl.

  ‘Yeah, I remember her. Why? Who are you?’ I asked, still playing it cool.

  ‘My name’s Louise Southworth. I’m a dentist and Michaela works for me. She’s sat over there,’ Louise gestured.

  Sure enough, Michaela was sat in the corner of the pub with a few colleagues on the dental practice’s Christmas party. I hadn’t seen Michaela for six years and she looked a lot different. Her clothes were a bit scruffy and she was wearing a silly hat. This was not how I had imagined she would turn out. But I still fancied having a go at chatting her up.