Foggy

by Carl Fogarty

  The next two hours were the longest in my life. The skies cleared and conditions were perfect for the second race. But I had a bad start and had to work my way through the field from fourth. Corser was one of those in front of me. But, again, there were no team orders and I had to out-brake him at a corner to move into third. I soon caught up with Russell and Gobert and thought, ‘The best way to win this is to ride the only way I know how.’ So I started to mix it with them and passed Gobert. But then I had second thoughts. ‘What am I doing? Gobert has nothing to lose here and he’s a bit wild at the best of times. He might try and ride even closer to the edge and become Kawasaki’s hero. Let him go, keep out of his way. He can win by four days for all I care.’

  So I sat in behind Russell and decided to follow him round. It really bugged him, as there was nothing he could do about it. With three laps remaining, he slowed right down. ‘I don’t like this. He’s up to something. If I try to go past, he might try and knock me off,’ I warned myself.

  Coming down to Honda Corner, he took his hand off the bar and made a throwaway gesture, as if he was conceding defeat. Keith Huewen, on the Sky Sports commentary, said, ‘If he’d had a towel, he would have thrown it in there and then.’ I passed him straight away but he stayed right behind me and I still couldn’t work out what he was up to. With two laps to go, Russell pulled into the pits. I knew that all I had to do was keep my head and finish the race.

  At the start of the last lap my board said ‘P2, Russell out’. This was it. All I had to do was slow down and stay upright. It was the best feeling I had ever had in racing. After such a troubled year, I was about to win the World Superbike championship in the final race of the season and on the other side of the world. It was too much for me. I cried all the way round and didn’t stop when I got back to the pits, completely drained. The whole Ducati team dived on me, and plenty more besides, including Sheene, who was trying to stick a microphone in my face. I pushed him out the way and shouted, ‘Where’s Michaela?’ There was only one person who had shared all the ups and downs of the year and knew exactly how much the title meant to me. Our embrace was shown around the world and captured the unbelievable emotion of the occasion.

  Russell came over and said, ‘Well done. You’ve deserved it.’ That went some way to healing old wounds and, from that day on, I think we had a bit more respect for each other. But I still believe that he was finished as a rider the second that he made that gesture of defeat. He even joined in the celebrations in a place called Banfields, where we stay every year. If I had been in his shoes, I would have locked myself in my room. Jamie and Andrea were there, as was Terry Rymer. Surprise, surprise, I was the first to be thrown into the swimming pool after a lot of drink. Jamie and Terry decided to follow but chose to jump into the shallow end. When they surfaced, Jamie had bust his lip and Rymer had cut his head.

  The idiots who arranged the travel for World Superbikes booked me on a Garuda Airlines flight which stopped at every city in the world on the way home. So I didn’t arrive back until Wednesday morning, absolutely knackered. But the reception was amazing. Sky Sports, the local press and local television stations were waiting for interviews at Manchester Airport. There wasn’t a great deal of coverage in the national newspapers as, by this time, we were well into the football season.

  But the invites for personal appearances flooded in. I was asked to light the big bonfire in Blackburn at Witton Park. Blackburn Rovers also wanted me to parade in front of their supporters at the next home game against Tottenham, in the year they won the Premiership title. I’m not sure how many of their supporters knew that I had supported Manchester United since being nine years old. I do actually go to watch a lot of Blackburn’s home games now. Maybe my loyalty would be tested if there were to be another battle for the title, as I have fallen out with Old Trafford over ticket arrangements. It’s no fun for me to sit among the crowd and miss half the game signing autographs.

  If you were to analyse my season it was probably the points from the Misano races, where I rode with a broken wrist, which secured my first world championship. If I had missed that race, I would have been left with a mountain to climb. And, without my aggressive, obnoxious approach to anything and anyone who stood in my way, I would probably have sat the race out. The fuel controversy and personal rivalries also helped to fire my motivation.

  Cash bonuses never really entered the equation because, when I negotiated the contract I was given two options. I was greedy and took the first – a bigger lump sum without bonuses. The second had bigger bonuses built in but with a smaller sum up front, and I probably lost around £50,000 as a result.

  But money was the least of my concerns. Success in the world championship had lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. I felt that I had proved a point and I was now in a position to relax more and enjoy the following season. For sure, there was a responsibility that went with carrying the number one plate, but now there was no question over who was the best. It was all set up for 1995, when I reached my peak as a rider …

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Reaching my Peak

  Being world champion had increased my bargaining powers. Neil Tuxworth was still desperate for me to be back on a Honda and approached me again at the end of 1994. Doug Polen had under-performed that year but was on a two-year deal, so Honda were looking for a way out for the following season. This time it was very easy for me to say no. I had already negotiated a very good deal with Ducati with good bonuses. My new leathers and helmet contracts were also in the bag at decent money.

  All this meant that I had been able to buy a few new toys, including a brand new red BMW M3. I soon found out that there was more than just the cash price to pay for owning a few luxuries. I always parked the car on the drive next to the house at night but one morning it had disappeared. After ringing the police, I contacted my insurance people, who asked if it had a tracker system. At first I told them that it hadn’t, but later remembered the salesman telling me that the tracker could be activated any time I wanted and had a 98 per cent success rate in finding stolen cars.

  Within a couple of hours the garage told me that it would cost £60 to have the tracker reconnected. ‘I’ll pay it,’ I said, although I thought that the car would be on some ship to Holland by then. Five hours later the police located it, being stripped down in a barn in nearby Bolton. The bastards claimed that they were just doing some work on it for another guy who had dropped it off. And, as usual with the British legal system, they got away with it and are probably out there nicking more cars today.

  Meanwhile the animal sanctuary was still in full swing. The first of the pigs had arrived the previous year. Unusually for a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, it was pink. Most of them are black so we soon decided to buy a normal coloured companion, as the first one was really clean and didn’t need much looking after. It never once shit in its hut and, during the day, was happy to roam around the half an acre in which it was penned.

  We needn’t have bothered about it being lonely because, unknown to us, the neighbour’s pig had escaped and shafted ours before being caught. We weren’t even sure whether it was pregnant because it was so fat – until all hell broke loose when Michaela was out with some friends one night. Piglets were coming out at all angles. I needed help.

  One of Michaela’s mates, Mandy Wrigley, who later took Bridget the Great Dane off our hands, had just bought a pub in a dodgy area of town. I rang the Elma Yerburgh pub and asked them to stop the live music to get an urgent message to Michaela. ‘You’ve got to get home quick,’ I shouted. ‘She’s giving birth.’

  We sat up all night as, one by one, Michaela’s friend Tracey delivered the pigs while we supervised from a safe distance. In all she gave birth to 11 healthy piglets and one runt.

  When we returned in the morning there were only eight still alive, as the mother had rolled over and crushed four of them. And we weren’t prepared for the chaos they would bring. If they ever broke out of the pen, it was like having eigh
t big rats running and squealing through the fields. It was once down to me, with some help from Slick, to round up all eight of them and I’ve never been so exhausted in my life. We both had to rugby tackle the last and most stubborn one and even then it nearly wriggled free. Passers-by must have thought we were murdering it, as the noise the thing made was unbelievable until it ran out of breath.

  Another time, it was down to my dad. He had trapped one, the size of a small dog, between the stable and a barbed-wire fence, which separated our land from a stream. It was a classic case of a ‘pig in a ginnel’. The rest of us couldn’t see what was happening. But we could hear all right! First the squealing got louder as dad slowly approached the pig. Then everything went quiet before there was a dull thud. And, as the pig came hurtling round the corner of the stable, we could hear dad moaning ‘Help, help’. The pig had charged him and knocked him over the barbed-wire fence and down the stream’s embankment. His face was cut and he stank of TCP for three days.

  It was obvious they would have to go. Again it was up to dad to take them to an animal sanctuary place called Only Foals and Horses, which had agreed to take them off our hands for a fee. He counted eight piglets into the Jeep but, when he counted them back out, he could only find seven. The last one had jammed itself under the driver’s seat.

  It was even harder to get rid of the adults, who, as I mentioned earlier, had been named after Scott Russell and Aaron Slight. Aaronetta, as she came to be known, just didn’t want to enter the box trailer. Perhaps they knew that we didn’t have the necessary licence for transporting them! Dad decided to lasso her round the neck and drag her up the ramp. But this pig just would not budge. I was crying with laughter as dad kept slipping on his arse, trying to heave a quarter of a ton of pork into the box. Even when I whacked it on the backside with a wooden plank, it only budged an inch at a time!

  Before the pigs were finally out of the way, another problem cropped up. I had asked my mate Howard Rigby to fetch a couple of ducks from his uncle’s farm, which was just across the neighbouring fields. He turned up with sacks containing hens, cocks, geese and ducks and emptied them all into the shed. The next morning, when I opened the doors to let the ducks out, a huge riot spilled out into the fields.

  The four cocks were at each other’s throats, a goose was spitting feathers and out waddled a half-dead duck, which we had sprayed with the word ‘Duck-ati’ on its back in red paint. God knows what it must have been like in there during the night. I had to kill two cocks by hitting them over the head with a shovel because they would not stop fighting. Then I had to sack the rest of them up and take them back to Howard, who was pissing himself laughing. Nothing seemed to last long at that house. At times, there was lots of nice wildlife in the fields. The next day almost everything was dead because a fox or one of the dogs had got at them, so we had to stock up all over again.

  It may seem that our animals have brought nothing but hassle. But I really like animals – except horses and cats. Maybe I should have taken more time to train them, the dogs especially. But I’m not one to sit down with a bag of goodies and go, ‘Shake a paw!’ I think they should train themselves – I had to! So, if there’s a problem with one of the pets, you have got to do something about it, especially if someone says they will take it off your hands. For instance, we had a Boxer which only lasted a few weeks because it was just completely stupid and wriggled around like a trout out of water. We had to give that away and, when someone brought it to a Christmas party we went to in 1999, I’m surprised it didn’t bite me!

  We now have two dogs, Charlie and Riot, and I didn’t have much say in getting either. If it had been up to me, I probably wouldn’t have had any more after all the problems with the others. So the first I knew about Charlie was when I was on my way home from the Milan Bike Show in 1999 and rang Michaela’s mobile.

  ‘I’m not in,’ she said, ‘but when you get home, mind the dog!’

  ‘What dog?’

  ‘I’ve just got a new dog. See you later,’ she said before quickly ringing off.

  Sure enough, a friend was minding a little Jack Russell pup and he has turned out to be a sound little dog – I can’t fault him. The following year we started to fancy having another big dog around the house. We had been through just about every other breed of dog, so we decided on a Dobermann. I forgot all about that conversation until my birthday, when Michaela walked in with Riot. He’s very quiet and soft for a Dobermann, perhaps a bit too soft as Charlie frightens him to death.

  While all this mayhem was happening at home, at least the Ducati set-up provided some stability. Mauro Lucchiari, who had taken over when Falappa was injured, was staying on as my team-mate for 1995 and I expected him to have a good season. That was fine by me, although his close relationship with Virginio worried me a little bit, as I didn’t want him to have preferential treatment. Mauro was obviously his favourite and the two of them used to train together, as Virginio was a very fit guy. But he was a nice lad who kept himself to himself and, because he did not speak much English, we didn’t bother each other too much.

  Slick was also still on the team, but only just. It was clear that Virginio no longer wanted Slick around and the row that I had with Virginio over this had been only my second big bust-up with him, the other being the team orders cock-up at Donington. He told me that Slick’s work hadn’t been up to scratch and that the other mechanics were fed up with his shouting and bawling. I don’t think they were too impressed with his drinking and his scruffy appearance on race days, and felt that he should socialise more with the rest of the team. But that was difficult for Slick. All the others were Italians, who had grown up in the same area around Bologna.

  I realised there was no point trying to keep hold of Gary, and he wasn’t too bothered. He had seen a bit of the world but I think he was more comfortable at home in England. The previous season had opened a lot of doors for him and, when he told people that he’d worked with Carl Fogarty, he had no problem finding a new job in racing with a privateer Ducati team which had Steve Hislop riding for them. But I dug my heels in over Slick.

  Virginio argued, ‘Carl, he did not win you the world championship, you won the world championship on your own.’

  I was insistent. ‘Look, I want Slick, and that’s that.’

  At that time, he was a very good hands-on mechanic. Nowadays the word mechanic doesn’t really exist. The team is full of engineers and specialists in different areas such as tyres and suspension. He was also English and a friend, and I needed someone close around me. This dragged on for a full day and everyone started falling out. ‘Believe me, Slick will be better in 1995, no worries,’ I promised. ‘It’s been hard for him this year because he was looking after Gary, who was new to the team.’

  Eventually I got my own way, but not without Virginio warning me that Slick would be out of the door at the first sign of trouble. He also moved two of his mechanics across from Lucchiari’s team and gave them the responsibility of making the final decisions. Slick might no longer have been the official chief mechanic, but he still was in my eyes.

  We decided to start the season by returning to Daytona. As a world champion and a member of a big factory team, I mistakenly thought that I would get fair treatment from the Americans. But it didn’t help matters when I was quoted in MCN as saying that I hated Daytona, the track and all Americans. What I actually said was, I didn’t like Daytona and didn’t particularly like the track.

  It was only when I arrived in the States that I realised just how much the Americans hated me for it. Dunlop America had even posted copies of the newspaper cuttings all around the track. Yanks just don’t like criticism of their country and the build-up to the race was like the hype surrounding a big fight. At the time it was a bit worrying but, looking back, it generated a lot of interest.

  Troy Corser, who was riding for the rival Ducati team run by Davide Tardozzi, was handed the number one plate because he was the reigning American champion. I needed a number t
hat was a bit stupid and different, so I chose 99. (Jamie Whitham always used to choose 69 because it read the same way when his bike was upside down in the gravel!) Having qualified in third, I was up with the leaders before Scott Russell crashed on the second or third lap. I couldn’t believe my luck, even though I had to run wide to miss him and lost a couple of places. But Russell received help from the marshals in getting back on his bike, which was illegal. Then there was another small crash. Nobody was injured and there was certainly no debris on the track.

  Still, the Americans decided to bring out the pace car while I was in fourth. No rider was allowed to pass another while we followed the car round for a couple of laps. Yet, when I looked around, I could see Russell weaving through the pack without a care in the world. If the rules were there to be followed, he should have been disqualified. But he was American, so he could do what he wanted.

  After that, though, he rode really well and was the quickest man out there. While his pit stops were ultra-fast and professional, I had to pull in once because I couldn’t even see my board. When I got into the pits, Slick and the rest of the team were sat on the wall having a natter and I lost 30 seconds on Russell. But I still managed to finish second despite a splitting headache. I was pleased to leave the place alive and I will never go back there again as the track is dangerous and the rules are bent.

  After tests at Laguna Seca in California and Misano, where I was presented with a gold engraved Rolex Daytona watch from Michelin for winning the world title, it was obvious that the improvements that had been made to the 916 had worked wonders. The suspension had been altered at the front and back, and the engine was smoother and more powerful. To this day, that 1995 model was the best bike I’ve ever ridden.

  The first race was at Hockenheim in Germany, where I had never won before. But I won both races and, to be honest, the season was pretty boring from then on! The team was working well, Slick seemed to be fitting in better, my confidence was sky-high and I was much more relaxed. And people had tried to tell me that it would be harder to retain my title!