by Carl Fogarty
All in all, my batteries had been recharged. Motivation was not a problem. In fact, it felt like the start of 1995 all over again. There were still doubters who thought I had been lucky the previous year, but that didn’t alter the fact that I had the number one plate back. And I was ready to ram it down their throats that I was the best. The early signs were good. At the first test, in Kyalami, I was fastest on all three days and I broke the lap record. It was such a contrast to the testing and qualifying problems that had plagued us the previous year. And the confidence that I built up made me concentrate even harder. We were quickest again in the Phillip Island test and continued to work well together in the final test of that year’s new 996 bike at Misano.
Throughout testing, I had been concentrating on the Superpole format of one fast lap, because the highest I had qualified all year in 1998 was fourth. At the first round, back in Kyalami, I was just pipped by Troy into second place. But the races were the easiest two wins I have ever collected. I controlled both from start to finish and was even pulling away when I was slowing down. The second race was my 50th career win while the first provided a good omen. In my previous three championship-winning years, I had won the first race of each season. I left South Africa thinking, ‘Bloody hell. That was easy. This is like 1995 all over again.’
It was also like 1998 all over again that evening, as 10 of us crammed into one car trying to find a South African nightclub. Slick and Noriyuki Haga were crammed into the boot, Haga jabbering away in Japanese and Slick drowning him out in pretend Japanese. It was one of the funniest things I have ever heard.
We never found the club and ended up back at the hotel pool where Michaela was messing around with Neil Tuxworth, nibbling his nipples as he loves that kind of thing. But he didn’t enjoy it when Michaela and Troy’s girlfriend Sam bit too hard and he had some explaining to do when he got back home to his girlfriend with a sore nipple. We sneaked off to bed after throwing him in the pool and missed all the commotion when Slick was accused of setting off all the fire extinguishers in and around his room. He got bollocked as usual but it turned out to be some of the Honda mechanics.
After a perfect start to the championship the season became a lot harder from those races onwards. The altitude near Johannesburg makes the bikes slower by around 15 per cent because the lack of oxygen starves the engine. It was the same in Mexico City in 1993 when it seemed like I was riding a moped down the straight. So, maybe, when the machines were back at sea level, mine became harder to control than the others.
But that didn’t stop us from dominating the next round at Phillip Island. We were out of sight early on, which had the other teams moaning. It was the usual stuff. The Honda riders, Colin Edwards, but mainly Aaron Slight, spat their dummies and complained that the Ducatis had an advantage. The only thing different from the previous year was that the suspension had been changed a little bit. Even we couldn’t understand why we were as much as 18 seconds better than the others. Troy made no mistakes in the first race, on his home track, and beat me. In the second race, I actually crossed the start line in front of him but he had better drive out of the last corner and, in the space of the few yards to the finish line, he won by five thousandths of a second. I’ve seen the video a few times and I’m still convinced I won!
It was a similar story at Donington. I won the first and was second in the second race. The Honda riders turned up at the pre-race press conference with faces like slapped arses. Perhaps they should have been doing as much work as we were in qualifying. I had blown two tyres in Australia, trying to find the right one. The other riders hadn’t put in anywhere near as many laps as we did that weekend. They were in and out all the time and not doing race distances. I said at the time, ‘I’m riding better than last year and we are working harder as a team. It’s no surprise to me.’
As it turned out, I won the first race at Donington quite comfortably – but it was probably one of the hardest all year. Everyone thought I was cruising, because I kept a three-second lead on Aaron Slight. They didn’t realise that it was like riding on marbles as my tyre was completely destroyed and I pushed as hard as I’ve ever done in the final 10 laps because I wanted to win so badly in England. Slight said afterwards that there was nothing he could do to catch me. ‘God man, if only you knew how hard it was to keep you at that distance,’ I thought.
That effort took it out of me for the second race. Although we stiffened the suspension, I was always going to be hard pushed to repeat the win. I knew I had the beating of Troy when our tyres lost grip because I was always able to dig down deeper and find the necessary aggression. But there was no way I could compete with Edwards. If he had not had problems in the first race, he would probably have won that.
And, in some ways, I was glad he won the second. At least it would stop their moaning for a couple of weeks. Someone actually had the nerve to come up to me and ask me if I had let Edwards win that race because everyone was whinging about Ducati! I couldn’t believe it. ‘What do you fucking well think?’ I snapped. ‘Have I ever let anyone win a race? You’re talking to me now. If someone offered me a million pounds to forfeit a race, I wouldn’t do it.’
The performance of the Honda worried me a bit but I expected to win in Albacete, which has always been one of my stronger tracks. Sure enough, despite more problems with grip coming out of first gear corners, I achieved my first pole position since 1995 in Japan. It had been a standing joke around the paddock. ‘He can’t go fast in practice, but just wins races and world titles,’ they said. As long as I’ve been on the front row, it hasn’t really bothered me. One fast lap doesn’t win a race or a world title. Very often I can do 25 fast laps better than just one.
On race day all the Japanese bikes were faster than our machines. In fact, Akira Yanagawa should have won both races on his Kawasaki, but couldn’t pass anyone. Considering the problems, a pair of third places in races won by Haga, on a Yamaha, and Edwards, was not too bad for me and my championship lead was extended. Even so, I was disgusted and I had a face like stone on the rostrum. Davide recognised this immediately. ‘That’s the best I’ve seen you ride,’ he said. ‘We just didn’t have the package for you to win the race.’ Yet commentators and journalists continued to say that the Ducati had good drive coming out of slow corners. It just goes to show that they haven’t got a clue what they are talking about. Ducatis are good coming out of third gear corners, but not first. That’s where the Japanese bikes are so much better.
While I had been optimistic for Albacete, I didn’t have good vibes about Monza. For the previous two years the Hondas had been miles quicker, on a track with long straights. In the past it had been important to be in the right position for a passing manoeuvre on the final lap. But this year our bikes were only a couple of kmph slower than the Hondas, so I wasn’t too worried about qualifying on the second row. And, crucially, the start-finish line had been moved from the end of the straight to the exit of the last corner. It was perfect for me. Now the best rider would win and not the rider on the fastest bike, as happened in 1997 when I led out of the corner and was passed by both the Hondas down the straight.
The first race of the 1999 round with Colin Edwards was the highlight of the whole year. He had a slight speed advantage but I was all over him in the chicanes to win. Second time out I was behind Edwards going into the long final corner but gaining all the time. Just as we were exiting the corner, and lifting the bikes up, I timed the move perfectly and caught his slipstream the instant before we hit full power. I pulled wide and he dived inside to open the line up perfectly for me, and I nosed in front by half a wheel to win the race. If the finish line had been in its old position he would have won. It was so close. But I wasn’t sure that I had nicked it. The first marshal that I saw put two fingers up to indicate second. ‘No! I can’t believe it,’ I said to myself as I rode gloomily back to the pits. By the time I got round, the Ducati team were yelling, ‘You’re first!’
‘What! I’ve won the race?�
� I replied.
‘The times showed that you were first,’ they insisted.
I started jumping up and down on the bike, as I knew how much it meant to Ducati to win at such an historic circuit in front of a passionate Italian crowd of more than 70,000. We drank until the early hours around the motor-homes, which is what usually happens at Monza. Stephane Chambon, who became the Supersport world champion that year, usually gets on a bike and starts doing one-legged and one-armed wheelie tricks, while other riders do burn-outs. And then I drove back to the hotel pissed out of my head, as nobody seems to bother about drinking and driving out there. It’s easy to celebrate after a double win.
But, by the end of that week, racing no longer seemed to hold any importance …
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hannah
Nothing that I had seen in all my time in racing could have prepared me for the awful events at my home on the afternoon of Friday, 4 June, 1999. As I’ve explained, a racer becomes conditioned to deal with death and horrific injury on the track. But when the accident victim is a two-year-old girl, a friend of the family, and the tragedy takes place at your own home, it’s impossible to cope in the same way. Hannah Walsh, the daughter of Michaela’s dentist friend Louise and her husband Graham, drowned in our swimming pool. It devastated us all.
I was up in the Lake District with a few friends, who had hired a log cabin near Windermere, when it happened. They were all staying for three or four days but I had travelled up that morning to spend a day trail riding with them. We had just got back after an exhausting ride and, while everyone was showering and winding down, I was getting ready to head off home when my mobile went at around 5.30pm. Michaela had been trying to contact me for the best part of an hour. She was desperate. ‘Carl, come home as quick as you can. There’s been an accident. It’s Hannah. She’s fallen in the pool and we don’t know what’s going to happen.’
The phone went dead before I had a chance to respond. But Michaela’s words had knocked me sideways. It was serious – there was no mistaking the urgency and panic in her voice.
Having told the others what had happened as best I could, I chucked my bags in the back of the van that I had travelled up in with a mate, Austin Clews, one of the managing directors of a motorbike business called CCM in Blackburn. I had parked my car at a hotel just next to the M6 near Preston but couldn’t get a decent reception on my mobile phone until we got off the motorway.
‘What’s going on? What’s happened?’ I asked.
‘We don’t know anything yet,’ she said. ‘We’re waiting to hear from the hospital. Please get home as quick as you can.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘No. She wasn’t breathing when she left here. Louise tried the kiss of life and went to hospital in the ambulance with her,’ she replied.
I told Austin what had happened and it was clear that we were both thinking the worst.
When I turned into the drive two police cars were parked at the end nearest the house. I stopped at the other end and ran inside, asking one of the policemen if there had been any news as I sprinted past. Michaela’s dad, Alan, had taken the kids to the other side of the house and shut the door. Alan’s wife, Pat, and Michaela were in the kitchen and both of them were totally distraught. Danielle, who was seven at the time, was a little bit more aware than the other two – Hannah’s brother Matt, who was five, and four-year-old Claudia. They were too young to properly understand what had happened and just wanted to tell me what had gone on.
It appeared that all the kids had been playing inside and outside the house, watching videos in the playroom as well as running in and out of the garden. Michaela and Louise were making tea in the kitchen, which directly overlooks the garden and swimming pool. It was a horrible, rainy day but the doors were open and Hannah must have wandered off on her own. There was a full cover on the pool and, I suppose, one of three things could have happened. Either Hannah perhaps thought she could walk across, or she had lifted up the cover to have a nosey and fell in, or she tripped up on the ledge at the side of the pool and fell straight in. Nobody will ever know exactly what happened.
But when Michaela and Louise realised she wasn’t with the others, they frantically tried to find her. Michaela spotted the shape of her body underneath the covering sheet and Louise immediately jumped in, dragged her out and tried to perform the kiss of life while Michaela rang for an ambulance. The wait for news was agonising. After I turned up, everyone just stood around waiting for perhaps an hour, nobody knowing what to say. Then a policewoman received a message on her radio. She came into the room to tell us that Hannah had died.
Michaela almost collapsed and was immediately sick in the toilet. I was in total shock. It just would not sink in. Louise and Graham arrived back from the hospital a couple of hours later. They had both wanted to come back to the scene immediately. There were very few words because everyone was just hugging each other and it was all unbelievably upsetting, even though everyone was still stunned and it hadn’t fully sunk in at that point. Michaela didn’t sleep at all that night. I eventually drifted off but woke up very early. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Michaela spent most of the next morning with Louise, comforting her but also helping with all the formalities and investigations.
I was just trying to occupy my mind and was having a cup of tea outside when a car pulled up the drive. Graham got out but I had no idea what to say to him. He just wanted to come and spend a few minutes where Hannah had spent her last few hours.
I had only just started getting to know Graham, who owns his own steel company, a few weeks before. We had been out for a couple of meals and then started playing a lot of squash and tennis and were getting quite close. This was the type of incident that could either tear a friendship apart, or bring everyone even closer together.
Later that afternoon, I picked Michaela up from Louise’s. She was in a terrible state. At one point I asked my mum to come up, because I thought another woman would be able to help her through it better than I could. On the Sunday evening, Michaela and Tracey went to see Hannah at the Chapel of Rest. It was their attempt to be able to remember Hannah as a person, and take away all the images of trying to revive her.
The press were quick to latch on and wanted to make a big issue of it, simply because it happened at my house. If it had been anyone else’s house, it would have made a small paragraph. It was an attempt to make it a circus around me. That annoyed me, and really angered Louise and Graham. The coverage seemed to miss the point that a little girl had died in a tragic accident.
One reporter from the local paper, the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, turned up at my house during Saturday afternoon, but I told her I didn’t want to say anything. They had also started hounding Graham and Louise. It is one thing expecting quotes from me – I’m used to dealing with the press and can look after myself – but what exactly was to be gained by going to the house of parents who had lost their daughter just the day before?
In any case, the police had told us not to say anything and there seemed to be a lot of conflicting advice. Both the local coroner and police had said that it might be possible to keep our names out of the papers. But the press wouldn’t let it drop and, after a couple of days, I thought that by continuing to tell them to go away sounded like we had something to hide. It would be better to make a brief statement on behalf of us all.
On Monday morning, I asked Neil Bramwell, the sports editor of the local paper, who I was used to dealing with, to come up to the house so I could explain simply what had happened. He arrived just as the inquest, which we weren’t required to attend, had opened. The police liaison woman was still, even at that point, trying to prevent all the names being released, but realistically that was never going to happen.
A Home Office pathologist called Dr William Lawlor carried out a post-mortem examination on Monday. He said that Hannah would have died the instant she entered the pool. He said at the inquest, ‘I think the death was due to imm
ersion in water associated with a mechanism which forensic pathologists refer to as dry drowning. The effect is that when water enters the nose and mouth, it causes almost instant unconsciousness and cessation of the heart. Once the heart had stopped it would not have been possible to restart it.’
In other words, there was nothing anyone could have done to bring her round and the coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death.
So try and imagine the horror we all felt when we picked up The Mirror newspaper the next morning and discovered their opinion column, ‘The Voice of the Mirror’, lecturing us all on how to look after children. These were their exact words, under the headline ‘Children In Need’:
‘A child is the most precious of gifts for any parent. A never-ending source of unconditional love and joy. But today every parent in the land should reflect on the fragile nature of that gift. The shocking finding that 90 per cent of kids killed in car smashes die because of ill-fitted safety seats should shake us out of complacency. And the tragic drowning of a tot in the swimming pool of superbike champion Carl Fogarty reinforces the need for vigilance known only too well to all mums and dads. A moment of carelessness or distraction can lead to a lifetime of grief.’
Hannah’s death was not down to carelessness or a lack of vigilance. It was an accident. Kids of that age have accidents all the time. Most of the time it is a cut finger or a bump on the head. This time the result was tragedy. You cannot tie a ball and chain around children, and you cannot watch them 24 hours a day. It just doesn’t happen. Maybe there are circumstances, perhaps if a young kid has fallen in a canal, when you think, ‘What the hell is a young kid doing next to a canal at that age?’ Maybe the parents could be blamed in that situation because nobody allows a six- or seven-year-old to play next to a canal.