On March 10, 2003 one of the most appreciated champions passed away for victories, courageous style and an over the top lifestyle. We remember the two-time 500 world champion and the mark he left on racing
Twenty years have passed since March 10, 2003, when he left us Barry Sheene, one of the greatest and most loved motorcycling champions of all time. Twice world champion of the 500, in ’76-’77, the English champion was the icon of the transition from the racing of the “days of courage” of the Hailwood-Agostini epic to the show-business of the Rossi-era. In 15 years of racing – between 1970 and 1984 – the London driver repeatedly climbed the altars and repeatedly fell into the dust. “I want to experience everything, on and off the track,” he said. And so he took racing and life: head-on. And always with irony. After the terrible flight in 1975 in the banked corner of Daytona caused by the explosion of the rear tire of his Suzuki at 280 km/h, the most terrible high-side in motorcycling, 45 plates and screws are needed to put all the fractures back together and many weeks to get back on the bike. Immobilized in a hospital bed, he confides to the friendly doctor who secretly passes him the lit cigarette: “If I were a racehorse, after a flight like this and with all these fractures, they would have already knocked me down”.