Two-wheeled King's Farewell

Sun Herald

Sunday September 28, 2008

Jacqueline Maley

Despite an amputated finger and a 'split atom', Troy Bayliss will miss biking when he retires.

During the 2007 World Superbike Championship at Britain's Donington Park, Troy Bayliss crashed. Later he realised he had injured his little finger so badly it was hanging by a few shreds of flesh, but at the time he was more focussed on a searing pain elsewhere.

Apart from a near-severed finger, Bayliss suffered a "split atom".

"A split testicle," he clarifies. "That was possibly the most painful," he continues, before words fail him.

"I was in the gravel trap holding my bits and I didn't notice my finger until some kid said, 'Give me your glove.' My finger was hanging by a thread."

It's typical that Bayliss, a two-time winner of the World Superbike Championship, didn't make a big deal of his finger, even though it had to be amputated.

When he shakes your hand, you feel the pinky's absence; he still misses it. "I wasn't devastated until maybe a week later, and that wasn't much fun. But I know a lot of people who have had a lot worse accidents."

Such equanimity is crucial for someone who has built a career on risk - every time he gets on a bike, Bayliss is aware of the possibility of injury or even death.

Sitting in his trailer after a day's racing at Brands Hatch, the famous motor racing circuit south of London, Bayliss, 39, is discussing plans to clinch his third World Superbike Championship before retiring from the sport - plans that were thwarted by last year's crash.

When he retires from bikes, he says he is considering a professional rally driving career but is tight-lipped on the details - simply saying he is "looking at a couple of options".

Dressed in a red Ducati jersey and a yellow cap emblazoned with advertising, Bayliss is relaxed - he has just finished in pole position.

After a career full of as many twists as a complex race track, he has learnt to enjoy success.

Apart from accepting the peril of motorbike racing, the boy from Taree took a lot of risks to become a professional biker.

How has he managed to conquer the fear? "I've never lost my nerve," Bayliss says. "Always when I crash, I know the reason why and that's a good thing. If you don't know the reason why you've crashed that'll give you problems in the head, for sure."

And has he ever had problems in the head? "Oh yeah! Sometimes you might think you're fine, and then you hop on the bike and you're just riding crap. Sometimes people can snap you out of it, depending on the situation."

Bayliss, a spray-painter by trade, has come a long way since he was a young kid messing around with bikes. He competed in rallies in his early childhood before losing interest as a teen, when he began his apprenticeship.

He used to ride a bicycle to work, past a motorbike dealership just out of town. One day he realised he was on the wrong form of transport, and took out a loan to buy the motorbike in the shop window - a Kawasaki ZXR 750.

He rode it for two months before he realised he needed to get on the track, "because I'm either going to kill myself or get put in jail for the things I'm doing on this".

It took three or four years to pay off the loan, Bayliss recalls. At that time, everything he and his wife Kim earned went into his sport.

He was runner-up in the Australian Supersport Championship in 1995 and then moved up to the Australian Superbikes series.

After competing as a wild card entry in the 1997 Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix (250cc), selectors noticed his talent and his career began to take off.

Bayliss then returned to superbikes and won the world championship in 2001 and 2006. Sandwiched between the two wins was a brief foray into MotoGP in 2003.

Now he lives in Monaco with his wife and their three children: Mitch, Abbey and Ollie.

"I remember when we first went to Monaco looking for an apartment, I felt not very right to be there," he says. "But now it's like, 'It's Monaco, big deal.' There's all types of people there. You can kick around in a pair of flip flops and a T-shirt or you can dress up like Elvis and no one will look sideways at you."

At the end of the year Bayliss plans to move back to Australia with his family. They will set up home on the Gold Coast - a perfect place for raising kids and launching a rally driving career.

But Bayliss knows he will miss motorbikes. "I had a bad moment about a month ago where I nearly re-signed my contract; I thought maybe I could do a year from Australia," he says. "I love riding the bike, I love to win and I'm going to miss it real bad."

© 2008 Sun Herald

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