Taken from the current issue of Classic Racer

Thirty years on from Mike Hailwood’s amazing TT return we get
the real story of the catalyst to the comeback. Jim Skaysbrook
played a huge part in the return of a legend and recounts the tale of the races and the bikes that formed a platform to three more TT wins.

“It’s not a comeback. It’s just a bit of fun, so don’t expect too much.” Mike Hailwood OBE, winner of nine World Championships and in the opinion of most, the greatest rider to ever straddle a motorcycle, must have repeated these words on countless occasions as the date for the 1977 Castrol Six Hour Race drew nearer. And let’s face it, after his stupendous career; a squirt around a two-kilometre track on the outskirts of Sydney was hardly earth-shattering stuff, at least on paper. Except that the Castrol Six Hour race had grown to be Australia’s biggest and most important event, attracting the serious attention of the Japanese factories. With Hailwood’s entry, the British press discovered it too.

The events leading to Mike’s first Six Hour race start in October had their origins at the same track on a scorching hot Australia Day in January. The biggest crowd in the circuit’s history packed every crevice of the rock strewn spectator area to see Mike don his leathers for the first time in almost a decade to ride the ex-Kel Carruthers Manx Norton, owned by Barry Ryan, at the annual All Historic Festival.

What had tempted him out of a peaceful retirement in his adopted home of Auckland? “Terminal boredom” was Mike’s typically understated reply. His right ankle was still largely immobile, a legacy of his career-ending crash in a Formula One McLaren in Germany in 1974, so the Norton was fitted with a rocking-pedal gear change to ease the problem.

By the end of the weekend, Mike was right back in the groove, recording the fastest 500cc lap of the meeting (62.5 seconds) on his way to second place in the final race, the City of Sydney Trophy. I won the race on a Matchless G50 with the engine stretched to over 600cc (the main class being for Unlimited capacity in those days) and back in the pits, over a glass or six, I struck up a friendship with the man who had been my boyhood hero.

Temptation

There was quite a group of us who stayed late into the evening that day at Amaroo, including radio personality and arch motorcycle enthusiast, the late Owen Delaney. Owen was alternating between radio work in Australia and New Zealand, and on his next trip to NZ called up Mike on-air.

Never backward in coming forward, Owen proposed to Mike that he contest the Castrol Six Hour Race, and to his amazement the suggestion was not rejected out of hand. Back in Oz, Delaney phoned me with the suggestion that I team up with Mike for the Six Hour, to which I replied something like, “Me? You must be kidding!” But he wasn’t kidding.

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