My Account
Graeme Crosby is a motorcycling legend, who chose to quit the sport only after two world championships and winning three races in the infamous Isle of Man TT event. These days, he lives on a lifestyle block in Matakana. But as he explains to Karyn Scherer, he will probably never get motorcycles out of his blood.
I was born in Blenheim, and moved to Auckland in the early 60s. Dad was a fireman at Auckland Airport and I went to school in Mangere. I was a bit of a jack-the-lad.
As soon as I finished school I did a motorcycle apprenticeship. I’ve always like mechanical things. I was probably the ultimate boy racer in those days. Groups of us used to do silly things, like go to Hamilton for a hamburger at 10 o’clock at night.
I was pretty lucky because when I first started racing I started winning from day one. In my first year at the Isle of Man TT, I ran fourth in my first race. The crowd in the UK got behind me because I was a sort of maverick, I suppose. At the end of the year I got a factory contract with Suzuki to race their MotoGP bikes. It all happened very fast.
In the late 70s there were quite a few people killed in the TT, so I decided not to get too attached to other riders. There were quite a lot of times when you’d go to France or somewhere for a race and come back and find there was someone you knew who had been killed. It was pretty bad. I got involved with the Professional Riders Association and we ended up boycotting events and so on, and it turned it into a professional sport. I was on US$100,000 or so, but two years later people were getting US$400,000, and the circuits were much safer.
I feel really, really lucky because I’ve been in a sport that’s highly dangerous, and all I’ve broken is my collarbone. But I stopped enjoying it, so I quit. I don’t understand why people keep going back and doing the same thing. There’s a lot of politics behind the scenes, but the other reason I quit is there was an Australian guy who I got to know really well and he got killed at the TT. I remember afterwards, everybody had packed up and gone, and his little van was still there with the side awning on it, and his leathers hanging up, and old tyres, as if waiting for its owner to come home. I said: “That’s it, I’m never coming back”. And I didn’t.
In ‘83 or ‘84 I bought a motorcycle shop and then spent the next 13 or 14 years trying to get out of it. Used cars started coming in, and although we sourced used bikes from a Japanese company, it just wasn’t working in the end. I actually lived in Japan for a while. I speak a little bit of Japanese, which is enough to get me into trouble but not enough to get me out. I’ve been there 100-odd times and I still deal with them.
The only place I’ve not travelled to is the Middle East. I love travelling, although it’s getting harder now, with age. A friend of mine introduced me to Helen. As it turned out, Helen was keen on golf, and I was too. I’ve known her for about 13 years but we didn’t get together until a few years after that, after my first marriage ended.
I had a heart bypass in 2002 and marriages often fall apart in those situations, because you reassess your life. I was pushing a plane out of a hangar and I felt nauseous. I went to see the doctor and had an angiogram, and they sent me straight to hospital. But I was out playing golf within three or four weeks.
I sold the bike shop in ‘96 and went flying aeroplanes for a bit for a company called Northern Air. I don’t really fly any more, but I like the idea of these really lightweight aircraft they’ve got now — the tiny little ones that only take two people and get along at 140 knots. I also worked at Coutts in Newmarket, selling Mercedes Benz for about six years.
In the last couple of years, my business has been rebuilding old bikes. The difficulty with some of the modern bikes is that it’s like having a really nice performance car and only being able to use first gear. A lot of motorcyclists bring danger upon themselves. Older riders who have had bikes in the past want to relive their youth, and those are the guys who get hurt. The technology has changed a lot in 40 years and bikes are a lot more powerful these days.
In 2009, HarperCollins asked me to write a book. On and off it took me about nine months. The last few months was a bit hard. I’ve got a good long-term memory, but not short-term. The book is called Croz — Larrikin Biker and we’ve had a couple of reprints already.
Helen and I have been in Matakana for four-and-a-half years and we’ve just built the art gallery across the road, The Vivian, which is going really, really well. We’ve got 12 acres now. We’ve got a couple of poodles, and a couple of cats, and 10 chickens. I like bees, too, but I can’t deal with them any more — they’ve beaten me. They’ve stung me too many times and I ended up in hospital.
Helen introduced me to the area. She had a place at Baddeleys Beach, and we moved up here about eight years ago. It’s like Grand Central station here — people are always coming in and phones are always ringing. It should be a slower pace of life but it’s not.
I like the idea of the new motorway, but being part of Auckland is a totally wrong move. There’s a whole raft of implications and one of them is that country folk are being dictated to by those from the city. Don’t get me started.
