ICONS of WorldSBK CARL FOGARTY
THE GREATEST OF ONCE-UPON-A-TIME
Carl Fogarty is the most iconic WorldSBK rider there has ever been . Or likely to ever be . All that despite the fact that his family friend Jonathan Rea has recently laid waste to just about all the records Fogarty ever held . Records that many said would last forever .
Sporting records don ’ t last forever , but legends do .
Considering that no other rider is quite as synonymous with WorldSBK as Fogarty is , it has to be said up front that he was not just a successful WorldSBK rider . It ’ s fair to say that Fogarty would have been a unique WorldSBK racing icon had he won just one title rather than four .
Why so ? He was the last champion to bridge the gap between motorcycle racing the way it used to be to conducted all the way through to the modern reality of racing categories becoming all the more stratified and specialised .
Fogarty was actually first recognised for his true expertise on pure-racing two-strokes . His father George was a wellknown racer in the UK , and Carl ’ s middle name is George . Very appropriate really as Carl is one patriotic Englishman , who shares his name with England ’ s patron Saint as well as his own dad .
A nasty fall for Fogarty ended his intended ‘ stroker ’ career for the simple reason that he literally could not bend his injured leg far enough under his body to race the little prototypes any more . Having finished 11th in the 1986 British 250cc GP race , he was clearly nobody ’ s mug on the smaller strokers . But , he simply had to race Superbike-sized bikes after his big crash .
Given that we are talking about a rider who started out in racing as some legendary TT riders were still successfully plying their wares on the short circuits of the UK , Fogarty would inevitably gravitate to real roads racing as well as short circuit events . It was just what a lot of aspiring British racers tended to do back then - roads and short circuits .
After turning his attention to four-stroke bikes , on the then very competitive Honda RC30 , Carl would win the first of his World Championships in the part-road circuit , part short circuit , part production-derived TT-F1 championship in 1988 . ( The same year WorldSBK had begun its vibrant life at this very circuit , of course ). After 1988 , Carl won another full WorldTTF1 title , and then finally the re-named F1 World Cup . Three titles in three years proved his versatility on different tracks and showed his determined pace absolutely everywhere .
And we ’ ve not even got to the best bits of his career yet , or mentioned his WorldSBK exploits . WorldSBK began for him in earnest in 1991 , when he finished seventh on a Honda Britain RC30 .
It was 1992 the cemented Fogarty ’ s legendary status in one single season . He set an all-time TT lap record pace that lasted for seven years . On a Yamaha . He won the World Endurance Championship with Terry Rymer . On a Kawasaki . Carl was as