Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Ivan Mauger 1939 - 2018

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Ivan Mauger 1939 - 2018

    Sad news emerging tonight that the six time World Speedway Champion and all time sporting great Ivan Mauger has died.

    A giant of the sport that I’m sure a lot of people will remember from the seventies era when Speedway had a high national televised profile, though his career spanned from the fifties to the eighties.
    Last edited by Ray de Galles; 15-04-2018, 22:38.

    #2
    Oh wow. I don’t follow speedway but his was always the number one name when speedway was on TV in the 70s. World of Sport I’m guessing. Memories, memories.

    RIP

    Comment


      #3
      The museum in Christchurch, NZ:



      I couldn't find a photo of Ivan and the Exeter Falcons riding around St James Park, which was one of my early, er, football memories. They had won the British League in 1974 and did a victory lap.

      In the '70s if you asked the general sports fan in the UK to name a famous New Zealander they would be far more likely to say Mauger than any All Black.

      RIP.

      Comment


        #4
        Dad took me to the '63-'69 World Finals at Wembley, the last of which Mauger won - my biggest memory of him, apart from the stylish winning, was that he always attracted the loudest hostility from the crowd, due to almost needing dragging to the line when everyone else was ready - even more than Barry Briggs! Ove Fundin was 'my' rider.

        Comment


          #5
          Nice tribute in the Herald

          http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news...ectid=12033407

          The Pele of speedway sums it up for me, he was the most recognisable figure all through the 1970s, even more so than Peter Collins or Barry Briggs. Even my Mum had heard of him. And he got crowbarred into a Half Man Half Biscuit lyric too.

          Comment


            #6
            M-A-U-G-E-R...not just any lyric but an intro

            Comment


              #7
              There’s no bigger mark of his standing than when he decided he couldn’t be bothered to ride away matches and the league agreed to it. A genuine legend when that word is often overused.

              Comment


                #8
                A real sporting legend indeed, I used to watch him at Exeter in the mid 70s and there was a real sense of going to see a World Champion (with capital letters). He was a Wimbledon Don, too.

                Comment


                  #9
                  In the 1970's, not many riders rode in continental Europe on the weekends, although Mauger was one of them. However, one bleak wet Saturday night in June 1973, Ivan Mauger made an appearance at a nondescript individual event at Kings Lynn. It was a filler event, no league match scheduled, either the Supporters or The Littlechild Trophy event. I was 14 yrs old. I had never seen him ride in the flesh. He showed up, immaculate bike, immaculate leathers, 5 rides, 5 wins as I recall. Podium and Trophy. After the meeting me and my friend made our ritual charge into the pits to snag autographs. We had 10 mins to snag as many as we could before we legged it back the 2 miles back into Lynn center to catch the last bus back to our village. 14 yr old kids catching buses at 10.30pm alone on a Saturday night eh) He was busy packing his toolbox, there was a large crowd around him, waiting for him to finish packing up and we were desperately shoving our programmes and pens through the crowd. Ivan noticed us and he got up and signed the programme cover. I immediately dropped it in the mud as he handed it back. He immediately turned, grabbed his personal programme pinned to the pit wall, signed it, and handed it to me. I still have that programme. I will and have never forgotten that moment. He was never liked as much as PC , Ole or Barry Briggs because he was a machine who simply just won the meeting and moved on. He wasn't someone you would expect to see hanging in the bar after a meeting, fraternizing. But he was the first world champion who I had seen on TV to ever sign anything for me. And as a 14 yr old, that was immense. Keep on sliding Ivan The Great.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by Duncan Gardner View Post
                    I always wonder if these Birkenhead boys saw cars on their way to Ellesmere Port Speedway? However in the 70's you would see loads of cars on the motorways with Speedway stickers and windshield speedway sunstrips, along with the riders and their bikes hitched to the trunks of their huge cars.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Lovely story, Exiled. There are a few similar ones on social media today and the wider general reaction his death has triggered certainly brings home the differing profile of the sport in Mauger’s time to now.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        The claim made at the time was that speedway in the mid '70s was the third most spectated sport in the UK, behind football and horse racing(?). I don't have good visibility of its profile nowadays, but it's obviously nowhere near as popular as it once was. I was never much of an Ivan Mauger fan, despite his obvious brilliance. The first meeting I attended was a GOBL match at King's Lynn in 1973, who were home to Exeter. In contrast to Exiled's lovely story, Mauger had apparently had one of his interminable rows with management and didn't show up, leaving the remaining Falcons the hopeless task of trying to fill in with rider replacement. The resulting non-entertaining (to the neutral, at least) slaughter has perhaps clouded my judgement of him.

                        Funnily enough, I best remember him as a Belle Vue rider. From Wikipedia;
                        As a Belle Vue Ace he won the title in 1970, 1971 and 1972, thereby becoming the only rider to complete the 'Triple Crown'. In 1969 Mauger finished with a British League record average of 11.67. He dropped only 13 points from his 37 completed League & Speedway Star KO Cup matches. During these matches he recorded 22 full maximums, and 3 paid maximums.
                        Those figures are so good they're almost implausible: he dropped two points in one meeting, one point in a dozen, and in the remainder no opponent beat him. How the hell did the Aces not win the league?

                        RIP.
                        Last edited by Muukalainen; 16-04-2018, 20:16.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          The meeting formula in those days had the top riders only meeting each other once per meeting, so the number ones often went largely unbeaten except to each other.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            At my mate's house on a 70s Saturday we watched a lot of speedway on WoS. The sport had a particular resonance for his Dad. He had been a cycle speedway rider in the 50s for Maidenhead Lions. His name is on that team list. Sorry I know this is totally irrelevant but, well it's nice to remember and many people wouldn't know cycle speedway existed - using fixie pushbikes. He's in his early 80s now and still has one of his old bikes in the shed, which he restored a few years ago.

                            Sidetrack over, but seconded that speedway had a pretty high profile in the 70s, and nobody more than Mauger.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              I'm still hoping to see some cycle speedway at the capital's remaining club when dates allow, East London. Heavy Dracula and I were hoping to see some sandwiched between a Coventry/Leicester a few seasons ago but time went against us so we ended up in a Harvester instead.

                              All of my memories of Mauger are World of Sport related too, as are most people's I imagine, as I wasn't actively watching speedway until many decades later.

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X