Briggo - a speedway legend

This is the era of extreme sports, with channels full of leaping motorcycles, maniac skaters and breath-taking aerobatics.
Imagine for a moment inventing a new form of motorcycle racing with ultra-light 500cc bikes - with no brakes or gears - broadsliding around a stadium dirt oval, the riders elbow-to-elbow in races that last about one minute. A perfect extreme sport for the 21st-century attention span?
Actually, it's speedway - a 1920s Australian invention and still a massive sport through Scandinavia and former Eastern Europe and perhaps the ideal made-for-TV style of motorsport.
With four world speedway titles, Kiwi Barry Briggs is regarded among the best to have slid a speedway bike. He left Christchurch in 1952 with a 17-year-old attitude to pursue a speedway career in Britain and although now 76 he hasn't slowed down much.
To put his era in perspective, Briggs was winning world speedway championships at the same time as Juan Manuel Fangio was the king of four wheels. There's a good chance if you're not yet 40 years old that Barry Briggs could be the greatest Kiwi sportsman you've never heard of.
But when the phone rang with Briggs on the line I didn't need an introduction. I'd spent a few afternoons on the grass bank at the old Mystery Creek Speedway near Hamilton watching Kiwi greats Briggs, Ivan Mauger, Ronnie Moore and Danish star Ole Olsen.
"Briggo" has been making his first visit to New Zealand in seven years to promote his autobiography Barry Briggs: Wembley and Beyond and a visit to Baypark Speedway provided a chance to meet a Kiwi sporting legend.
Speedway books about Briggs have been written in the past. This one is more of an adventure story than a speedway book.
The first surprise is to discover the foreword is written by F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. Seems Bernie and Barry have been mates since they raced on grass tracks in the 1950s and it's the first clue that there's a lot more to "Briggo" than four world speedway titles.
Later you'll learn Briggs taught Steve McQueen to slide a speedway bike. He's owned gold and diamond mines in Liberia and survived malaria and coups.
He promoted speedway races including taking the world championship outside Europe for the first time by building a temporary track in the LA Colosseum and almost became the promoter of a Formula 1 race (the Ecclestone connection).
Briggs' record includes riding 17 consecutive world finals, which remains a record. He missed the 1971 event and returned in 1972 for what turned out to be his last appearance and one he believes should have delivered a fifth title. Instead it cost Briggs an index finger.
In his second ride, an ambitious move from a Swede bundled Briggs off his bike.
"I'm 100 per cent certain I could have won," says Briggs. "I'd had Ivan (Mauger) in my first ride and beaten him by 25 yards."
Briggs was a superstar, always much better known in Europe than in New Zealand.
"A lot of people in New Zealand probably think I'm dead," he says.
Briggs has an MBE (a British one) and in 1974 featured on a BBC This Is Your Life episode.
He won his fourth world championship in 1966, the year England won the soccer World Cup. When England captain Bobby Moore won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award and Geoff Hurst, who scored a hat-trick in the final, was third, Briggs was runner-up.
For motorcycling fans, Evel Knievel, Bert Munro, Roger De Coster, Barry Sheene and others make an appearance in this collection of stories.
But there's also a tragic side, Briggs relating how son Tony's promising racing career was halted by a broken neck. And the catalyst for the book's completion - Briggs actually started it in 1989 - was the agonising death of his wife, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2002 and died less than a year later.
Briggs says he would wake at 4am and start typing with two fingers. Writing was therapeutic.
"The words are all inside you. You have to work out how to get them out," he says.
Even at 76, motorcycles remain a big part of his life. Last year he rode 7000km, visiting 30 speedway tracks in Europe and the UK, raising £70,000 ($147,700) to assist injured speedway riders.
And in spite of recent knee surgery, a 300km trail ride was included among his adventures on his return to promote this book.
It's not a conventional book but it's fascinating. Speedway is the platform for the story but there is so much else ... plenty of Kiwi colloquial, and the storyline darts around a bit. It's a remarkable story of a Kiwi legend for whom the motto "When in doubt flat out ..." remains appropriate today.
You won't find Barry Briggs: Wembley and Beyond in many bookshops. It's no surprise that, in do-it-yourself Kiwi-style, Briggs is doing his own promotion. Check out www.briggo.net to find it.