Graeme Crosby winning on the Isle of Man.
In the best sense of the word, Graeme Crosby is restless, a man whose energy carries the world with him as he eyes his next project. There have been a few missions since he left Renwick in Marlborough and wound up the throttle on his motorcycling career.
He's settled onto a lifestyle block at Matakana these days, but that does not equate to watching the world go by. There's little chance of that. Croz, the Larrikin Biker, as he called his book, is always on the go. He and life flow.
In the workshop, he and his staff restore an array of machines while wife Helen runs the Vivian Gallery on the adjacent property, in between tending to the dogs, chickens, fruit trees, roses and all the other trimmings on their property.
They are busy people but, in the best conventions of those who live in rural surroundings, they make time for others. Crosby is both juggler and puppeteer.
He raced bikes for a decade to world titles and triumphs at the notorious Isle of Man circuit, swapped that for life as a commercial pilot then worked selling cars before heading north.
As Crosby approaches his 60th birthday, he stacks more into a week than many half his age might in a month. Perhaps it's down to fumes he's been sniffing since he watched Blenheim identity Ivan Miller race around on his motocross machine.
"I was about 6 or 7 and we'd go to watch motocross in a gravel pit before I got my first ride on a road bike when I sat on the front of a Yamaha and rode from Renwick to Blenheim," he recalls.
Crosby's father was a crash fireman at the Woodbourne air force base and moved to a new job at Mangere when the airport opened.
"I got more involved in engines and that flourished from building carts to buying, selling and pulling apart little motorbikes when I was in my early teens," he says. "I had an inquisitive mechanical mind and, the more you know about a bike, the more natural it is to ride it properly to its capabilities.
"It is a progression. When you find out how and why something works, then you can take it to the next stage. It's a parallel learning curve which lets the mechanical aptitude go with your experiences. I was doing motocross and road racing.
"It was not something I set out to do but, when I got my first job as a motorbike apprentice, the guy in the workshop was racing so I went with him. I prefer the road to the dirt. I'd go with him and be the dogs-body and, when he upgraded his bike, I bought his old one and that's when I started racing."
Photo / Dean Purcell
Crosby started in events at New Lynn and Porirua and his first big race was at a shopping centre in the Hutt Valley when he ran off the track into some ropes and 44 gallon drums. He finished second and the drums were third and fourth.
Soon he was racing a Kawasaki 750 and reading enviously about overseas riders with their four-cylinder two-stroke 250s or multiple world champion Mike Hailwood on his six-cylinder Honda.
Crosby and his mates would buy records with soundtracks from the Isle of Man and sit at the motorcycle club drinking and listening to the commentaries. He was working but that was a handbrake on his ambitions to race and travel and he left as a teenager for Australia.
He did well enough and maintained that momentum in Japan, then Europe and back in Australia before, as a 20-year-old, he was racing full-time in the UK with his eyes on the Isle of Man.
He was supposed to do an 'apprenticeship' in the Manx grand prix before graduating to the TT but a letter from Hailwood helped short-circuit that condition.
Crosby finished second in the TT Formula 1 feature race at Brands Hatch where his style and ability on his Kawasaki against the factory Hondas and Suzukis quickly built his fanbase.
"I went to the TT with a race bike and got fourth in my first race at the Isle of Man behind Alex George, Ron Haslam and Hailwood. Top speed then was 180mph - pretty quick.
"Power is always an advantage but it's how you get the power to the ground through suspension, steering, handling or your set-up, and that is what you learn. Now it's all done through data acquisition when you take the rider off the bike and the mechanic downloads all the information from the sensors which gives you a picture of how the bike is performing.
"In my day, it was seat-of-the-pants stuff which was gained through experience. It was that way right throughout my career."
Crosby did his own reconnaissance around the 60km Isle of Man circuit and soon collected enough notice to earn both appearance fees and prizemoney as well as a contract as a factory rider for Suzuki.
He won the 1980 Isle of Man race and, in the same year, teamed up with Wes Cooley to win the Suzuka 8 Hours endurance race. The following year, he won the 1981 TT Formula 1 on a Suzuki.
He rarely fell during a decade of testing his limits around the globe. Many rivals had pins and grafts from accidents but Crosby's only serious damage came as a youngster when he broke his collarbone in Timaru in 1974. He has no recollection of that accident but has a clear picture of the moment his days on the professional circuit were done in 1982. That exit got a shunt because of the politics in the sport and Crosby's growing interest in airplanes.
"One of the last races I did was in the Japanese championship and I was coming down the back straight at Suzuka and thinking about which restaurant I should be eating at that night," he says.
"It dawned on me then that it was crazy I should be thinking about dinner when I was doing almost 300km/h and getting ready to pitch the bike into a left-hand corner at that sort of speed. I was going to get hurt. That was enough. My mind had gone. It had left motor racing and was thinking about flying, which had always been a fascination for me."
Crosby gained his commercial licence and flew a turbo prop twin engine and then owned single engine Pipers and Cessnas, running charter work and night deliveries around New Zealand.
When productivity waned, Crosby sold high-end cars for five years then worked on a project in Fiji before settling into his barn and building his house and the next chapter of his life in Matakana. He was shoulder-tapped to restore some motorbikes and that sideline became a business.
One of his clients is yachtsman Grant Dalton, a long-time motor racing enthusiast who dreamed of racing a bike at the Isle of Man. The pair converted that idea in August when Crosby travelled to salute former world champion Joey Dunlop, who won 26 times in various classes from 1977 to 2000 at the Isle of Man.
"For anybody to be so dedicated and single-minded to be able to do what Dalton does in the yachting field and take that style into another type of sport is amazing," Crosby says. "The dedication he shows and pig-headedness to go and do it - you could not think of anyone else who could accomplish that.
"My lap times were averaging about 115mph. Now they are doing 130, and Grant did about 80-odd. As a newcomer with fairly limited experience, he did very well."
Like Grand Prix cars and those drivers, you wonder about what makes the differences in the top levels of motorcycle racing. Is it the machine or the man, the bike or the rider which makes the difference?
Computers have changed the sport and short-tracked riders' abilities to race quicker. Knowledge which took a great deal of time and testing and was absorbed through the seat-of-the-pants technique has been overtaken by the high-grade technology attached to bikes.
The best riders had to be confident but also needed to carry some apprehension about their work.
"If you had no fear, then you were in trouble," Crosby says.
Then there were riders who knew they were good and had unfaltering self-belief and whose demeanour gnawed at rivals who questioned their ability.
There were times when Crosby was afraid. Several road circuits, including the Isle of Man, caused him anguish, especially in the cold, mist and rain.
"You've got a tyre on and you're not sure whether you should go full-wet, half-wet or dry," he says. "There is that apprehension that plays with your mind. You're walking around on fingernails for much of it.
"The better state is when you get into a zone when you harness the power of your mind no matter what is happening."
In his era, Kenny Roberts was the best. He was an American from a dirt track background who was brash, arrogant and a "pain in the arse" but a brilliant racer. If his bike was in tune, he would disappear. He was that good.
"It took me half a year before I turned the switch to say I was as good as him and had earned the right to be in his company and that was the difficult part."
Graeme Crosby
• Raced his first 500cc grand prix in 1980 but retired after the 1982 season, when he finished second overall, after becoming frustrated with the sport's politics. Earned 10 podium finishes and four pole positions.
• Won 1980 and 1981 TT Formula 1 titles and 1982 Daytona 200.
• Won three times at the Isle of Man: 1980 Senior TT, 1981 Classic TT and 1981 Formula One TT.
• Competed in touring cars in the late 1980s.
• Inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame in 1995 and New Zealand Motorcycling Hall of Fame in 2007
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