Superstar of speed’s passing will touch sports fans around the world

THE death of motorcyclist Barry Sheene from cancer earlier yesterday has robbed sport of one of its most colourful characters.

The 52-year-old lost his battle against the disease in his adopted home of Australia.

But the passing of the London-born superstar of speed, who loved to race and lived to have fun, will touch sports fans around the world.

It will also have more than a passing effect on millions of other people whose only memory of Sheene is as a star of Brut aftershave TV ads or lying in a hospital bed after surgeons had plated and screwed his shattered bones back together.

The end for Sheene has come after a painful battle against throat and stomach cancer.

Following a life spent living out his dreams on the race track, Sheene had moved to Australia where the pain he suffered from arthritis as a result of his injuries was eased considerably by the climate.

In 1975 he crashed at the Daytona 200 event in Florida, breaking his thigh, right wrist, forearm, collarbone and fracturing six ribs. He also suffered compound fractures to several vertebrae.

Seven years later Sheene was taking part in an open practice four days before the British GP at Silverstone when he collided with a fallen machine at over 160mph.

Two broken legs and wrists were added to Sheene’s catalogue of injuries from a career that had seen him rise from small beginnings to champion of the world.

Sheene, who began riding motorcycles at the age of five, won 500cc world titles in 1976 and 1977 and was awarded the MBE in 1978.

In 1981 he won the Swedish Grand Prix, not knowing at the time he would be the last British rider to win such a race.

His TV appearances took him beyond the race track, Sheene starring on This Is Your Life and alongside boxing legend Henry Cooper in the Brut ads. The former British heavyweight champion was inspired by Sheene’s courage, seeing the chirpy Cockney climb out of his hospital bed in order to shoot a TV ad.

Cooper told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: “I can remember watching him have a crash at 100mph, getting a bruise as big as a football and the next day he was ready to shoot the commercial. I would have been in bed asking where the doctors were.”