Garry McCoy - Profile of "The Slide King"

It all started with a phone call at 3 am on a mid-winter's morning in June 1999 at his parents Camden property west of Sydney. Garry McCoy's life was about to change dramatically. 

Red Bull Yamaha team boss Peter Clifford urgently needed a replacement rider for Simon Crafar and McCoy had just a couple of hours to make up his mind and get on a plane for Europe. The Dutch TT was just four days away.

McCoy had not long recovered from a broken ankle suffered at Brno (August 1998) and was in two minds about jumping in at the deep end for what would be his first-ever ride on a factory V-four grand prix bike.

"But my mum and dad said go for it, so I rang Peter back said I was on my way," McCoy said.

Just when he thought his grand prix career was hopelessly stalled the lifeline came from the Red Bull Yamaha team and McCoy's life and 500ccracing hasn't been the same since.

For the jockey-sized Australian rider has proceeded to use his speedway heritage to tame a 190 horsepower grand prix bike much in the style America's original oval dirt-track czar King Kenny Roberts.

McCoy's calling card tells it all. Full throttle, speedway style slides leaving strips of rubber on race tracks around the globe.

It all started when his father, a keen speedway racer, introduced McCoy to motorcycling when Garry was six years old. By the time he was 16 McCoy was pursuing his own  speedway career unaware that a dozen years later that special brand of sideways motorcycling would help make him a 500cc grand prix winner.

During those teenage speedway and moto-crossing years McCoy didn't much care for road racing.

Then early 1991 he had gone to visit bike racing friend Mat Mladin (now US Superbike champion) to watch the Australian Grand Prix on television from Sydney's Eastern Creek track. Unable to maintain interest McCoy left the telecast early.

A qualified cabinet maker McCoy had planned to spend his savings on a ticket to  England and a couple speedway bikes and link up with neighbour and speedway mate Craig Boyce (later to become Australian champion) on the British dirt-track scene.

"Mat Mladin had just got his ride with Team Kawasaki Australia and it seemed like there was more money in road racing and it looked pretty easy by comparison so I thought I'd give it a go," McCoy said.

So McCoy bought an Suzuki RGV 250 instead and went production bike road racing.  Inside a year McCoy had scored wild card entry to replace the injured Peter Oettl in the 1992 Australian 125 GP at Eastern Creek. He qualified 12th and got up to 8th place before the AGV Rotax stopped with a cracked exhaust.

But the seed was sown and  and in between finishing third in the national 250 production championship McCoy picked up a couple other GP guest rides in Malaysia and Holland. 

In 1993 McCoy's four year involvement in the 125 GP championship started   with the AGV German Aprilia team, his lightweight (57 kg) frame seemingly ideally suited to the smallest GP class.

But there was frustration and disappointment aplenty with a succession of 125 teams offering little in the way of financial and career security.

Even though he won a rain soaked Malaysian GP at the start of 1995 after the fourth race of the season he spilt with his German Honda team to return home after being left stranded following he Spanish GP at Jerez.

The following year McCoy returned to win the Australian 125 GP but that was the extent of his success and at the end of the 1997 season he had contested 58 GPs in the 125s for two victories and seven podium finishes.

In the 1998 the opportunity to go 500cc racing, a dream that McCoy had always held, came with the Shell Advance Team on a Honda NSR. A move forward but again reality did not match McCoy's hopes.

A regular finisher in the points McCoy's first 500 season  came to a painful end during the morning warm-up at Brno for the Czech GP when crashed and suffered a nasty fracture to his ankle.

Months later as the 1999 season approached it seemed McCoy was the forgotten man of GP racing, the phone was silent, and he despaired of finding a racing home with a competitive, professional team..

He was about take a job helping his uncle install garage doors when Peter Clifford and the Red Bull Yamaha team intervened and within six hours McCoy was at the airport on his way to Europe.

The cathedral of speed at Assen was McCoy's introduction to the elite V-4 brand of grand prix racing aboard a factory Yamaha YZR500.. He finished in the points in the Dutch TT and was offered a regular team place and by September he was on the podium with a third place finish in the Valencia GP.

People were starting to take notice of the pocket-rocket Australian but the shock waves really hit at Welkom for the opening GP in South Africa.

After thousands of kilometres of pre-season testing McCoy and his race engineer Hamish Jamieson had figured the little used, almost forgotten, 16.5 inch rear Michelin tyre could be a race winner.

The larger contact patch at maximum lean angle, McCoy's favourite cornering style, offered more grip and cooler running temperatures. With the breathtaking rear wheel sliding and throttle control that has become his trademark McCoy blitzed the field to win at Welkom.

His rivals then began a frantic switch from their regular 17 inch rear tyres to follow the McCoy trend.  But a series of mid-season wet weather races with no suitable 16.5 inch tyres for McCoy to use conspired to briefly halt McCoy's winning ways.

But by the time the European summer weather hit Portugal and Valencia in September 2000 McCoy and Michelin were ready and two consecutive GP victories plus a career first pole position came McCoy's way.

After scoring just seven points in five mid-season GPs McCoy charged to finished the season in fifth place in the world championship.

Along the way he built a huge new fan base. His laid back off-track manner but spectacular and often brutal cornering technique attracted thousands of new followers. And even Honda star Valentino Rossi.

"Racing with Garry is so much fun, for this show you would pay for a ticket," said Rossi after his race long duel with McCoy in the Czech GP at Brno in 2000.

McCoy opened the 2001 season with a strong second place to Rossi in the Japanese GP. It looked a perfect platform from which to challenge for the championship.

But McCoy crashed while trying for  a repeat win in South African and when he fractured the scaphoid bone in his left wrist during practice at Le Mans for the French GP he was forced to miss five races.

With the championship gone for 2001 McCoy is aiming to win some late season races and regroup for the 2002 world championship campaign when he will again spearhead the challenge of the Red Bull Yamaha team.

"I enter each race with the same attitude, to ride as fast as I can, if you are given a factory bike to ride I don't see the point in wasting it.  I just want to try and win some races again," McCoy said.

McCoy's humble, almost shy, off-track persona is in stark contrast to his flamboyant, gravity defying riding style. When it came time to find a permanent base in Europe to pursue his 500cc career  McCoy shunned the bright lights and hype of Monaco, the traditional haven for successful sports people. 

Instead McCoy headed for the hills, the Pyrenees Alps to be precise, in the Spanish-French enclave of Andorra where he now resides in a mountainside apartment. Despite a brief period based in Rome during his 125 career much of McCoy's early European time was nomadic, living out of suitcase. 

"Andorra is certainly better than coming to Europe and with no place to really base yourself and that's how it was with a couple of the 125 teams I raced for, " McCoy said.

Mountain trail bike riding is at his doorstep and his training gym close at hand, as is the peaceful atmosphere he prefers :  "I have never really liked big cities and it didn't look like there was enough room for dirt biking in Monaco."

And when it comes time to unwind from the pressures of racing and training McCoy heads for the ski slopes in winter or the beach with his jet-ski in the summer. Or just kicking back with his stereo blasting out his favourite heavy metal bands Megadeth, Slayer and White Zombie.

And if McCoy goes missing at a GP weekend the Red Bull Yamaha normally know where to find him. Stocking up on memorabilia for his burgeoning Stars Wars collection.