Posted 31 January 2013 - 09:30
That's a pretty comprehensive thread Tony, and well researched. The little bloke at the top of the page, Bill Whitworth, was a clubmate of mine when I started racing in 1986. He rode the Morgo Triton in the pic, and was the man to beat. In his earlier years, he'd raced grasstrack in England, with the Baybutts and co. Certainly didn't fancy us upstarts turning up on our "rice-burners" (delivered in loud Lancashire tones). But after we gave him a fright or two, particularly in the wet, he surreptitiously arranged to have one built, and joined the growing throng of K4 pedallers.
Bill, in his mid-fifties, was fit as a fiddle, and played comp squash, but fell flat on his back one Wednesday evening while attempting to learn to ride a unicycle in the hallway, and told us it had quite knocked him for six. The following weekend, while competing at a country road race at Mingenew, Western Australia, Bill pulled to the side of the track in the braking area at the end of the front straight and toppled off his Honda, dead from a heart attack, perhaps induced by his flat fall. A good man gone too soon.