88 replies to this topic

[fester82]

I just remembered Sir Jackie Stewart, wasn't he a world class skeet shooter?

[dretceterini]

Lurani was a world class bobsleder

[jarama]

Another world class sportsman who later became a star in motorsport was the late Víctor Palomo.
Víctor was world champion of water skiing, c.1970 IIRC, before making his name in motorsports, mainly motorcycling, crowning himself as the winner of the 750cc-F.I.M. Cup by 1976, if my memory serves me well (the FIM Cup was the ancestor of today's Super Bikes / Super Sports Championships). There were also various GP wins (250cc?, 350cc?).

Carles.

[GeoffR]

Nicolas Vouilloz (Fr), former world downhill mountain bike champion who drove a Peugeot 206 WRC in this year's Monte Carlo Rally. Vouilloz was in 10th place O/R after the first leg but was later forced to retire as a result of broken front left stub axle due to a light off-road excursion.

[Macca]

Going back to Graham Hill, who was mentioned without identifying his sport earlier; he was a member of London Rowing Club, and used their club cap colours for his helmet.

He said there was probably some deep significance in the fact that both of the sports at which he excelled were done sitting-down, and one of them going backwards!


PWM

[Vitesse2]

Originally posted by Macca
Going back to Graham Hill, who was mentioned without identifying his sport earlier; he was a member of London Rowing Club, and used their club cap colours for his helmet.

He said there was probably some deep significance in the fact that both of the sports at which he excelled were done sitting-down, and one of them going backwards!


PWM

He'd also done some motorcycle scrambling, although not to any great standard. In rowing, he stroked the LRC's eight to a win in the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley but his achievements were probably eclipsed by his future wife, Bette, who was part of the Stuart Ladies eight which won their category in the European Games - Graham coached the team though! Somehow one can imagine him relishing the prospect of working with eight fit young ladies ....

[Paolo]

Alexander Wurz : World Champion in BMX mini bicycles.
Teo Fabi : Competitive skying, at international level, albeit not for the Italian Federation, IIRC, but for another country (Brazil ?).
Maria Teresa De Filippis was quite good at horse racing before starting with cars.

Recently , Daniele Massaro, of Juventus and Italian National Team football fame, went rallying (national level) with pretty good results.

[Maldwyn]

Originally posted by Richie Jenkins
Riccardo Patrese too has tried his hand at a few differing sports...

Showjumping & skiing for instance

[D-Type]

Originally posted by Vitesse2


He'd also done some motorcycle scrambling, although not to any great standard. In rowing, he stroked the LRC's eight to a win in the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley but his achievements were probably eclipsed by his future wife, Bette, who was part of the Stuart Ladies eight which won their category in the European Games - Graham coached the team though! Somehow one can imagine him relishing the prospect of working with eight fit young ladies ....

I've never read this before. What year was the ladies' eight?

[Frank S]

Originally posted by Vitesse2

Graham coached the team though! Somehow one can imagine him relishing the prospect of working with eight fit young ladies ....

I'm recalling that the OED editor James Murray had a similar avocation for decades (and decades). Must be the weather, eh?



Frank S

[Jimmy Piget]

Jean-Luc Salomon was an International sprinter before succeeding enough in F3 to be chosen by Team Lotus to fill the works 3rd seat for the 1970 GP de France.
Unfortunately, Jean-Luc met his death the week before the GP in a F3 race at Rouen.

[TFBundy]

In fact Salomon was a European Junior record holder for the 1500metres steeplechase and a 5000m finalist in the 1966 European Championships in Belgrade. Before he quit athletics to go motor racing, the French athletics world thought he might be the successor to Michel Jazy, their great distance running hero of the '60s.

Innes Ireland, as well as shooting deer and fishing, was apparently a reasonable quarter-miler for The London Athletic Club when LAC was Britain's premier club.

More recently Daley Thompson, Olympic Decathlon gold medallist and equally all round unpleasant character, tried a season of one-make Porsche 924 racing in the late '80s but without notable success.

[conjohn]

Peter Eriksson, a Swedish showjumper on the international circuit, is a no mean pedaller of a PRC sportscar in the Swedish Radical Challenge.

Edit - When I think about it, he shares the circuit with disabled, former top alpine skier, Tomas Fogdö, who is still on a learning curve, to put it delicately...

[Felix Muelas]

One of the most valued members of The Spanish Forum is my beloved Pablo Vignone , an Argentine journalist that is a teacher to all of us there.

He is also a lurker here and this time he couldn´t resist the temptation of asking me to translate some notes on his behalf and post them here. Obviously the result is a small disaster in itself, as I am not familiar with some of the terms of other sports and I completely lack the ability of Pablo to tell stories.

Anyway, I am sure these two gentlemen that we are going to present here do deserve to be part of this thread, so let´s go introducing them...

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

"If one can think about two extremely popular sports in Argentina those would be soccer and motor sport, although some would argue that basketball might from time to time challenge motor sport for second spot.
On the one hand we have the story of Vicente Alberto Pernía , born in the town of Tandil, close to Balcarce, Fangio´s birthplace.

His first passion was soccer, and he made his debut on the Argentina’s Premier League ("Primera División") in 1973, as part of the Estudiantes de La Plata Team. Two years later he became part of the Boca Juniors, one of the best known soccer teams in Argentina. Pernía´s position was typically "right wing" and he got selected to play as part of the Argentine National Team. As part of Boca Juniors, Pernía became several times Argentina and South America’s Champion between 1976 and 1979.
He would have taken part in the 1978 World Cup (and hence would have been World Champion with them, as it happened) had an incident not taken place. Unfortunately for him, in 1977, whilst playing with the National Team in the Boca Juniors stadium against Scotland, he got involved in a fight with a player called Willie Johnstone.
The "incident" produced Pernía not being ever again "called" to be part of the National Team.
Apart from that, and in the same year 1978, he became, with Boca Juniors, Champion of the Intercontinental Cup (that is the result of a match between the European Champion and the South American Champion)and, just a month later, still in 1978, he made his debut in motorsports, with a Fiat 128 in a saloon car race.
Retired from soccer in 1982, he switched to motorports.
Pablo Vignone explains how the Pernía "driver" was exactly the opposite of the Pernía "soccer player", in the sense that the rude player was substituted by a fine, precise, and elegant racer. Mid eighties he started driving in the Turismo Carretera series. After some years in it, he became Vice Champion of the TC in 1997. Not a small achievement!
He then had a fight -but not involving any physical contact, I understand- with the authorities, and decided to retire from the sport.

We also have a much more dramatic case in the name of the very well known boxer Víctor Emilio Galíndez , that was Boxing World Champion (or whatever the official name might be) between 1976 y 1979. He was too very attracted by the idea of motorsports and in August 1980 he accepted participating as navigator to Antonio Lizeviche in a Turismo Carretera race.
The car retired and Antonio and Victor got out and started walking back to boxes when another competitor just run over them, killing them both."



(Addenda on Galíndez : Galindez was forced to retire after undergoing surgery to repair two detached retinas. In his brief retirement, Galindez decided that he would pursue one of his dreams of becoming a race car driver. While he was driving at the track on October 25, 1980 his car broke down. As he was waiting along the track for assistance, another car passing by lost control and ran over Galindez. He was killed instantly. © 1998 The Cyber Boxing Zone. Thanks to Matt Tegen for supplying the record. )

[D-Type]

That reminds me - didn't Fangio acquire his nickname 'El Chueco' (bandy legged) on the soccer field?

[Mihai]

Reigning Romanian rally champion is former boxing world champion Mihai Leu. He won the WBO title with the Universum Box Promotion team from Hamburg/Germany with the ring name Löwe (the German translation of his name, Lion - in English) before retiring with injury and starting a second career in rallying. In 2003 Leu drove a Hyundai Accent World Rally Car, winning 3 rallies out of 10 and grabbed the championship equal on points with a group N car.




This year Leu has virtually no chance in retaining his national title. Hyundai’s retirement from the WRC and a tense relationship with the British-based MSD company who was running the South Korean cars left him with a two wheel drive Hyundai Coupé that will probably land him 10 th overall. Mihai Leu is one of a kind, I had a nice interview with him last November, just after clinching the national championship. If interested in reading it, let me know.

[Vitesse2]

Originally posted by D-Type


I've never read this before. What year was the ladies' eight?

After a bit of Googling, it would appear to be in 1954 in Amsterdam, which was the first Women's European Championship. I'm open to correction though, since there don't seem to be any comprehensive rowing stats sites .... :

edit/
Or it might be as early as 1951 in Macon, where there was a women's regatta held in conjunction with the men's European Championship.

[Garagiste]

Barry McGuigan did a spot of rallying IIRC.

[Nanni Dietrich]

Originally posted by uechtel

Wasn´t also one of the more recent Italian Formula 1 drivers (Patrese? de Cesaris?) selected for the national junior alpine skiing team?

Teo Fabi, I think.

Originally posted by Paolo

Recently , Daniele Massaro, of Juventus and Italian National Team football fame, went rallying (national level) with pretty good results.

Massaro played for Milan Football Club, not for Juventus.;)


Now there is Yuri Chechi, who won the Olimpic Games at the rings (I don't know if is the correct name of this gymnastics speciality), that run in italian F. Ford, VW, kart and touring races.

And also famous football player (still in activity!) Fabrizio Ravanelli (Juventus, Lazio and Perugia in Italy, Middlesborough in England, Olympique Marseille in France), got some race in 2003 in touring cars (Alfa Romeo 33 throphy).

[Carlo]

The legendary Fausto Coppi raced with an Alfa Romeo in some events.

Alfa Romeo could use him and his popularity very well for public relations...

Ciao Carlo

[Ian McKean]

Originally posted by Vitesse2


... In rowing, he stroked the LRC's eight to a win in the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley but his achievements were probably eclipsed by his future wife, Bette, who was part of the Stuart Ladies eight which won their category in the European Games

Surely winning the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley is far more prestigious than winning a category at the European Games?

[ggnagy]

Does playing a role of a sports figure on TV count? Craig T Nelson raced in a western US sports 2000 semi pro series as well as in various IMSA series, during his time playing a College Football coach on _Coach_.

[LittleChris]

Didn't JJ Lehto excel in another sport ( mountain biking ? ) with an injury resulting in him being given a carbon fibre knee joint or something similar ? (This being the first time this operation had been perfomed. )

[Graham Clayton]

Prior to competing successfully in hillclimbs and reliability trials around the Sydney area in the immediate period prior to World War 1, Leslie Pye had been a first-class standard cricketer. He played approximately 25 matches for New South Wales in the Sheffield Shield competition between the mid 1890's and the mid 1900's.

[Tim Murray]

The Estonian tennis star Kaia Kanepi, who takes on Britain's Laura Robson at Wimbledon today, apparently 'likes to race rally cars on frozen lakes'. It's not clear whether she actually competes:

http://www.dailymail...aia-Kanepi.html

NB: The Daily Mail is not my newspaper of choice; I found the item via a link from the BBC site.

[Nanni Dietrich]

Fourth in the GTE Am class in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2013, was the Porsche 911 RSR GT3 of Patrick Long-Patrick Dempsey-Joe Foster, entered by Dempsey-Del Piero Racing Team.
Italian soccer star Alessandro Del Piero (former Juventus and Italian Nazionale, and still a Sydney FC player) and Hollywood star Patrick Dempsey joined force.

[D-Type]

Didn't Alain Prost break his nose playing rugby before he started racing?

To set the record straight ten years later. My latest charity shop purchase is Prost's autobiography. And he says:

~ I first broke it when I fell off a friend's shouldesr while we were horsing around one day. And I broke it again when I went roller-skating. And I broke it again - oh, never mind ....

No mention of playing rugby

[Francois78]

Luc Alphand reached 7th place in a Corvette at Le Mans 2006 . He also won Paris-Dakar Rally .
Before motor racing , he was a ski champion with 12 victories in the world cup .

[Lee Nicolle]

Someone mentioned Killy and whether he raced much. I know he also did the Targa Florio with photographer Bernard Cahier. Prost is another - he was good enough at football that a French first division club was interested. And wasn't danny Ongais an established drag racer before he made the transitition to (circuit) motor racing? Jackie Stewart was the front runner to make the British Olympic team in skeet shooting, had a bad day and finished, I think, third whereas the first two were picked for Rome. Wayne Gardner went from bikes to cars, too, but wasn't too successful.

Wayne Gardner was a top 10 runner in the V8s for quite a while and ran his own team.And from memory won a couple of races. And then went on to racing and I believe winning in the Japanese Sports Car championship. So while never a Peter Brock he was no mug! Though on bikes he was never a Mick Doohan or Rossi either. But again defenitly no mug!

[Lee Nicolle]

Not sure if this has been mentioned but Jack Brabham was a good speedway midget racer before he found bitumen!

Alex Zanardi has found himself at the pinnacle of his new sport in wheelchair racing. I read somewhere he was a good soccer player also in his younger days.

Robert Kubica seems to be a very good rally driver these days.

Though I am sure both would prefer to be in the situation they were before their very major injurys.

Edited by Lee Nicolle, 03 July 2013 - 23:16.

[Lemnpiper]

Didnt former Oakland Raider quarterback Ken Stabler take up drag racing ?

[brucemoxon]

Winter Olympic gold-medallist Stephen Bradbury has gone Formula Vee racing in Australia, after getting a taste via a celebrity race at the Grand Prix.

He's a nice, unassuming sort of bloke who was taking his racing seriously enough (without taking himself too seriously) when I spoke to him a couple of years ago.



Bruce Moxon

[JacnGille]

Didnt former Oakland Raider quarterback Ken Stabler take up drag racing ?

Dan Pastorini did.

[Hamish Robson]

Petter Solberg was a former disco dancing champion!

[Collombin]

Winter Olympic gold-medallist Stephen Bradbury has gone Formula Vee racing in Australia, after getting a taste via a celebrity race at the Grand Prix.

He certainly understood the motorsport maxim "to finish first, you must first finish" at the Winter Olympics.

[brucemoxon]

He certainly understood the motorsport maxim "to finish first, you must first finish" at the Winter Olympics.

It's called 'Doing a Bradbury' here now - keeping your head while those about you are losing theirs.




Bruce Moxon

[GMACKIE]

Like this bloke, Bruce.
http://www.youtube.c...p;v=4NMA17v1xnw

[Cavalier53]

Downhill skieer Konrad BartelSKI (what's in a name) did some racing in FF2000 (or was in Sports 2000) in Zandvoort in a car from the Vermeulens. Apparently he grew up in this very flat country which makes his skiing performance all the more remarkable.
Autosport 4-1-79 featured a very convincing article from Maurice Hamilton who'd attended a Jim Russel FF school course. At least it convinced me.... Anyway: One of the pupils was top skier Philippe Roux who went rallying until at least 2006.

And on the topic of racing drivers that turned to other sports: i did not see Prince Bira mentioned yet; he was an Olympic sailor!

[pressman]

Sir Chris Hoy raced at Oulton yesterday in the SR1 Radicals and was quick !!,
Cheers
Steve