WORDS OF WISDOM FROM DARRYLL KING

Yesterday we featured the first part of two in our sit-down interview with Kiwi motocross legend Darryll King and there’s still an awful lot of anecdotes and wisdom that he can pass on.

And so today we carry on the conversation with the man who was one of New Zealand’s pathfinders and pioneers on the international motocross scene, alongside his younger brother Shayne King, in the early 1990s.

“It’s important to do the little trips away to places like Australia first because it’s a big step heading straight to Europe or the United States,” Darryll King continues. “I remember my first trip to Tahiti as a 16-year-old. I got there a day before my dad flew over and I was homesick to the max.

“I think the golden rule is just to bite the bullet and leave New Zealand, make sure you’re on a good bike, make sure you’re fit when you leave and make sure you’re ready. Just piece all those things together first, but that can sometimes be tricky too.

“You can still do the extra work and put in all those extra hours on the track, but then you get an injury and you’ve got to start again. Kiwis are a special breed because we just want to make things happen. A lot of kids have been brought up on a farm.

“We didn’t have the internet when we were growing up, so we were just out on the farm riding all the time. We worked hard on the farm too, pulling thistles or burying dead sheep, and that made us tough. Kids can head off in the wrong direction these days by spending too much time watching tv.

Former Taranaki man Darryll King, pictured here at a race meeting near Whakatane in 1985. Photo by Andy McGechan, BikesportNZ.com

“Walking the track before racing it is very important and perhaps kids these days don’t do that enough. Hawera’s Daryl Hurley was great back in the day when he’d head out on a track walk. I go and give the track a peek all the time too, to see how it’s changing and how ruts and berms are developing.

“I’ll spend a bit of time before each race just visualising what’s going to happen. I’ll sit in a chair, closed my eyes for five minutes and imagine the race, all the jumps, all the corners. I’ll think about what went wrong in the race before. I always want to win, but it gets harder now that I’m older and I’m riding a 2005-model bike.

“The likes of (young Australian superstars) Jett and Hunter Lawrence have a crew of ‘spotters’ out on the tracks in the US, watching out for track developments for them. Riders here could have mum and dad, brothers and sisters watching out for lines for them.

“At the GPs, I always had some really good people looking out for things … we didn’t have video cameras back then that could be brought back to the camper, but we did have spotters giving us reports. (Belgian legend) Joel Smets had about 10 spotters, all around the track, bringing back advice for him and that was always more than we had.

“To the young ones today I say it all starts with a dream. Do you want to be world champion, American champion, Australian champion, national champion or just club champion? Then just save up, work hard, put plans in place and go and make those dreams happen.”

The likes of Christchurch’s Dylan Walsh, Tauranga’s Josiah Natzke and Waitoki’s Cole Davies are all currently giving it a crack in Europe or the United States and it’s hopefully just a matter of time before we see other Kiwi hopefuls joining them on the world stage.

Meanwhile, as it is interesting to note Levi Townley’s 85cc class success (in The Netherlands this month) is New Zealand’s first junior motocross world title, it is also worth recognising that even such a small country as New Zealand had already produced an incredible seven senior motocross world championship winners in the past (with 12 world titles between them) – Taranaki’s Shayne King (500cc world title, on a KTM in 1996); Taupo’s Ben Townley (MX2/250cc world title, on a KTM in 2004); Pukekohe’s Katherine Prumm (women’s world titles, on a Kawasaki in 2006 and again in 2007); Bombay’s Tony Cooksley (Veterans’ Motocross World Cup Champion, on a Yamaha in 2007); Hamilton’s Darryll King (Veterans’ Motocross World Cup Champion, on a Yamaha in 2012); Hawera’s Daryl Hurley (over-40 years’ veterans’ motocross world champion, at Glen Helen, in the USA, on a Husqvarna in 2016 and then again on a Suzuki in 2018) and Otago’s Courtney Duncan (women’s world championship titles, on a Kawasaki in 2019, 2020, 2021 and again in 2023).

The yet-to-be-named Kiwi contingent that will head to this year’s MXoN event, set for Winchester in England in October, will certainly do well to draw inspiration from the likes of Motueka’s Josh Coppins, with a staggering 14 Motocross of Nations campaigns under his wheels, Taupo’s former MX2 world champion Ben Townley, Opotiki’s evergreen Cody Cooper and the King boys … because they’ve surely proved that underdogs can sometimes bite.

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MAIN PHOTO ABOVE: Former Taranaki man Darryll King, pictured here racing for the Husqvarna factory team at Namur, in Belgium, in 2000. His team-mate at that time was none other than Belgian icon Stefan Everts.