As the year of hard work winds down and we gear up for the silly season we kick off our Christmas countdown with a look at what the busiest bloke in bikes has been up to.
He’s Australia’s golden boy of motorcycling. Well, the truth is he’s probably been regarded as Australia’s golden boy of motorcycling since the unassuming spray painter from Taree picked up his first world superbike championship in just his second attempt 14 years ago.
But for a bloke who retired from world championship racing at the end of 2008 he’s shown little sign of slowing down — both on and off the track — and as the years roll on, he seems to be only taking on more. Fitting, I s’pose, for a bloke who didn’t start racing in the Australian championships until the ripe old age of 26.
These days, the guy is seriously busy. In the last few years alone, and in no particular order, he has launched a promotional events company called Troy Bayliss Events, taken on and relaunched the Australian Motorcycle Expo scene, was granted wildcard rides in two rounds of the 2015 World Superbike Championship, got a guernsey to race in Marc Marquez’ Superpristigio dirt track event in Spain, instigated, hosted and raced in the world renowned Troy Bayliss Classic and Troy Bayliss Scramble events, relaunched his international racing career in the hotly contested AMA Pro Flat Track series in America, broke his leg, picked up a couple of Australian racing titles (his first, no less) and raced as a co-driver a couple of times in the Australian Porsche Carrera Cup Championship. And that’s just off the top of my head.
But the one thing that will firmly stamp him as the bloke that can do no wrong will be if he can pull off turning the Australian racing scene from the fractured and controversial bag of bickering blokes it is at the moment into a single, successful and professional race series. A series where the teams and riders reap rewards of international recognition for their focus, forking-out and hard work.
He’s trying. He stole the limelight at his very own expo when he announced he’d have a crack at promoting the official Australian racing series. Not only that, he also announced when standing on his own stage that he’d enter a factory-supported two-rider Ducati team, too.
Bayliss’ new motoSBK championship will launch as a summer series at the end of 2016 following the completion of the current ASBK series where it will run from October to April until the 2019-2020 season.