Post by speedyguy on Jan 31, 2014 23:31:01 GMT
RON JOHNSON article
by John Hyam
ONLY the best was good enough for former Australian international speedway rider Ron Johnson. He rode like a star - and he lived like a star.
Ron’s second wife Ruby recalls: “He knew how to live. He was riding for New Cross, and though I never discussed with him the money he made, we lived at the Dorchester Hotel, which was - and probably still is - the number one hotel in London.
“He had his suits made by the best tailors and frequented the top restaurants. His bikes were looked after at the track and he travelled around by taxi from track to track. He was idolised by the crowds - always signing autographs at the stadiums, which were packed. Ron was the drawcard wherever he went.”
In the 1930s, Johnson was the equivalent of a modern day Premier League footballer. The glory road began at Duntocher near Glasgow in Scotland on February 24, 1907.
After six years, his parents took him from the Highlands to tropical Western Australia - and it was there, on the sweeping Claremont circuit in Perth, that Ron Johnson (he dropped the ‘T’ from his name to make it easier for track announcers to pronounce) climbed onto the first step of the stairway to speedway stardom.
As a teenager, Ron was a useful boxer and jockey, but his passion was motorcycles and he took a step nearer his destiny when he met speedway rider Charlie Page in 1926.
"What’s speedway?’ asked Ron. Page told him, and said ‘a wild sort of guy’ named Johnnie Hoskins had opened a track in Perth. In no time at all, through Page, Ron was on the programme.
Ron was among the original pioneers who set out for England in 1928, where the sport had made its British debut at High Beech in February that year.
With Charlie Datson, Sig Schlam, Steve Langton, Dickie Smythe, Frank Arthur and Vic Huxley, Ron arrived in London on May 5.
The 1928 season was one of big money for Ron, who reckoned to average £300 a week at a time when a working wage was £2.50 a week.
The following year saw the introduction of team racing to speedway, which established the sport and lifted it above its circus-style image.
Ron signed a contract with Fred Mockford to race for Crystal Palace. It was a link that was to continue from 1934, when the side switched to New Cross, right up until 1951.
It was while racing in an open event at Exeter in 1929 that Ron had his first serious injury, when he collided with the safety fence and lost the little toe on his right foot. And in 1931, in an accident at Crystal Palace, he lost the top of two fingers on his left hand when he caught them in his bike’s primary chain.
He was in the first Australian Test team that beat England 35-17 at Wimbledon on June 30, 1930. He raced 54 times in the once-traditional series, making his last appearance in the Third Test of 1949, scoring 12 points as Australia went down 62-46 on his home track at New Cross.
In 1933, Ron won the British Championship - then a match race contest - by beating Wimbledon’s Claude Rye, but later lost the title to West Ham’s Harold ‘Tiger’ Stevenson.
Individually, Ron qualified for the never-held World Championship Final at Wembley in 1939 and was runner-up to fellow Australian, the brilliant Vic Duggan, in the 1948 Speedway Riders Championship - then equal to a world championship - a performance that earned him his highest world ranking, a second to Duggan in the 1948-9 listings above such stars as Jack Parker, Wilbur Lamoreaux, Alec Statham and Tommy Price.
Two other prestigious titles also went his way, the 1945 and 1946 London Riders Championships.
But it was as a team man that he was best, helping Crystal Palace to the London Cup in 1931 and New Cross in 1934, 1937 and 1947. There were league championship medals too with New Cross in 1938 and 1948.
Perhaps the most traumatic and tragic incident in Ron’s racing career came in 1935 when he was involved in a crash with team-mate Tom Farndon on the eve of the Star Final at Wembley. Farndon died, and Ron was badly hurt.
An out of step stretcher bearer may have saved the life of Australian international Ron Johnson when he crashed at Wimbledon on August 1, 1949. Johnson was following his New Cross partner Cyril Roger for a 5-1 heat win when Roger faltered in front of him and Johnson fell. Wimbledon’s Cyril Brine ran into Johnson as he rose to his feet, fracturing his skull.
According to fans who saw the crash, one of the stretcher bearers was out of step - and the jolting this caused may have dislodged a blood clot that was threatening to fatally starve his brain of oxygen.
Stretcher bearers are trained to walk in step when carrying people - but this time a bearer’s non-compliance may have been the factor that decided whether Johnson lived or died.
When he was recovering in hospital, Johnson poo-pooed the stretcher bearer theory and insisted he lived because of the low protection his helmet gave to the back of his neck. He said, “Otherwise I would have been killed.”
After the crash, it was another 11 years before Johnno - by then 52 years old - would accept that his racing career was over. Before the crash, he had top scored for Australia in the third test at New Cross and was about to lead them in the fourth test at Harringay.
The doctors told Johnson he should stay in hospital for six months, but he went home before the end of the month. “I’ll ride again in 1950,” he told his fans.
His come-back was to be a disaster. Besides his high-flying form of the 1930s, when speedway resumed in 1946, Johnson was one of the sport’s top five stars. In 1949, he had been the first challenger for Belle Vue skipper Jack Parker’s ‘Golden Helmet’ Match Race Championship.
In 1946 he scored 179 points, in 1947 it was 194, in 1948 it was 239 points and in 1949 he had scored 186 league points. On the title front, Johnson won the London Riders Championship in 1945 and 1946.
Johnson’s 1950 return showed a marked contrast. He struggled to score just 29 points for the Rangers. The following season, he scored 13 points for New Cross, then went Ashfield in the Second Division and managed 35. His racing licence was taken from him following a blackout during one match.
Johnson admitted his racing skills had gone and he returned to Australia in 1952. In 1953, he spent months in a West Australian hospital where lumber punctures were part of his treatment to reduce pressure on the brain that were causing him headaches. But he couldn’t get racing out of his blood and made a come-back at the Claremont Speedway in 1954-55 and won the West Australian Championship.
Johnson was inspired to make a return to Britain and, after a protracted battle with officialdom, was cleared to race again and signed for West Ham. In a handful matches in a reserve berth, he scored one point.
His pitiful track form left him without money and it needed a testimonial fund organised by the ‘Speedway News’ to pay his fare back to Australia. But the desire to recapture the heady form of the late 1940s still burned in the old veteran. When he heard that Johnnie Hoskins was promoting at New Cross in 1960, Johnson returned to England.
The New Cross return was a sorry one. In a second-half race he came off when junior rider Jim Chalkley passed him on the inside. He went into the Provincial League with Edinburgh but failed to score a point in five matches. He ended the year working with the track staff at Belle Vue, and eventually returned to Australia.
Some critics of his failed come-backs blamed the authorities for the debacles of his declining speedway years. They maintained the ignomies could have been avoided by refusing to licence him to race again.
Johnson’s life ended tragically. In 1968, he was involved in a road accident near Perth, Western Australia, and ended his days in a wheelchair, and died on February 4, 1983, aged 75 years.
Even then there was more tragedy. Johnson had been dead for five days before a neighbour found him. Johnson was buried in an unmarked grave. It needed a fund, established by Londoner Bob Buckingham in 1992, to raise £1,000 for a headstone to honour a great rider who should be remembered as such rather than the struggling no-hoper of his last racing years.