I could fill a separate book with every race of my motocross career and every feeling I had in the build-up, on the start line and at the end – I can remember every single one.
There were few better than the end of the 1997 British championship. At a week-long festival before the final weekend at Desertmartin, I had a couple of huge crashes landing on a double jump that followed a big tabletop. Twice I picked my rut too late and ended up cross rutting – when your front wheel goes into one rut and your rear is in another – and twice I crashed. I became really anxious and scared to do the double jump again over the weekend.
Dad could see my confidence was completely gone and gave a senior rider called Adam Lyons a few quid to do a track walk with me. He helped me cope by talking me through exactly how to deal with the jumps with those deep ruts. When the first race came I had a great start, leading through the first few corners to the big tabletop. The 60cc bikes couldn’t quite clear the flat part like bigger, more powerful bikes, so I landed on it and bounced down the other side towards the jump where I’d had those huge crashes a couple of days before. When you’re ahead with a clear track in front of you, it’s the best opportunity to make time on your rivals, so I picked the rut I was aiming for as soon I found the down slope of the tabletop and nailed it first time. From that point my confidence was back, I built a massive lead and ended up winning all four races that weekend to become British champion.
There were so many special moments that year. In the build-up, I was interviewed by Stephen Watson, the BBC’s sports presenter and a big motorcycling fan. He had asked me then about my future plans and I told him to watch out for the Rea name.
I also won the Irish and Ulster Motocross Championships back home. British Prime Minister Tony Blair even wrote to congratulate me!
Dad did a great job of keeping my feet on the ground though. I wanted the world and couldn’t wait for it to come to me. I remember later being desperate for some white Tech 7 Alpinestar boots and eventually Mum went against Dad’s wishes and bought me a pair, but he wasn’t happy. He believed you had to strive and wait for the good things in life. Mum was the same, but I could manipulate her a bit better.
Mum is a very loving, nurturing character. She can get a bit stressed sometimes and have very strong opinions but will often back them up if she’s challenged on them. She was the glue that held the whole family together both at home and while we were on the schoolboy motocross adventure.
While Dad was sympathetic as I sat in that puddle at Desertmartin, he never showed much emotion. He is a quiet, humble man who likes to just watch from a distance, often puffing away on a cigarette.
In the final race of my second year in the modified 50cc class, I got pipped to the championship by my good friend Martin Barr and bawled my head off. He was very calm and said, ‘Look, you’re going to get beaten sometimes and you’ll just have to accept it.’
At the time that just pissed me off even more! But now I feel I’m a really well-rounded rider and I have my dad to thank for that. I’m always trying to make my sons see that a pair of white Tech 7 Alpinestars is something you have to long for. But Alpinestars are one of my biggest and most loyal sponsors, so my four-year-old son Jake’s already got a pair. I had to wait until I was 14.
I was always aware I had a responsibility to do my bit and, because I was a terrible mechanic, I was happy to wash the bikes down and polish everything until it shone. Dad often said to me, ‘While things might not look perfect and you might not be wearing the latest gear, your bikes will always be good.’ As usual he was right – thanks to him my bikes never missed a beat and never broke down.
He must have spent thousands of hours fettling the bikes and driving thousands of miles for me to go racing. He would never put me down, but I knew if we were travelling in silence I hadn’t done a great job. He never went over the top when I won either; he’s not the kind to spray the champagne.
I learned so much in those years just by racing and trying to get better: How to apply the throttle to get maximum traction out of the corners on dirt; how to use the front and rear brakes in combination – applying and releasing to create a balance and prevent the bike pitching back and forth too much. I worked out how to release the clutch lever to make gear changes as smoothly as possible. And I learned how to plan a race. Those 15-minute-plus races were incredibly physical, absorbing bumps and landings from jumps, muscling the bike into and out of corners. I found any way I could to make the races less physical, by taking different, smoother lines or adjusting my body position to make riding less tiring.
When you’re riding bar-to-bar with 40 other riders going down to the first corner, you develop this balance of aggression and caution, a kind of sixth sense of what the other riders are going to do. After years of those, launching off the start line of a World Superbike race with three riders on each row of the grid is honestly not that daunting.
Motocross is so raw and is still my first love. We can’t even go to a private World Superbike test now without two 40ft trucks, plus the hospitality unit to water and feed around 40 staff. But when I’m at home I can put my motocross bike in the back of my van and go and meet my friends at the track and have a great day riding, having fun. I really love that, but I think if motocross was my job the enjoyment might be different.
I always arrange a motocross camp before each World Superbike season. I put myself through race simulations of about the same time length as a World Superbike race – around 35 minutes – to switch my brain and my muscles on again after a few weeks off the bike. In track racing, the speeds are a lot faster but the environment is extremely controlled. In motocross, the track is always changing and you have to be so alert to all those variations.
My annual camps remind me of my early motocross years, which were one long fantastic adventure. Mum and Dad bought a bigger motorhome and we had what we called the ‘coffin bed’ above the workshop which I shared with Richard, and the two of us had Chloe, a wee baby at the time, in between us. We’d often get a late ferry back on the Sunday night and my parents would leave us asleep in the motorhome and wake us on the Monday morning for school.
But if the racing was going from strength to strength, school definitely wasn’t.
Mum and Dad had said that if I wanted to carry on with motocross, I’d have to pass the 11-plus. I did, but I ended up the only kid from Ballynure to go to my senior school, Larne Grammar – no Philip, no anyone. I knew from the first time I got on the bus just outside the house that I wasn’t going to be happy. I struggled from the first day and found it difficult to make friends.
I want to say now that Larne Grammar was a fantastic educational institution. My business studies teacher, Miss Herron, my Spanish teacher, Miss Beggs, and my technology teacher, Mr Lee, are amazing people. But I found it pretty tough. In my first three years there, I really felt what it’s like to be bullied. And it’s not a nice feeling at all.
You probably know about the religious divide in Northern Ireland and how dramatically it has affected people’s lives over the years, especially during the Troubles in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. The Good Friday Agreement, which brought about a permanent peace in the province, was signed in 1998, just a few months before I went to Larne Grammar, a mixed school taking children from Protestant and Catholic families.
My naïve country upbringing hadn’t prepared me for life in a school where, to some kids, religion was something to hang on to. The guy who was bullying me was a Catholic, which I couldn’t have given two shits about because I had as many Catholic friends as Protestant in my motocross world. But where it gets bat-shit crazy is how it all started – with a Kevin Schwantz pencil case done out in his famous Pepsi colours. You know the Pepsi colours: red, white and blue. Yep, the same as the Union flag. And this, I kid you not, is what kicked it off in school.
My friend Martin Barr lived on a housing estate just outside Ballyclare and the kerbstones there were painted red, white and blue – not unlike the rumble strips at the Assen TT Circuit – obviously