Featured In the October 2021 issue of Roadracing World:
When Ginger Molloy decided to become a Grand Prix racer he gave his Matchless G50 a polish, packed a suitcase, filled a toolbox and got a lift to the local train station. It was January, 1963, and Molloy was a tough youngster from Huntly, New Zealand, where he worked down in the coal mines to make money to go motorcycle road racing.
After a 10-hour train ride he arrived at Wellington station, from where he pushed the G50, with toolbox and suitcase perched on the seat, the mile and a bit to the Wellington docks, where he boarded a boat to Southampton, England, a six-week voyage away. When Molloy finally returned home almost a decade later, he was a 500cc World Championship runner-up, a Grand Prix race winner, and he was married, with three kids.
The adventures he had along the way—living on the road like a gypsy, cheating death and ducking and diving to put enough gas in his bikes and food in his mouth—would sound as likely to a modern-day MotoGP rider as would tales of racing on Mars. It is said that history is another country. In this case it’s another planet…
—MotoGP Analysis: The Life Of A Grand Prix Racer 50 Years Ago, by Mat Oxley
When Ginger Molloy finished second in the 1970 500cc World Championship, he lived a very, very different life than today’s MotoGP stars. MotoGP Editor Mat Oxley looks at the difference between top-level racing today and the way it was a half-century ago in the latest issue of Roadracing World!
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