I missed this at the time. I remember him being famous when I was a kid. Some others on here will remember him, no doubt. Geoff Duke obituary Motorcycle racer who won the world championship six times please log in to view this image Geoff Duke is congratulated by wellwishers on his victory in the Isle of Man TT race in 1950. Photograph: Bert Hardy/Getty Mat Oxley Geoff Duke, who has died aged 92, was the first British star of the motorcycling world championships, inaugurated in 1949, a year before the Formula 1 car championship. He won his first world titles for the British Norton concern in 1951, before moving to the Italian Gilera factory, where he achieved the first world championship hat-trick, taking the 500cc crown in 1953, 1954 and 1955. Born into an age when motorcycle racers looked more like matinee idols than rock stars, Duke brought new standards of professionalism to the sport. He was meticulous in everything he did and his riding style was unerringly smooth, a crucial factor at a time when chassis, tyre and suspension design still had a long way to go. Like all top racers, Duke rarely stopped contemplating how to extract more speed from his machine, from himself and even from his riding kit. In the early 1950s he instructed his tailor to create a tight-fitting, one-piece leather suit that would cheat the wind better than the usual two-piece outfits. One-piece leathers quickly became the norm and remain so today. Many motorcycle champions come from motorcycling families, but Duke was not one of them. He was born in St Helens, Lancashire, to Robert, a baker and confectioner, and his wife, Lily (nee Tague). At the age of 10 Geoff bought his first motorcycle – a 1923 belt-drive Raleigh – for 10 shillings, by pooling his savings with a few friends. The ageing machine was carefully hidden from his parents and underwent a full rebuild, until the gang ran out of pennies. Unable to afford a new throttle-actuating cable, Duke showed the resolve that makes champions by using a piece of string, tied between the carburettor and the sprung seat. To accelerate he would stand up, to decelerate he would sit down. As a teenager at the start of the second world war, Duke instructed dispatch riders in the Signals Corps. He competed for the first time in military trials events – essentially contests of slow-speed control over difficult terrain. please log in to view this image FacebookTwitterPinterest Geoff Duke in action. Photograph: ANL/REX Shutterstock A fine trials rider, he was employed in Norton’s trials department after the war. However, he already had his sights set on something a little faster. With Norton’s backing, he made his road-racing debut in 1948, starting out on the most treacherous racetrack of them all, the Isle of Man TT course. His rise in this dangerous sport was meteoric: he won a Clubmans TT – for Isle of Man beginners – the following year and in 1950 came within a single point of winning the 500cc world championship. If he had not suffered two tyre blow-outs, he would have been crowned world champion just three years after taking up road-racing. In 1951 there were no setbacks. Despite Norton’s ageing single-cylinder engines, Duke took control of the 500 and 350cc world championships and probably would have repeated the title double in 1952, but for injury. Although he had made Norton great again, the Birmingham-based manufacturer treated him with disdain. When he suggested to the managing director, Gilbert Smith, that they needed a faster, more advanced machine like Gilera’s rapid four-cylinder 500, Smith observed that Duke should attend fewer dinner dances. Duke had the last laugh: Gilera offered him a ride for 1953 and Norton never won another world championship. The five seasons at Gilera were his golden years. He won more than half the 24 grand prix events in his first three seasons with the Italian marque, at the same time becoming the first rider to win premier-class world titles for different manufacturers. Geoff Duke at the German Grand Prix at the Solitude circuit, Stuttgart, in 1954 And yet the Gilera was not an easy machine. Although it was fast, its road-holding was less than ideal. Duke needed all his technical nous to make the machine more manageable. He almost certainly would have won more world titles if he had not been punished for his actions at the 1955 Dutch TT, where he supported strike action threatened by the poorer, privateer riders. These members of the so-called Continental Circus were not the No 1 attraction at grand prix events, but they made up most of the grid. They lived like circus performers, earning just enough at one event to get to the next. In standing with them, Duke was given a six-month suspension that forced him to miss the first two rounds of the 1956 world championship, which went to a young John Surtees. Injury sidelined Duke for much of 1957 and he hung up his leathers at the end of 1958. Thereafter he lived on the Isle of Man, where he built up a successful shipping and ferrying business. Duke’s first wife, Pat (nee Reid), died in 1975. A second marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, Daisy (nee Hollis), and his sons, Peter and Michael, from his first marriage, and grandchildren Adam, Alex, Benjamin, Chloe and Kirsty. • Geoffrey Ernest Duke, motorcycle racer, born 29 March 1923; died 1 May 2015
Another of the motorcycle greats along with Hailwood, Surtees, Agostini, Read, and Sheene, two others Hocking and Redman I never actually saw and Surtees was at a show not racing. RIP Geoff Duke.
Wonderfully talented rider, bearing in mind the times he was racing to reach 92 is amazing, many didn't survive to the end of their racing career. RIP.
Like Stirling Moss he was quoted by people not even around at the time, which shows how important he had been in his sport. Anyone speeding in a car would be asked if he thought he was Stirling Moss, anyone on two wheels whether a push bike, moped or motor bike going by would draw a comment of "Who does he think he is, Geoff Duke?". He was at his peak when I was four or five but even over 15 or more years later you would still hear people coming out with the Geoff Duke remark. Quite a testament to his impression on the public consciousness.
