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The King Retires
Darryll King Interview
Words & Pics: Terry Stevenson Article from: DRD #26



The day we all knew would come, has arrived. One of the country’s most successful and gutsiest motocross riders, Darryll King, has finally decided to hang up his boots and call it a day.

He is not your average sportsman. He’s not even an average motocross rider - with no less than 38 New Zealand titles under his belt, plus three Australian Pro Open Motocross titles. DK has been racing motocross bikes around the world professionally since 1987. He has raced against and beaten the best of the best, winning the Belgian, French and German Grand Prix in 1997 - rating as career highlights. In ten years of 500cc World Championship competition, he finished in the top five no less than five times, twice second.

Darryll’s a busy man as he manages the Subway Yamaha race team, runs a swimming pool construction business, and, somewhere in between, coaches motocross.

Darryll King proudly steps down from the sport he loves so much and has committed most of his life to, as the current Open and 250cc class NZ national champion. Earlier this year DK won the Veterans class of the National Four-stroke champs and rode the NZTT championship event the day before going into hospital for a July shoulder operation.

You read it right, at 38 years of age, DK rode through all pain barriers to win both Open four-stoke and 250cc two-stoke classes! He wanted to ride a round of the Australian champs at Wonthaggi instead, but opted for the July NZTT event, only because he couldn’t get a flight back home in time to go into hospital on the Monday!

Following three days in hospital DK was told he had to stay off the bike for the next 12 months to let his shoulder heal properly, giving the 38 year old time to reflect on what he wants to do and where he wants to go in the sport.

It all started when DK suffered a painful blow to his right elbow during a Subway Yamaha team photo session in May, breaking his rotator cuff tendon. “Most of my injuries in the latter part of my career came from stupid things - mistakes where you think you’ve got everything covered. That day, Hamish Dobbyn was riding around wide-open and I was on an old practice bike that Damien had, the tyres were bald, the suspension wasn’t right and I was jumping on the side of the track and just fell off.”

DK re-injured the same shoulder two weeks later in a first-turn crash at Murray Bridge in Adelaide, during the sixth round of the Australian Motocross champs. Perhaps the writing was on the wall?

Yet coming back from injury is nothing new for Darryll, as the burly Hamiltonian smashed his knee in an unfortunate accident during the opening round of the 2005 nationals at Taupo. He spent some time in hospital and couldn’t ride for several months. It wrecked his NZ season, but DK is a man who looks forward, not back, and has a very positive outlook. That attitude took him back to Australia last year where he finished fifth in their championship, adding to his two New Zealand 2006 motocross titles.

And, he’s still on top of his game. Darryll rode in three Australian rounds this year, gaining third overall in the opening round, then placing fourth in the sixth round, before injuring his shoulder in a race two crash. At McKay DK finished seventh overall.

With a strong motocross team his plans were to continue riding for at least another NZ season. Darryll explains, “I always had it on my mind, when was the right time, and I wanted to push it out another year, especially after winning two national titles last year. And having a dominating performance, having a good set up with the team, I thought this year I could go another season easy. Then this injury has came about, I could have ridden through it with some cortisone and gone through to the end of the year and then had the surgery. But the only problem with that is if I were to have another crash, completely rip the tendon off back into the shoulder, it could be a bit more major. The earlier you get it done the more chance the tendon can be repaired properly, and there is a window on it, a timeframe of three months or so to get the tendon fixed. So we are well within that timeframe and I am not normally that sensible but , after getting some good opinions from different doctors, they all said to get it done.”

All the same, there were other things in the motorcycle world which DK said he hadn’t had a chance to do properly, so the injury itself wasn’t a catalyst to retire. “I want to really hammer the safety side of it a lot more. I’ve had a lot of injuries, I’ve counted up 35 broken bones during my racing career, which is quite a lot, and the brace products we use for the neck braces, knee braces, wrist braces, I really want to attack that. That is a kind of exciting project, not that riding isn’t exciting or anything.”

DK also wants to continue managing his Subway Yamaha team. “It’s all coming together in the last few weeks. I didn’t know the extent of the injury until I had an MRI and went to the surgeon. He said ‘It’s pretty bad’ and we were flying out the next morning to go on our family holiday. I had a week in Fiji and I thought ‘Hold on, these things happen for a reason, and the reason is it’s a good time to call it quits and focus on some of these other areas and do them better.”

Darryll shares his proudest moments, “Right at the beginning putting the team together, I really wanted to help lift the profile of the sport in NZ - get a truck on the circuit. Honda did the same within a year which was fantastic. Having Subway on board was fantastic too. Right at the beginning it was great to put that together and since then winning all three titles last year with Damien and myself at the NZ motocross champs, that was pretty good! Honda had done that for four years and we just hadn’t done it. I think my last national title in the motocross before that was in 2001, so it had been quite a while since I had won a title, or Damien had won a title, and to win all three last year just showed that we must be doing something right!

“There have been a lot of highlights right back to Europe. Right back when Darlene and I first went there in ‘92, getting the first grand prix points, finishing 15th and then building up. And then actually winning a moto, winning a GP, winning five GPs, finishing second in the world two times, coming back, having twin daughters and then racing in Australia for seven seasons - winning the title three times in Australia and that’s just the racing side of it.”

“There’s been a lot more on top of that, with the coaching schools that we’re doing, helping out young riders like Hamish Dobbyn, he has turned into a super-star in the last six months. He goes riding with us and we do lap times with all our Yamaha development riders, and he’s as fast as Damien and I!

“At the last school we did, I said to Hamish at the end of the day, ‘Okay, here’s my 450, get on that and show us what lap time you can do, you’ve got five laps to do it’. He beat it by a second straight away, within four laps and then I said, ‘Okay, give me the bike back. I’m going to go out and see if I can beat you as well’, and lucky I did, by a second.”

DK rates Dobbyn to make it to world level. “Yes definitely, no doubt! He first rode a DS80 with me out at Whatawhata and I used to spend every week out there with him for about two and a half years.”

DK’s long and successful career began on a Honda QA50, the same bike that also brought younger brothers Shayne and Damien into motorcycling. Shades of Dobbyn, DK went on to win the 85cc class (12-15 years) at the 1984 NZ Junior champs, backed up with the Junior 125cc crown the following year, before DK made a huge impact in his first senior race at Levin, back in early 1985. Riding in two classes he finished third overall in the 125cc class, and second in the Open class, behind Malcolm Moore - and in front of Open champ Murray Anderson! Just turned 16, King won all four Junior 125cc races the previous day!

Helping other riders to push themselves and grow remains a strong motivator for DK, and Sam Leighton (North Auckland) is an 18 year old rider who will ride for the Subway team this season. “He’s a young kid and we can see the talent in him. We do Yamaha development training schools, with riders such as Hamish Dobbyn, Jesse Donnelly, Jayden Jessup, and Kieran Lee. We work with them every two or three months, and he’s been coming along to some of those schools over the last year, and I thought it was a good time.”
 
Darryll said it wasn’t a difficult decision to end his illustrious career, “It wasn’t because I’ve had a really good last few years of my career - still being able to win. I still had motivation to go out practicing and train my butt off when I needed to for the right events. If I was at the end of my career and struggling with keeping my body together and having the motivation to go out and ride and race, and then having to make the decision to stop at the same time, it would have been a lot harder. I knew I was at my best when I chose to stop, pretty close to it, and I can now go on and fight some other battles in other areas of business. And that will be a blast, I’m really looking forward to that.”

And what about that last race? “Two titles and I rode really well. Rode fantastic actually, the track was amazing, it was rough and I rode as good as I’ve ever ridden and I know I finished on a high, so it was really good!”

Darryll King is the model professional sportsman. Other riders take note – if you want to be seen in the right light for sponsors and media folk, all you have to do is use DK as your role model.

Darryll King, take a bow. You have entertained thousands of motocross fans here and around the world over three decades and helped hundreds of riders with your stunning riding ability and sound advice. Any which way you look at it, NZ motocross will never be the same without Darryll King lining up on the start gate. However, DK has such a passion for his sport, don’t be surprised if you see the King don his boots for selected races at some point in the future.        DRD