REES HONOURED WITH
HALL OF FAME INDUCTION
T
he honours just keep piling up for the
Bay of Plenty’s Tony Rees. The 50-year-
old Whakatane man was inducted into
Motorcycling New Zealand’s Hall of
Fame during the MNZ awards night
function in Queenstown in May, the
latest honour in an impressive list of awards
and achievements that the popular superbike
star has garnered over his long career.
It was certainly a sweetener for the Honda
rider, who had been unable to extend
his tally of national title wins on the race
track this season because of an injury.
Trophies began spilling off Rees’ mantelpiece
from the day he started road-racing in the
1980s – he become the Shell Rider of the Year
in 1987, won the NZ Castrol Six-Hour Endurance
Race in 1988 and competed with top-10 results
in Japan, Malaysia, Australia and Belgium.
He was ready to have a taste of World Superbike
Championship action in 1990 and raced the
final round of the series at Manfeild that year,
finishing sixth overall for the weekend.
Rees was named New Zealand Road-
racer of the Year in 2005.
He won the national Hill Climb title (during the Burt
Munro Challenge week) in 2016 and, also in 2016, won
the Robert Holden Memorial trophy at Whanganui’s
world-famous Cemetery Circuit for a record seventh
time. His first Robert Holden trophy win was in 1990.
Rees won national Open Sports Production
class titles in 1997, 1998 and 1999, before winning
the premier superbike crown in 2001, 2005
and 2017. He remains one of New Zealand’s
pre-eminent motorcycle road racers.
Rees was belatedly confirmed as 2017 New
Zealand Superbike Champion in April last year –
the delay following a mix-up with results and the
legal wrangling that followed – and then, sadly, he
was not able to defend his title when he crashed
and injured himself racing in December just a few
16 KIWI RIDER
Words & pics: Andy McGechan
Whakatane’s Tony Rees (Honda CBR1000RR), the latest
inductee into Motorcycling New Zealand’s Hall of Fame
weeks before the start of the 2018 nationals.
Before his 2017 superbike title win, it had been
a long time between drinks for the multi-time
champion, with his previous national superbike
title win coming 12 years earlier, in 2005,
making his 2017 victory even more special.
“Obviously I had not contested every
championship season since 2005 and I wasn’t
originally intending to race the nationals in the
2017 season either. I was merely going to act as
mechanic for my boys (Mitchell and Damon), but
they said to me ‘Hey, come on dad, you’re still
fast, join us on the race track’. And so I did.”
It certainly brought a smile to Tony Rees’ face