ROAD NEWS
VALE SHANE RICHARDSON
Not something we often do but this one hurt the racing community here in NZ really hard, so we will try to put something in words,
knowing it will, at best, be a drop in the ocean to those closest. Wainuiomata’ s 29 year-old Shane Richardson was eminently likeable and, here is the real kicker, even more so if you were racing him as a competitor. Sure, Shane was fast and smooth and few could hold a candle to the smiling ace for pace but he was also clean, fair and respectful. His fiercest competitors were also among his closest friends and his far too early demise hit them like a sledgehammer. To his wife, Hannah, his two kids, his family and his nearest and dearest friends, both within and outside the racing community, all we can do is offer our sincere condolences and share a link to a Justgiving site trying to raise some funds to help soften the financial blow the self-employed joiner by day’ s death will have on his family. The first round of the BSB Championship at Oulton Park was going well until an eleven-bike pileup at Turn One of the second Supersport race, where Shane and 21-year-old English rising star Owen Jenner were hit in the ensuing carnage. Jenner died at the track and, despite
the monumental efforts of the medical team, Richardson, flying the flag for us Kiwis back home, died on the way to hospital. As we said earlier, obituaries are not our thing, but like many of you, we love racing. We also love watching Kiwis racing at the top level overseas and live our dream by watching those talented few do what we simply cannot, so the tragedy that claimed Shane and Owen cuts deep. We know it hit especially hard the other Kiwis racing in Europe at the moment, some who have battled Shane on many occasions and enjoyed the challenge and friendship that exuded from the ever-upbeat man that Shane was. It is a harsh and often cruel sport, like many are in the motorsport arena but please take the best wishes of us here at Kiwirider and the motorcycle racing family as a whole with you as you deal with it all and follow your dream. We spend our lives creating with words and when we need them most, they just don’ t do any justice to events like this and we just muddle along trying to cobble inadequate text together and they fall so very short. Gutted. RIP Shane and Owen.
KIWI RIDER 83