Cover Story Cycles of Life World Champion Motorcyclist Lives Full Life in Monterey Despite Career-Ending Injury January 2007

by Dan Shafer
Images by D. M. Troutman

It’s been 14 years since Wayne Rainey lay on a race track in Misano, Italy, feeling the most intense pain of his 24-year motorcycle racing career. Fourteen years since what he terms a “slight miscalculation” hurled him from the 500cc bike which was traveling 133 mph at the time and sent him tumbling into a gravel pit. Fourteen years since he last mounted a motorcycle to practice his hobby and occupation: World Championship Racer.

Those who knew the scrappy, determined Rainey before the accident would probably be unsurprised to hear that he is busier than ever these days with a full plate of activities that would tire a lesser man. And he has also begun putting his rich and successful life into perspective.

“Only in the last little while has it begun to dawn on me how really successful I was in my chosen profession,” said Rainey with an embarrassed smile that seems to dance perpetually at the corners of his mouth.

As he and his 14-year-old son, Rex, are discovering together, Rainey was an exceptional world-class athlete. He won three consecutive 500cc Grand Prix World Championships and was well on his way to winning an unprecedented fourth when he was injured for the final time in Italy.

Rainey added numerous other titles to his glittering career in what many describe as the Golden Age of Motorcycle Racing, the late 1980s and early 1990s. He and a partner won the prestigious Suzuki 8 Hours endurance race in Japan. Prior to that, he had won the 1983 and 1987 AMA American Superbike Championships.

“I’ve raced on almost every continent,” he remembered, “I used to travel 200,000 miles each year racing my motorcycle.” Which, helps explain why he now prefers to stay closer to his Monterey Peninsula home in order to spend time with Rex and his wife Shae, whom he’s known since childhood.

Rainey currently resides in the Bay Ridge community where his house overlooks his much-beloved Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway. He is in the final stages of building a new Spanish bungalow style home in the newly emerging Montera development.

“I won’t be able to see the track,” he said wistfully, “but I can still hear the motorcycles when they’re running there and having a house that’s all on one level and built from the beginning to be accessible for me will be a great advantage.”

Rainey’s current home was built while he was riding the circuit and finished only months before his accident.

“I came back from the hospital and had to install an elevator, ramps, stair-climbers, the whole thing,” he remembered.

“When you’re living in that kind of setting full-time, you become aware of what doesn’t work well for you.” He’s taking those issues into account as he works closely with local architect David Martin and builder Jerry Stepanik to construct his new residence.

Why Monterey?
So, what led a Southern California boy who had traveled the entire world to settle in Monterey? While Rainey cites a host of reasons, the one that stands out the most is tranquility.

“Nothing I’ve ever seen or experienced compares to this area,” he said. “It is so peaceful, so calming, so beautiful. And I love the small-town feel in a place where you don’t have to sacrifice a lot of the advantages of larger cities. I’ve had a home in Barcelona, but I’m telling you, it can’t compare to Monterey.” He cites the valleys, beaches, light traffic flow, and the “laid-back attitude” as some of the area’s best features.

Rainey leads an active life here. He and his wife enjoy dining out often and attending the local music scene and its festivals, the multiple auto events such as the annual McCall Motorworks event at the Monterey Airport, the big-name golf tournaments, and of course the major racing events at Laguna Seca.

Among his other activities, Rainey has until recently served on the Board of Directors of the raceway, which has a turn named after him. The Rainey Curve is a medium-speed acute left-hander that follows immediately after the infamous Corkscrew.

“I got so busy that I’ve asked to step down from the Board and become a consultant,” he said.

The raceway is one of the main features that drew him to Monterey. “When I was actively racing,” he recalled, “we’d race and test here once a year, so this was a regular stop on the tour. I first raced here in 1982 and fell in love not only with the track but with the area.

Another thing Rainey loves about Monterey is that, “You get to meet lots of different kinds of people.”

Holding on to Life
Rainey grew up in Southern California, the oldest of three children in a family that was in the construction business. While his mother sent him to church irregularly, “I didn’t have much to do with faith while I was growing up,” he said. But he’d gotten enough of a taste of the meaning and value of religious experience that when he found himself in 1993 with an excruciatingly painful broken spine on the track in Italy,

“I reached out to the Jesus I remembered from my youth. I said, ‘If you’re there, I’m not ready to go yet.’ I knew that I might well die on that track. I could feel myself slipping into darkness. I gave my life to Him that day.”

As soon as he had done that, Rainey said his rapidly fading vision returned and, along with it, the searing pain he’d been experiencing until a few moments before when he was sure death was near.

“It was really strange. It was like God said, ‘Okay, if you wanna live this life, it’s not gonna be easy. But I’m gonna let you live.’“

Rainey said racing “gave me a lot but it also took a lot. I know this is in God’s plan for me, and I know my faith in God is stronger than it ever would have been had the accident not happened.” He said that when something as bad as his accident happens, “You just know there’s no way you can do it yourself, that you just need to call on God. There’s no other help.”

Today, Rainey and his family are active members of Calvary Chapel in Monterey. “I love it,” he said with a broad grin. “I have lots of good friends there I know I can count on and trust.”

You Can Take the Man Out of the Race...
After six months of grueling surgery, therapy, and recovery, Rainey — paralyzed from the chest down and confined to a wheelchair — had to decide what to do with the rest of his life. Unsurprisingly, he decided to stay in racing, taking charge of Yamaha’s 250cc factory team on the Grand Prix circuit. He worked hard for two years, replacing the equally legendary Kenny Roberts as operator of the Yamaha 500cc team.

But the pace as an owner-operator wasn’t much slower than that of a racer and the travel and work began to take its toll on Rainey’s then-fragile body. In 1999, he retired from the cycle racing circuit to take up permanent residence in Monterey. That’s when he began to notice the little things that made his first home less than nicely adapted to his needs.

Rainey’s “need for speed” diminished only slightly, though, and it wasn’t long before his old racing buddy, Eddie Lawson, hand-crafted a Super-Kart for Rainey, complete with leg restraints and hand controls.

It took him a while to convince Rainey to give it a try but when he did, he found it thoroughly enjoyable. Racing Super-Karts is still an avid hobby for the former World Champ.

Meanwhile, he decided to try to help Monterey regain its status as a world-class motorcycling site. As usual, he thought big right from the start as he set his sights on bringing the premier MotoGP event to Laguna Seca. After several years of working behind the scenes, that prestigious event made its debut at Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway in 2005. It returned last year and is scheduled this year for July 20-22.

A lot of people think that the jewel of the Monterey Peninsula is Pebble Beach Golf Course,” Rainey said, “but it’s actually the race track. Last year’s MotoGP brought $50 million to the peninsula. I’m frustrated that the community doesn’t get behind the racing scene and the race track in a bigger way. If the track went away, a lot of local businesses would be hurt.

Rainey said that with five major national and global racing events every year at Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway, Monterey is a prime racing spot.

“Running the race track is a real challenge,” he pointed out. “In addition to all the usual problems any race track has, this one is a Monterey County park, which leads to lots of unusual issues.” He said Gill Campbell is doing a great job as track CEO.

One of Rainey’s biggest frustrations with trying to bring major events such as the MotoGP to Monterey is what he called the “gouging practices” engaged in by area hotels any time there’s a big event.

“The cheapest motels go to $400-500 a night,” he said incredulously. “That’s a very short-sighted view. They get that money once but fans who feel they’ve been cheated aren’t inclined to come back in subsequent years.”

At least one local hotel was fined $139,000 after it overbooked rooms for the 2005 event in an apparent effort to extract higher room rates after the dates for the event were announced.

Like Father; Not Exactly Like Son
Rainey’s son, Rex, is a young athlete in his own right. He is particularly interested and active in the rich Monterey youth baseball scene. In that sense, he’s nothing like his father was during his mid-teen years.

“When I was around 15,” Rainey recalled, “I took an entire summer driving all over the country racing my motorcycle.” He and a friend who drove the truck went from one small town dirt track to another all summer.

“First prize was usually $20,” Rainey chuckled. “If I didn’t win, we didn’t eat and we didn’t have money to put gas in the truck to go the next city.” He did well enough that he was able to stay on the road all summer.

Didn’t his parents object? “My folks were pretty good about that,” he said. “They raised me to be responsible and to take care of myself. Sure, I did some of the typical teenage things all young people do but I never got into any trouble or hurt anyone.

Rex’s lack of interest in motorcycles — “He can take it or leave it,” said his father — is perhaps directly traceable to the fact that by the time the youngster was of an age where he could have taken up riding, Wayne was already paralyzed. “I couldn’t take him riding like my Dad did with me when I was little,” Rainey said.

Rainey is still very close to his family. “They gave up a lot to support me in my passion for racing,” he said, “and now I try to do what I can to give back to them.” His brother was, like Rex, a baseball player who made it to the pros where he played in the New York Yankees farm system. Now that brother is training with “ultimate fighters,” who are creating a newly emerging sport in which two fighters square off inside a cage.

“I like ultimate fighting,” said Rainey. “I’ve always been an intense competitor who was out trying to beat my opponent just as they were out to beat me.”

If Not a Racer
Asked what he might have become in life if he hadn’t become so passionate about motorcycle racing, Rainey got a puzzled, distant look on his face. Maybe this is the first time the question ever occurred to him. After all, he’s been racing motorcycles since he was nine and went on the world circuit at 18.

“I guess,” he said after some thought, “I’d have ended up in construction with my family. I used to do some carpentry for my father as a way of earning money to pay for my motorcycling interest.

He also recalled that at one point in his high school life he looked at dentistry as a possible career. “I didn’t think I could ever make a living as a motorcycle racer,” he admitted. “It just never occurred to me.”

Once he figured out that he could indeed make a living — and a very nice one at that — doing what he loved most, he shelved any ideas of any other possible careers and focused like a laser beam on his motorcycling.

The degree of Rainey’s passion as a racer was evidenced in the way his parents chose to discipline him. “One time,” he recalled as he shook his head, “I did something wrong and my parents took away racing. They made me go to a race track and sit and watch everyone else racing. I learned that lesson in a big hurry.”

His Life Today
“I think I’ve learned not to try to do too much,” Rainey said. And then he ticked off the numerous activities in which he engages regularly: riding his exercise bike, cruising the many miles of bike trails in Monterey, swimming, attending charity events, working on the raceway, woodworking, and driving his Super-Kart. He also sometimes sits and watches video tapes of some of his races, particularly with his son.

Are they painful to watch?

“Not really,” he said, “But they are pretty boring!” As the length of the list begins to dawn on him, Rainey chuckled.

“I guess I haven’t really learned not to try to do too much after all, have I?” he asked rhetorically.

Then, turning serious, he said, “I do everything in my life that I want to do, I just have to do everything a little differently than I might if I hadn’t had the accident.

One of the big lessons racing teaches you is that every move you make has consequences. You have to be patient and you have to be thinking ahead all the time. The hardest part about racing isn’t getting on the bike and going fast, it’s all the build-up, planning, thinking, practicing, and preparation.”

“When I was injured, I didn’t want to lose that sense of constant effort and focus. That would be missing life itself. You need something to look forward to, something with which you can always challenge yourself.”

Somehow, you get the impression that not having something to look forward to will never be a problem for Wayne Rainey as the cycles of his life come around once again. °