Bathurst (NSW Australia) Speedway racing legend, Bluey Wilkinson poses for his first motorcycle advertisement, the German built 'Victoria'. The bike is their new lightweight, two-stroke V 99 Fix.
Riding/racing in England for the West Ham Hammers (1929-1938), Wilkinson would win the 1937 National League Championship with them. However the pinnacle of his career was becoming Solo World Champion in 1938 at Wembley Stadium.
Bluey's 1938 championship win was considered a real ballsy effort considering he had actually broken his left collarbone in a match for West Ham the night before the World Final. Determined not to miss the final, Bluey had the Tottenham Hotspur club doctor put his arm and shoulder in plaster. He ignored the pain he was in to win his first four rides before finishing a safe second in his fifth and last to clinch the World Championship before a crowd of 95,000.
Shortly after winning the 1938 World Championship Wilkinson would become the first Speedway rider to appear in Madame Tussaud's London wax museum.
During his career, Wilkinson also rode for Australia in test matches against England and the United States. He scored a maximum 18 points in each of the five Tests against England staged in Australia in the 1937/38 season, a feat he failed to duplicate the following season by only a single point.
He retired from riding in 1939 to become the promoter at the Sheffield Speedway. Tragically, less than a year later on July 27, 1940, Bluey Wilkinson would be killed in a road accident in the Sydney suburb of Bondi.
Arthur George "Bluey" Wilkinson was inducted into the Australian Speedway Hall of Fame in 2008.
Today in motorcycle history proudly supports the National Association for Bikers with a Disability (NABD). www.nabd.org.uk
