Mick Doohan, AM

5x World MotoGp Champion

When it comes to Australian motorcycle racers there is one name that stands above all others — Michael Sydney Doohan.

Both on and off the track, Doohan’s combination of talent, determination and bravery are unmatched.

From a teenage dirt track ace, this once beach-loving concrete labourer from the Gold Coast became a global icon of grand prix motorcycling.

Hired by Honda as a grand prix rookie in 1989, Doohan went on to assemble a winning strike rate that remains the benchmark in MotoGP.

In 117 starts, Doohan won 54 times riding Honda’s fearsome 500cc two-stroke machines — a stunning career win ratio, of 46 per cent.

Overall, Doohan stood on the podium 95 times.

Only two riders in the history of the sport — Valentino Rossi and Giacomo Agostini — have won more premier class grands prix.

But it is Doohan’s five consecutive world championships, between 1994 and 1998, that are embedded in the folklore of sporting greatness.

For these championships came after he made a miraculous and pain-filled recovery from near crippling leg injuries, suffered at the Dutch TT in Assen in 1992.