20 years of Sharks

I've been putting my head in one place for nearly 700,000 miles. Here's why

IT WAS THE SCOOTER that woke me. A high-pitched two-stroke whine, somewhere out of sight. I could see a window - pure blue sky. I had no idea where I was and for a second my brain thought: I’m in Imola. Then the pain hit and I remembered. Not Italy. Peterborough hospital.

This was May 6, 2006 – and frankly I was lucky to be there. I’d had a massive crash the day before. Over the next 48 hours, the surgeons would put 26 pins in my right arm and leg. But my head was okay, even though my helmet had taken a battering. It was my first Shark. I’ve been wearing them ever since.

This was back when I was assistant editor on Bike magazine. In those days we sold over 100,000 copies a month and had a staff of 14. But since road-tester JP had left, there was only one staffer wearing Shark, designer Mookie, who wasn’t pictured all that often.

As it was useful for every brand to have its helmets seen in print, the PR man came to the mag with an offer: if someone switched to Shark, they’d pay for a paint job… It was easier for me than my more-established colleagues, who had years-long relationships with their helmet suppliers. I’d only been on the mag for a couple of years and had been wearing all sorts of helmets – KBC, AGV, Arai, BMW… So I gave a tentative yes: I’d try one and, if it fitted and I liked it, we’d go for it...

That wasn’t just one of the best decisions of my life. I genuinely think it’s a decision that saved my life. When I ran out of road and out of talent and rode into a wood, hanging a Honda CBF1000 between two trees, I was wearing that “trial” helmet, a Shark RSR2. I don’t think I’d be here to type this otherwise.

I’d liked the RSR2 straight away because it fitted my head properly. It had a really high-quality feel. It was lightweight, had a fabulous field of view and worked well with my glasses – they fitted easily and misting was pretty much nonexistent as it was so well vented.

If I’m honest, I hadn’t really paid much attention to the detail of how the helmet was constructed. I knew it had a top-end fibre shell with a clever multi-density EPS liner, but mostly I figured if it was good enough for GP racer Jeremy McWilliams, whose monthly column I was ghostwriting at the time, it’d be good enough for me.

I think I explored the limits of its construction more thoroughly than Jezza ever did (which is saying something). I got to see my crashed helmet afterwards and the shell had cracked – as it was designed to, dissipating the force of the impact. Inside, my head had slammed so hard into the polystyrene liner that I’d compressed it from about an inch thick to barely 3mm. And yet I’d survived without even being knocked out.

I was in hospital, still recovering on Ward 5X (hip replacements and motorcyclists) when the first painted helmet was delivered. Si Hargreaves brought it in from the office for me. You could see the nurses thought I was insane when I took it out of the box and got excited.

A lot of this is Si H’s fault. In those days the Bike art department would Trinny-and-Susannah the riders, telling us what to wear for pictures. I’d been assigned a plain yellow helmet… but after the photoshoot, didn’t really wear it – I felt like an AA recovery man. But then Si talked about using coloured electrical tape to put a pattern on a helmet (like Eddie Van Halen’s iconic guitar) and a lightbulb went off in my head. I took that plain yellow lid and a roll of black insulation tape, adding two stripes like Yukio Kagayama, but offset because perfect symmetry is boring.

I’d done this pretty much as a joke, but a few days later, coming into the office, staff writer Luke Brackenbury said, “I saw you yesterday out near Oakham”. How did you know it was me? “I recognised the helmet.” So when Dave the Shark PR man came in that Friday with the offer of painting up a helmet, I suddenly had a design ready…

Having a personal helmet design was always a bit controversial. Who do you think you are? You’re not a racer. Also, when magazines are meant to reflect their readers’ experiences, that’s pretty atypical. But for me it was about building a personal brand – I was the new kid on a team of established heavyweights, so it seemed important to have an easy-to-identify image.

When I jumped ship from Bike to RiDE, I hoped it would help readers who liked what I did track me and – hopefully – stay with me.

As I did more and more touring content for RiDE, having that egotistical helmet design really helped protect the material. Though Bike, RiDE and Motorcycle News all have the same publisher, back then they were so fiercely competitive none would use pics that were obviously from another magazine. So while I was often asked, “Have you got a pic from [the Alps/Pyrenees/Dolomites/wherever]?” I could say “yes” safe in the knowledge that the other mags wouldn’t use it... because it was a picture of that – ahem – bloke from RiDE.

Then when I jacked in the magazines to ride to Australia and figure out what I wanted to do with my life (see the "Big Trip" section of the blog if you don't know the story), having the helmet was invaluable. As I blundered around America, Australia and New Zealand, blogging and social-media-ing for all I was worth, I didn't even need to be in the pictures. The helmet alone showed that I was there. And when I came to set up the website, I instantly had a visual identity. Yellow and black became the corporate colours, with a simplified version of the helmet design as a logo.

More importantly, the helmet helped to brand my books – and having my name on the cover beside it hopefully told people who was in the picture and reminded former readers that I was the bloke who used to be in the magazines. A virtuous circle. All underpinned by that yellow-and-black Shark helmet.

Over the past 20 years I’ve had 10 different yellow-and-black Shark helmets, replacing them every 65-70,000 miles. Which for me has worked out to be more-or-less every two years. Helmets don't last forever: the sun makes the shells too brittle, while the heat of your head will gradually bake that EPS liner and dry it out, so it's likely to crumble rather than compress in the event of an impact. If you don't do so many miles, your lid can last up to five years – but even if you love it, you should replace it after that.

After two RSR2s, I moved to its replacement, the Race-R Pro – which was an even better helmet. Though it had to adapt to the new lid, my design never changed: it has always been the same offset black stripes on a yellow base, but the pattern within the yellow has changed every time. There was always something subtle, so if the designers wanted a close-up picture, there was more going on than just a plain yellow field. Some have been random shapes, there have been circuit boards, tube maps, even a flux capacitor… painted to look "wired in" to a set of pinstripes on the main black stripes.

Now I’m not riding on track for work, I’m in the road-focused Spartan GT Pro Carbon. Like all top-end Sharks it has a lightweight fibre shell with a multi-density EPS liner. The comfort lining is softly supportive for a snug fit (and removable for cleaning). The interchangeable visors have Pinlocks, though the venting is good so mist isn’t much of a problem anyway – even with my glasses. There’s also a drop-down sun visor, though I prefer the black visor. The helmet is secured with a proper double-D-ring strap and it’s relatively quiet (certainly quieter than the race helmets).

With any helmet, fit is paramount and you need to make sure you get a good, snug fit without tight spots. But next time you need a new helmet, try a Shark. They’ve kept me safe for 20 years and something like 700,000 miles – and counting.