Ángel Nieto 1947-2017
Spain’s 13-time world champion and so-called ‘king of the tiddlers’ Ángel Nieto passed away on August 3, from head injuries sustained in a road traffic accident a week earlier. This saw him thrown off a quad bike he was riding on the holiday island of Ibiza, where he’d lived for many years. He was hit from behind by a car, and was apparently not wearing a helmet when his head struck the ground. He was 70 years old.
Nieto dominated small-capacity Grand Prix racing for two decades, winning a remarkable 90 GP races and taking 139 podiums en route to his 13 world crowns – or ‘12 + 1’ as he superstitiously insisted on terming his title tally. Six 50cc world championships and seven in the 125cc class between 1969 and 1984 riding Derbi, Bultaco, Garelli, Minarelli and Van Veen Kreidler two-stroke machinery also made him the rider to have won multiple world titles with different manufacturers.
Additionally, he won a total of 23 Spanish National Championships in the 50cc, 125cc, 250cc, 500cc and 750cc classes, establishing himself as a living legend whose earthy personality as it came to the fore in TV commentaries and talk shows brought him a charismatic fame extending beyond the motorcycle community, even after retiring from racing in 1986.
Born in the hill town of Zamora, near the Portuguese border, on January 25, 1947, Ángel Nieto Roldán came from a poor background, and was just one year old when his family moved to Madrid in search of work.There, he became passionate about motorcycles from an early age, playing truant from school from the age of ten to become an errand boy for a local motorcycle workshop, progressing to sweeping the floor at the end of the day.
First road race
This story is from the November/December 2017 edition of Classic Racer.
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This story is from the November/December 2017 edition of Classic Racer.
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