Kel Carruthers | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Kel Carruthers on a 1969 stamp
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Nationality | Australian | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Born |
3 January 1938 (age 79) Sydney, Australia |
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Kelvin "Kel" Carruthers (born 3 January 1938) is an Australian former world champion Grand Prix motorcycle road racer and racing team manager. After his motorcycle racing career, he went on to win world championships as a race team manager for riders Kenny Roberts and Eddie Lawson.
Carruthers, as the son of a motorcycle shop owner, learned how to work on bikes from a young age, started riding at 10, and entered his first race at 12. By the early 1960s he had won the Australian 125 cc, 250 cc, 350 cc and 500 cc National Championships.
In early 1966, he moved to Europe with his family to compete in British and International short-circuit races, including Grand Prix World Championship series riding a Drixton Aermacchi, and for early 1969 season riding bikes for the Aermacchi factory. Halfway through the 1969 season, he was offered a ride with the Benelli factory and won the Isle of Man 250 cc TT race. After the Isle of Man TT, Aermacchi released him from their contract to continue as a factory rider with Benelli and, he went on to win the 1969 250cc road racing world championship after a tight points battle with Santiago Herrero and Kent Andersson.
After the 1970 Grand Prix season, he accepted an offer from Yamaha to race in America. Yamaha asked him to tutor a young American dirt track racer named Kenny Roberts. In 1973, Carruthers became the manager of Yamaha's American racing team. Under Carruther's guidance, Roberts would win the 1973 and 1974 Grand National Championship for Yamaha. When it became apparent that Yamaha didn't have a bike able to compete with the dominant Harley Davidson dirt track team, they decided to send Carruthers and Roberts to Europe to compete in the road racing world championships. With Carruthers tuning the bikes and offering guidance, Roberts went on to win three consecutive world championships in 1978, 1979, and 1980. Carruthers also managed Eddie Lawson to a 500cc World Championship in 1984.