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Michelle Duff’s final GP ride to 3rd in the Canadian 500GP at Mosport on an Arter Matchless G50 in 1967.Motorcycle Mojo Magazine/Supplied
Michelle Duff was the first North American and, so far, the only Canadian to win a motorcycle race on the world championship grand prix circuit.
A triumph at the 1964 Belgian grand prix helped make Duff a popular figure among racing fans in Britain and on the Continent – where the sport enjoyed crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands – but earned her little notice back home.
The pursuit of the checkered flag came with regular risk of serious injury, and even death.
“Every year, two or three of our friends get killed,” said the Toronto racer in Ride For Your Life, a short documentary produced by the National Film Board in 1966 that tracked Duff’s recovery after her own near-fatal crash during a practice in Japan.
A “smooth, stylish” rider, according to Cycle World magazine, Duff’s ambition was to become a world champion, a title based on points accumulated in each of a series of races. In 1965, Duff finished second in the final standings in the 250cc class behind Yamaha teammate Phil Read of England, the closest she would come to this goal.
Duff, who has died at 85, raced on the grand prix circuit for eight years, also securing victories in the 125cc Dutch Touring Trophy and 250cc Finnish grand prix, both in 1965.
Early on, she earned a reputation for fearlessness by cornering without putting down a steadying boot as most riders did. But the reason owed less to bravery than to poverty: Duff only had one pair, and couldn’t afford to replace it.
Duff was born on Dec. 13, 1939, in Toronto to the former Ruth Horning Oram, a stenographer, and Alexander George Duff, a Scottish immigrant engineer. “I had been born male, and I accepted that I would have to live my life as one,” she wrote in her memoir, “but since the age of awareness, I wanted to be female.” In 1984 she took the name Michelle Ann.
She learned to ride a motorcycle at the age of 13 by sneaking an older brother’s machine out of the family garage when no one was at home. Caught by her unsuspecting parents when she roared past them one day, she was grounded as punishment. But her mother and father later gave in to the inevitable and bought her a racing motorcycle.
After enjoying success on Ontario tracks, Duff, at 19, booked passage aboard the RMS Empress of France to launch a career overseas. She was described in contemporary newspaper accounts as Canada’s only professional motorcycle racer.
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Michelle Duff at the 2007 Isle of Man TT races 100th Anniversary celebrations.Bill Petro/CMSA
Duff spent two lonely years following the nomadic tribe of racers from meet to meet. The English racing press first noticed the Canadian after she won a non-championship race at a former military airfield in Norfolk County.
In 1962, Duff set lap and race records in a 350cc race at Nurburgring, Germany, hearing O Canada from the podium for the first time before winning another victory in the 500cc race the next day.
That same year, Duff married a Finnish woman; the pair had met while Duff was racing in the Nordic nation.
Finland was also the site of a horrific reminder of how hazardous the sport could be. During a 500cc race in Helsinki – won by Duff before more than 65,000 spectators – a rider was killed after smashing against a tree. The riderless bike then slammed into and killed a newspaper photographer resting on a tree stump.
Especially treacherous were races held on ordinary roads, including the Belgian grand prix circuit known as Spa-Francorchamps, through the Ardennes Forest in southern Belgium. It was a “public road with all the natural road hazards still in place,” Duff wrote in her 1999 memoir, titled Make Haste, Slowly. “Farmhouses, trees, lampposts, front doorsteps, and road signs, all totally unprotected from the hordes of racing motorcycles, offered fair warning that this racecourse left little margin for error.”
Duff once took a corner known as the Cocoa Bends too fast, missing the jagged stone wall of a house by less than a metre.
Her memoir’s title came from advice given by fellow motorcyclist Bob McIntyre, known as the Flying Scot, who told Duff, “Make haste, slowly, laddie.” Mr. McIntyre died at the age of 33 in 1962, nine days after crashing into an advertising sign during a race.
Duff also endured hair-raising close calls on the famous Isle of Man Tourist Trophy circuit, notably finishing fourth on a Matchless in the 500cc in 1963, the only non-Briton to earn points.
While the racer endured several dangerous spills, including once nearly severing the index finger on her left hand, it was the crash while testing a factory Yamaha on a track in Japan that caused the most devastating injuries.
“The bike threw me down hard onto the tarmac. I clawed the pavement for grip, rolling over and over,” Duff wrote. “The friction between my leather suit and the tarmac quickly reduced my speed. I slid off the track’s surface onto the narrow grass verge and clobbered the yellow metal guardrail that surrounded this portion of the circuit. When I contacted the metal railing, an intense pain shot through my left side, followed by a sudden numbness.”
The accident left her left leg 2.5 centimetres shorter than the right. Duff was recuperating when approached by director Robin Spry about taking part in a documentary. The racer was filmed undergoing an operation in Toronto to have a metal cup inserted in the left hip.
The 10-minute documentary includes numerous spills by riders, shots of family life in a caravan and some thrilling images taken low from a motorcycle during training runs.
“The bike is a delicate, finnicky thing,” Duff narrates from off-screen, “but it does 130” miles an hour (about 209 kilometres an hour).
Her comeback race was at Mosport in Ontario, where the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme, the sport’s governing body, granted a grand prix race in honour of Canada’s 1967 centennial celebration.
Hobbling with every step, Duff is shown in Ride For Your Life unsuccessfully trying to push-start a 500cc Matchless bike. The engine refuses to turn over, and bike after bike buzzes past the starting line until the machine finally kicks to life with the rider at the back of the pack. Despite this misfortune, a cool and collected pursuit put Duff in third place by the end.
Duff continued to race, though not on the grand prix circuit, notably winning an Eastern Canadian championship and finishing third at the famed Daytona track in Florida.
As well as her memoir, Duff wrote children’s books, including Serial Number 6218 about her motorcycle, and for motorcycle magazines. She also worked as a clerk for the Ontario government.
Duff was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Canadian Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2007.
A resident of Queens Manor nursing home in Liverpool, N.S., she died on July 23. She leaves a daughter and two sons from two marriages.
Duff remained a popular figure among British and European motorcycle fans, signing her memoir and autographing memorabilia at reunions and celebrations. She also rode on vintage machines in classic races until a nasty spill at Spa-Francorchamps, the site of her first triumph. The bike skidded on a corner, pitching her over the handlebars in a somersault in which she landed on the back of her helmeted head, leaving her, at the age of 68, with severe bruising, a punctured lung, three broken ribs and a fractured skull. She continued to ride motorcycles, but never raced again.
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