When four-time World Superbike champion Carl Fogarty rode his 1995 title-winning Ducati 916 up the hill at Goodwood in July it marked three decades since one of British motorcycle racing’s most magical moments. Fogarty ruled the World Superbike series through much of the 1990s, taking a title double in 1994 and 1995 and again in 1998 and 1999. British fans got behind him like they got behind the England football team and found much more joy through that support.

His annual homecoming at Brands Hatch attracted huge crowds, sometimes outdoing the Silverstone Formula 1 grand prix. In 1999 more than 120,000 showed up, the biggest-ever attendance at a British motorcycle meeting. Not even Barry Sheene attracted that many in his 1970s heyday.

Fogarty was a ferocious competitor who went racing on a mountain of self-belief and raging torrents of aggression. He was maniacal about winning and struggled to cope with defeat.

His years at the top were characterised by bitter feuds with rivals, including several team-mates. Funnily enough, Sheene had been the same, using the UK motorcycle press as a weapon against his enemies. Fans loved them both for it.

“I look back at some of the things I said and I think, ‘Why did I say all that?’” admits Fogarty, now 60. “Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut and let my riding do the talking? I always had a go at my rivals, putting them down, saying things like their bikes were better than they were and I was going to win the next race and I was the best. Now I think, ‘Why did you put yourself under so much pressure by saying stuff before the next race?’ But more times than not, it turned out all right and I still won.”

Brands Hatch was the highlight of the World Superbike season, fans thronging to the natural amphitheatre, turning it into a motor racing Wembley, screaming support, which Fogarty used as another weapon.

“Brands was always special and I loved the crowd. I remember when the garage door went up before a race, there’d be this huge roar and I’d milk it a bit. I’d be the last one to go out for the race, so after the sighting lap I’d be weaving my way through the grid to pole position and the crowd would be going mad. I’d be milking it, so that all the other riders knew I was the main man and this is my theatre, my playground.”

World Superbike has mostly been a British playground. Fogarty and current Yamaha WSBK rider Jonathan Rea stand fourth and first in the all-time superbike race-winners league, while Britain’s most successful MotoGP rider is 1960s legend Mike Hailwood, who has six Spaniards, Italians and Americans in front of him. Why is this? Why is Britian so strong in WSBK and so weak in MotoGP?

Primarily, financial reasons. Britain’s recession of the early 1980s had a catastrophic effect on the nation’s motorcycle racing scene. Bike shops went bust, sponsors disappeared and grids emptied, because few riders could afford the high-maintenance two-stroke grand-prix bikes that had ruled the sport since the 1970s.

Necessity is the mother of invention, so in 1985 a new, low-cost national championship was established using road-based superbikes. These motorcycles cost a fraction of the price of a GP two-stroke and were much cheaper to run. They were also heavier and more basic, but British riders soon learned how to get the most out of them, so when the World Superbike series was launched in 1988, they were already up to speed. Meanwhile, GP racing’s heartlands – Spain and Italy – stuck with GP bikes. That’s still the way it is, with British riders taking the superbike route, while continentals take the Moto2 and Moto3 road to MotoGP.

Fogarty’s career took off when Britain was at the crossroads between GP bikes and superbikes. Initially, he was determined to succeed as a GP rider, like Sheene, and he made his GP debut at Silverstone in 1986. Two weeks later everything changed.

“I had a big highside at Oulton Park – went up in the air, came down and my right leg was facing the other way. The femur came out the skin – it was a right mess. When I came out of hospital I couldn’t get comfortable on a 250, then I crashed again and the bone snapped again because it was infected. I had two years in the wilderness when I should’ve been away racing 250 GPs.”

“I ended up winning a world championship I hadn’t really planned on doing. It was bizarre”

Fogarty’s career was saved by superbikes, not because he was skint but because he could no longer fit on a 250. His sponsor, a slot-machine millionaire, bought him a Honda RC30, a homologation special made for the World Superbike series.

“When I finally got on a superbike in ’88, I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m comfortable on a bike again!’ I took to the RC30 like a duck to water because I felt comfortable. And I was only riding at 80%, because I couldn’t afford to crash and break the leg again. My doctors had told me I shouldn’t be racing, that I should be thinking about retiring.”

Fogarty didn’t have the budget to contest the inaugural 1988 WSBK series, which raced as far afield as Japan and Australasia, so he had to make do with the lower-level TT Formula 1 series, which mostly used lethal street circuits – the Isle of Man TT, Belfast’s Dundrod and Vila Real in Portugal. He won the title, ahead of TT legend Joey Dunlop.

“I ended up winning a world championship I hadn’t really planned on doing. It was bizarre. But I knew I wanted to be a short circuit world champion.”

Fogarty began his push towards winning the World Superbike title in 1992. He got some backing to buy a Ducati 888 V-twin and financed his campaign by squeezing in well-paid rides between WSBK rounds with Yamaha at the TT and with Kawasaki in the World Endurance Championship. He won five of the six endurance rounds, including the Le Mans 24 Hours, securing another title he hadn’t aimed to win.

“I had my mojo back for 1999. Everything was right in my head and the bike was better”

His speed on the 888 was the turning point. Ducati signed him as an official WSBK rider for 1993 and he was away, only narrowly losing the world title to American factory Kawasaki rider Scott Russell. The following year Ducati launched its seminal 916 V-twin.

“The 916 was nervous and twitchy, like a 500 GP bike. I came from 250 GP bikes, so I always carried lots of corner speed, but I couldn’t do that with the 916. After the first few rounds we lengthened the swingarm and that was it.”

Fogarty dominated the rest of the season. The next year was even better – he won more than half the races, including double victories at Brands Hatch and Donington Park. Foggy fever was at full force by then, which is why Britain had two WSBK rounds.

And then he went and quit Ducati. The Bologna brand’s bikes were missiles, but its race team was troubled by politics and lackadaisical organisation. More importantly, Ducati’s 1996 financial offer didn’t impress him so when Honda offered to double the number, he went there.

Honda’s RC45 V4 superbike had never won the title and it didn’t with Fogarty. He took several race wins on the bike but soon realised he had made a mistake – he found the Japanese team too organised! “Like being back at school!” so he returned to Ducati for 1997.

Fogarty’s last two championships – 1998 and 1999 – were arguably his greatest, because the quality of riders and bikes had never been so good.

In 1998 the title went down to the season finale at Sugo, Japan.

“My head wasn’t in a great place that year – I was struggling with back and knee injuries, so I wasn’t riding good. And I kept making wrong tyre choices because I wasn’t doing my homework in practice, doing long enough runs. The last two or three rounds I really got my head into gear, worked hard, thought about it and won the championship. I had my mojo back for 1999. Everything was right in my head and the bike was better. I thought, ‘I’m going to come out of the blocks and show them how fast I am. I’m absolutely going to wipe the floor with them.’”

And that’s what he did. His season points tally was 489, 128 more than the runner-up’s – US rider Colin Edwards.

The 2000 championship might have been more of the same. Instead it was the end of his career. He crashed heavily at Phillip Island, Australia, in round two.

“I woke up in the helicopter, in and out of consciousness. I’d smacked my head and done a shoulder again. I knew pretty soon that I wasn’t going to come back. I saw specialists who said I might get 75% of shoulder movement back, plus there was nerve damage, so the decision was made for me. I remember feeling so relieved. I felt like the weight of the world had been taken off my shoulders. I didn’t have to go out to be number one any more. I didn’t have go out to prove to the fans and the media and myself that I was the best. I wanted to enjoy myself. I wanted to see my old mates and have a few drinks.”

Although Fogarty enjoyed a great deal of success in WSBK, his first thoughts when he looks back are of a circuit that has a visceral effect on racers.

“The bike was falling apart around me. None of the clocks were working, the screen was broken”

“My best racing memories are from the TT, always will be. All my childhood memories are from the TT. I went every year watching Dad [George] racing. I remember my first TT, getting up for early morning practice and going around the course, thinking, ‘This is just mad!’ Down Bray Hill, flying towards Ballacraine, through the Glen Helen section, onto the Cronk-y-Voddy straight, through the village Kirk Michael, over a bridge at Ballaugh, into a little town called Ramsey and up over the mountain…

“I’ve got goosebumps!” he laughs. “They say the closest you’ve been to death is when you feel most alive and that’s what you experience at the TT.”

Fogarty won three TTs, one in 1989, two in 1990, but his most famous island ride came in 1992, when he battled for Senior victory with Steve Hislop. Fogarty rode a Yamaha superbike. Hislop Norton’s super-fast but evil-handling rotary. Their duel is rated as the best in the TT’s history, Fogarty pushing into the danger zone, establishing a new lap record which stood until 1999.

Even Hislop, an 11-times TT winner and one of the event’s all-time greats, was worried they were asking for it.

“I was riding the bike beyond its limits at 180mph,” he wrote in his autobiography Hizzy. “At that speed instinct takes over and for the first time in my life I started thinking that victory wasn’t as important as living. That soon passed and I got my head down.”

Fogarty started the sixth and final lap of the 37.73-mile course 6sec down, but typically refused to give in.

“I was hanging in there, pushing really hard. But the bike was falling apart around me. None of the clocks were working, the temperature gauge was gone, the screen was broken and there was brake fluid and oil on the inside of the screen. On lap five at Ramsey the exhaust went. The noise was horrendous. I couldn’t wait to get off the thing. I had a bad headache, so I thought, ‘The faster I go, the quicker I can get off it.’

“I pulled a few seconds back on the last lap and when I crossed the finish line it was announced that I’d broken the lap record. We lost the race by 4sec but it was an amazing race, it really was.”

Next year Fogarty returns to racing, running a Ducati team in the British Superbike championship. “Because I was  a little bit bored.”