Phil Read obituary

The British motorcycle racer Phil Read, who has died aged 83, was a successor to Geoff Duke and John Surtees and a friend and rival to Mike Hailwood and Barry Sheene. Winning eight world championships and 52 grand prix victories during a career that lasted from 1961 to 1975, he became the first rider to take world titles in the 125cc, 250cc and 500cc categories, a feat since matched only by Valentino Rossi and Marc Márquez.

Perhaps surprisingly, since he lived a colourful life and raced at a time when the sport was highly dangerous, he was never as well known to the general public as some of those other figures. Many within the sport, however, were in no doubt of the talent of a man nicknamed “the Prince of Speed”.

The King was Giacomo Agostini, the great Italian rider who won 15 world titles and was Read’s teammate in 1973, riding the works MV Agusta four-stroke machines, with their sleek red and silver fairings. That year the Englishman brought off a feat of lèse-majesté when he took the 500cc title; he repeated his victory the following season, by which time “Ago” had departed to join Yamaha.

Born in Luton, Bedfordshire, Read left Moreton End school in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, to take an apprenticeship at a local company, Brown and Green, a manufacturer of industrial machinery. Encouraged by his mother, herself a keen motorcyclist, at 16 he was given a 350cc Velocette KSS, followed by a BSA Gold Star of similar capacity. It was on a modified Gold Star that he began competing in 1958, but it was on a Norton Manx that he won his first major victory, the 1960 Junior Manx Grand Prix.

A year later he and the Norton returned to the Isle of Man to follow it up with a win in the Junior TT. In the following two years he took