It’s obviously not normal to ask someone their age, and for them to respond by detailing an elaborate subterfuge that “may have” involved a forged document and which was perpetrated for more than a decade.
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But that is what happened when the Namoi Valley Independent caught up with retired motorcycle racer Warwick Nowland, a two-time Endurance world champion (2000 and 2002), at Gunnedah Rugby Club.
Nowland, who spent his formative years in Quirindi, was in Gunnedah to speak to locals about what it means to be an Aussie, as the town’s Australia Day ambassador – a role he has performed for 16 years at locations in NSW and the Northern Territory.
His clenched-jaw desire to carve out a successful motor-racing career – after moving from Quirindi to Sydney at age 17, where he continued the motor-mechanic apprenticeship he started in Tamworth – took root when he relocated to London in the 1990s.
However, making himself more attractive to teams meant getting creative with his age. He is 51 years old. But while racing overseas, including two years in the Superbike World Championship, he benefited from his teams believing he was five years younger than his actual age.
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“I’ve still got a racing licence and it says I was born in 1972 [he was really born in 1967],” he said.
A quick Google search supports that: his Superbike World Championship profile states he was born on October 30, 1972.
Nowland – winner of the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans motorcycle race, in 2004 – said that when a team manager asked for passports at airports, he would “just stay back” and hang on to his passport, which revealed his true age.
“Even if you could still do a good job but you were, like, older and someone was two or three years younger than you, they’d give them money and not you,” he said, to explain the basis of the deception.
Nowland rode motorbikes growing up in Quirindi. A road accident on a motorbike resulted in him looking for a “safer” way to express himself on two wheels.
“I found a race track [Sydney’s Oran Park Raceway] and I was hooked – I just had to go racing … battled and struggled and had no money to pay rent and all that sort of thing, and just kept going and going, and ended up winning two world championships, winning the Le Mans 24-hour endurance race … amazing.
“I think back now and think, ‘Wow, did that all really happen?’”
Nowland returned to Australia at the end of 2008, after being based in London for 12 years. His wife, Kris, was pregnant with their first child, Aston, 9, The Sydney-based couple now have a second child, Ethan, 3.
“My wife fell pregnant, I was doing too many things, and I said, ‘Let’s stop …’ I said, ‘Let’s go home to Australia and have kids.’”
Nowland officially retired as a racer at the end of 2011. He ran his own British Superbike Championship team, and covered motorbike racing as a commentator for Eurosport and the BBC.
His fondest memories of growing up in Quirindi relate to his high school years: “I loved high school. Hopefully I can get back over there and have a chat to them all one day. I loved it. I didn’t want to leave.”
