EMBLAZONED on the side of the bright yellow #75 Gambler sprintcar are the words - ‘No Guts, No Glory', and for the 27 year old pilot of that high-powered projectile, Ian Bradford, those words mean a hellva lot. The current Western Australian Sprintcar Champion has certainly displayed a lot of that intestinal fortitude over his racing career and he has reaped some of the accolades. But the battle he faces against the might of the Claremont winged warriors every Friday night pales into insignificance against the biggest fight of his life.
Over the past two years the farmer from Ballidu has been literally fighting for his life against cancer, and the way young ‘Bonza' has faced up to this ultimate challenge has won him a lot of fans. He has spent a lot of time talking to others with similar problems - especially the kids - and has given them a lot of moral support. To Ian Bradford, life is a precious thing and he intends to live each day to the fullest.
He enjoys everything he does, especially his sprintcar racing. It (the cancer) all started when a mole on his neck was diagnosed as a malignant melanoma, and surgery was required to remove a lump from his neck - a process that had to be repeated six times. Bradford went across to America for treatment and counselling and returned with a specially formulated vaccine that he was required to take over the next twelve months - nine injections a week. More drama occurred when he suffered from a series of bad headaches and a Cat Scan showed he had a brain tumour. It was back into hospital for his seventh major operation.
Things are going well for him at the moment, but Ian realises that it is still very much a wait-and-see situation, while the support he has got from his wife Kerryn, his two sons and the rest of the Bradford family means a lot to him. “They have all been a tower of strength to me,” said Ian. “Also, everyone connected with the Ken Marriott Racing Team has been fantastic.” Being one of Noel Bradford's five sons, I guess it was only natural that Ian would become a speedway driver. His father, known affectionately as ‘The Big Chap', was one of the all-time greats of Western Australian speedway, who although not starting his career until late in his life, certainly made up for it, winning the 1975-76 Australian Sprintcar Championship and two state titles.
Ian's elder brother Kevin was one of the western states leading speedcar drivers, while another brother Barry is active in sedans on the country circuits. First making a name for himself by winning the W.A. Division 2 sprintcar title in father Noel's car down at the Bunbury clay way, Ian spent six months learning the ropes in America as part of Des Moines, Iowa based Bob Trostle's pit crew.
He secured the drive in the Brian Sadler Trostle at Claremont at the start of the 1983-84 season and raised a few eyebrows by knocking off three of the first four main events that summer. He moved into the Performance Modifications teams new Gambler but that initial success seemed to elude him. After spending a lot of the off season in America having treatment, he started the 1985-86 season in the #3 Sadler Gambler, but after only a couple of meetings he lost the ride. All appeared lost until Ken Marriott agreed to let him have a go in the #76 coil-over Murphy. This proved to be the turning point in his career as he followed up a third in top company in the Masters in Adelaide with a feature race win at Claremont the following week. Two more main event successes followed in February, the latter in the Marriott team's #75 Gambler in which Rocky Hodges had blitzed the west coast brigade earlier in the season. Marriott had been so impressed by young Bradford's performance in the Trostle that he vacated the Gambler to enable him to go all out for the state title.
Four qualifying rounds of heats were organised for the W.A. crown, with starting positions allocated for the final on the number of points gained by each driver. ‘Bonza' finished the preliminaries second on points to Lee Foster (in another Marriott car) and he jumped best in the final. After a fairy tale all the way victory in the championship, Bradford had to believe things were finally going his way. Last winter he underwent surgery for a brain tumour, and within days of his release from hospital he was working on the racecar. Ken Marriott told me at the time that they literally had to lock him out of the workshops, but he added that Ian's consuming passion with the sprintcars had certainly helped get him through the rough spots.
A touch of Bradford's humour came to the fore at the Sprintcar Association of W.A. trophy presentation night, only weeks after his latest operation. Sporting a very short crew-cut, Ian said that the Marriott team was out to remove all excess weight from their cars during the coming season, and he was certainly doing his bit. After a slow start to the present season, which included a high speed roll-over at the start of a feature race, Ian Bradford and the #75 Gambler have come back strongly to win two main events late in November. In only his fourth full season of sprintcar competition, Ian ‘Bonza' Bradford has won nine feature races at Claremont , plus four on end at the south-west Bunbury circuit.
The current W.A. titleholder has carried the flag on several occasions in major interstate meetings and performed with distinction. He knows all about overcoming adversity and is a walking example of the old adage - ‘A winner never quits, and a quitter never wins.' Due to the fact that so much muscle has been taken from his neck during surgery, Bradford has had to fit a special bracket to the car's roll cage which will give his neck added support during a race. But little things don't worry Ian Bradford - he's a man with guts.
EDITORS NOTE:
Ian Bradford passed away on November 7, 1992. He was 33 years of age. Even today W.A. fans can still be seen wearing the ‘It's Just Not the Same' T-shirts honouring the great driver.
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