Who Is Troy Bayliss?
Troy Bayliss won the Superbike World Championship three times, all of them with Ducati. He is Australian, born in Taree in 1969, and took 52 race wins from 156 starts: a victory in exactly one start out of three, a higher rate than either Carl Fogarty or Jonathan Rea managed.
He got the ride because of an injury. In 2000 Bayliss was racing a Ducati in the American AMA series when Fogarty crashed at Phillip Island and never rode again. Ducati called Bayliss in to replace him. He missed the first three rounds, won two races and finished sixth, and was world champion the season after.
2002 is the season he is remembered for losing. He won 14 of the 26 races, a record at the time, and Colin Edwards took the title anyway by finishing second almost every time Bayliss won. It came down to Imola, where Bayliss crossed the line first in race one and lost it on aggregate after a red flag.
He left, and came back, and won twice more. Three seasons in MotoGP produced a sixth place and a broken arm. He returned to Ducati in 2006, won eight races in a row and took the title, then won the last Grand Prix of that year at Valencia as a one-off stand-in. A third championship followed in 2008.
