Dakota North

It’s been a decade since North hung up his helmet, yet the whispers of his global success still echo at Undera Park Speedway – culminating in a roar with his recent induction into the Junior Honour Roll of the Greater Shepparton Sports Hall of Fame.

At 12 years of age, North was putting on a dirt-flicking spectacle at Undera, making sweeping passes while going around corners at breakneck speeds.

Some were surprised, others bewildered.

Dad Rod North was neither.

“(Those bikes), they’re not easy to ride ... he seemed to have this ability, and you could just tell that he was going to be quick,” he said.

“Dak took to the sport like a duck to water, so we thought he was going to be not bad.”

North’s “not bad” form firmly established him as one of the sport’s top challengers, with those beside him at the start line wide-eyed like stags ready to bolt.

By 15, he was already competing against Australia’s best – and the victories piled up.

Taking out the Australian Junior Championship and the Australian Pairs Title with Justin Sedgmen in 2007, served as a springboard to the world-class ranks.

There was no turning back.

North represented his country in Britain at age 16, but it was his ride during the under-21 World Championships that caught the attention of British teams looking to mine new talent.

Shortly after, the boy who once slid along Undera’s tracks, was swirling his signature on a contract with the Mildenhall Fen Tigers.

“He was tenacious,” North senior said.

“He hated losing, put it that way, so he would always do as much as he could to win, which means you’ve got to be pretty ruthless.”

North’s star quality was on the rise – until an injury cut his season short.

While representing Australia at the under-21 level against Great Britain, one wrong turn on these bikes with no brakes and little suspension cannoned North into the fence.

“He was in a back brace for a fair while,” North senior said.

“When he hit the fence, it sort of compressed some vertebrae and chipped the backs out of them.

“He’s had his fair share of injuries, like everyone who rides those things.

“I think he’s still got pins in his ankle, pins in one of his fingers, and maybe a wrist.”

Did a blue cloud of dejection hang over the speedway racer?

Absolutely not.

North’s signature tenacity never ebbed, regardless of his setbacks – or the iron addition to his insides.

He returned to Britain and spent the next five years on the European circuit: a club asset at the Elite League’s Peterborough Panthers, loaned to the Premier League’s Newcastle Diamonds, a podium finish in the World Cup representing Australia, and later, racing for teams such as the elite King’s Lynn Stars and the Glasgow Tigers.

While his achievements are remarkable, rightfully earning him a spot in the Hall of Fame, some things are bigger than sport.

In 2015, North senior was injured in a work accident.

Ironically, at the time, North was racing for the Poole Pirates, the team his dad had ridden for in 1982.

The announcement that North would be returning to his Goulburn Valley roots to help out his family’s earth-moving business was a reminder that life moves faster than a bike with all gas and no brakes.

Most professional athletes retire when they’re too tired, too jaded, too fearful, or perhaps even too resentful.

Loyal. Selfless. Unpretentious.

That’s what North was and continues to be.

Nowadays, he still works at a prodigious pace to fuel the adrenaline – the revelation that the match has been placed from bikes that whine like amped-up mosquitoes to taking flight himself piloting aeroplanes would come as a shock to no-one.

After all, you can’t keep a North star from soaring.