Product Description

Arrogant, brash, volatile and sometimes just simply crazy according to some, outspoken Yorkshireman Kenny Carter was the biggest box office attraction in speedway. He was the brilliant number one rider for Bradford Dukes and England, having spent his first season showing great promise with second division Newcastle and the next seven starring as 'King Kenny' for his home-town team, Halifax.

A courageous double British Champion on the track, his world title dreams were twice wrecked by a broken leg. Away from speedway, he saw himself as a sharp wheeler-dealer who formed his own sports promotions company and believed he could make it big in business.

At the age of 25, sharing a luxury farmhouse with his wife and former childhood sweetheart and their two children, with a flash, new sports car designed to impress his clients, he seemed to have the world at his feet. But very few people ever knew or understood the real Kenny Carter and the huge family tragedies he suffered in his early youth. These were devastating influences that would haunt him for the rest of his life and no doubt shaped the personality that the fans came to either love or hate.

No-one knew the demons that must have been raging inside the young head of a fiercely driven, self-obsessed individual who could not accept losing be it a friendly game of snooker, a speedway race or indeed the love of his life. Kenny was never able to reveal his true feelings . . . until it was too late. At his Yorkshire moorland farm on the evening of Wednesday, May 21, 1986, the England speedway hero shot dead his wife, Pam, and then killed himself, orphaning their two young children in the process.

Tragedy is the full, sad and harrowing story of Kenny Carter's rollercoaster life and examines what led up to that nightmare ending including candid contributions by his friends, speedway rivals, team-mates, managers and promoters who knew him best. From the world of speedway. How they remember Kenny Carter... Ivan Mauger, Bruce Penhall, Peter Collins, Eric Boocock, Eric Boothroyd, Kelvin Tatum, Michael Lee, Hans Nielsen, John Louis, Phil Crump, Neil Evitts, Andy and Alan Grahame, Doug Wyer, Craig Pendlebury, Mick McKeon, John Berry, Ian Thomas, Carl Glover, Joe Owen, Malcolm Simmons, Chris Morton, Dave Jessup, etc...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #346583 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Peter Collins MBE www.retro-speedway.com
I found the book compulsive reading and once I started it, I couldn't put it down.

Richard Clark: Speedway Star Magazine
This certainly can't have been the easiest of biographies to write.
But it is, certainly, one you must read.

Gordon Bailey, Glasgow Tigers Fan
The book is just fantastic, absolutely brilliant.
The in-depth of it - people just don't know what Kenny Carter was like - until they read this book.

Customer Reviews

A tragic but touching biography
I wasn't sure whether to buy this book, I was never a great fan of Kenny Carter's, but having read it from cover to cover I'm very glad I did. It has helped me a lot to understand his true personality, away from the track.

I had no idea about all the family trauma he went through as a youngster, which obviously played a part in making him the 'time bomb' he became. To lose his mother and younger brother in such a tragic way must have been very hard to cope with at such a young age, although nothing can ever justify what he did to his wife at the end.

I was pleased that the author didn't attempt to influence our thinking by the way he wrote Kenny's story, leaving it to readers to decide for themselves what they think of him. Having read Tragedy, I must admit, rightly or wrongly, I now feel more sympathetic towards Kenny than I did when he died.

It's a book I strongly recommend. I could never understand why Kenny ended his life so tracically the way he did and I feel that Tragedy: The Kenny Carter Story has given me a thorough understanding. What a tragic waste of two lives but what an absolutely gripping book for speedway fans.

Must Read
I supported Belle Vue in the late 70's not a Dukes fan, but that didn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying this brilliant book about a young man who lost his way and did the unthinkable.

My own hero Peter Collins, features often in the pages and it's the views of Kenny Carter's former rivals (eg Bruce Penhall and Ivan Mauger) and team mates that I particularly enjoyed reading.

Honest, straight to the point books like this are a breath of fresh air and I'am sure it will become the biggest selling Speedway Book of all-time. For it's balanced and exhaustive research, it certainly deserves to be.

Brilliant,Brilliant,Brilliant.
This is a book that you just cannot put down a real page turner,I wasn't a fan of Kenny Carter's whilst he rode speedway, as I thought that there was something not quite right about him,however reading the book and discovering the appalling tragic circumstances surrounding his life as a child and then a teenager and his realationship with his father who in my opinion has much to answer for, it is not suprising that what happened to him happened,this in no way excuses him for murdering his wife though and leaving 2 orphaned children.The book is excellent and incerdibly well written.