Shawn Giles

33-year-old Wallerawang (Near Lithgow, NSW) resident Shawn Giles has, without question, been the most dominant rider in Australian road racing over the past couple of years.

Unlike a lot of today's younger racers Shawn didn't start road racing as a career, but instead found that he liked it after sliding around for a bit of fun on a slick shod CR 500 back in 1989. Some short circuit work followed by some club days at Amaroo and Oran Park, but it was enough to get him hooked.

So he jumped in with both feet and got himself an RS 250 Honda GP bike to compete in the Australian Championship. It was then that he found out how much the tar could hurt after a big fall in his first championship outing. The rest of his debut season was plagued with machinery problems.

From there he decided to go four-stroke and got hold of an RC30 to race in 1991. Shawn was starting to get noticed at this point in time and Tony Hatton arranged for Shawn to do some riding in Japan. The bike he rode there was the Moriwaki Zero, an RC 30 engine housed in a Moriwaki frame.

Japan taught Shawn a lot and he went back for more in 1992. He finished 2nd in the Suzuka 200 behind Yamaha factory pilot Nagai. This boosted his confidence even further. The practice of racing 4-stroke 600s was just getting off the ground in Australia that year and Shawn won the new championship that was then known as "Junior SuperStreet".

1993 looked like being very rosy with a two-year factory Yamaha contract in his pocket. But it proved to be one of Shawn's hardest years as the team struggled to get on top of the (then) new YZF 750. Shawn spent much of the season bruised and sore as the Yamaha developed a tendency for spitting him off with alarming regularity. One of the highlights for the year was a 9th place finish at the Suzuka 8-hour with Yoshikawa, they ran under the banner “Yamaha SuperBike Development Team”.

Then the team folded, this left Shawn out in the cold for the second year of his supposedly two-year contract. He bought the YZF from Yamaha and ran it himself with some success. Shawn won "The King of the Mountain" at Bathurst, and set a new lap record in the process. He then scored a wildcard entry at the Australian round of the 1994 World SuperBike Championship and rode a Fraser's Ducati to 7th in race one, and 8th in race two. This was a busy year for Shawn, he also competed in his fourth Suzuka 8-hour, aboard a Yoshimura Suzuki teamed with Briton Niall McKenzie.

Ducati Australia had Shawn onboard their bike in 1995 and he rewarded them with a win in the 2+4 series, this was the first Australian Championship win for Ducati.

1995 also saw Shawn have another major crash. Chasing Mat Mladin towards Phillip Island's Honda Corner, Shawn was setting up for a pass when Mladin's tyre delaminated, the resulting rubber shrapnel took the front wheel of Shawn's Ducati out from underneath him. This sent him sliding along the ground at well over 200kph before slamming him in to a tyre wall (which has now been moved to a safer position).

Shawn remained with Ducati for 1996, but halfway through the year headed to Europe to help the Alstare Corona Ducati Team develop the new Pirelli race tyres. He also recorded six World SuperBike race starts in 1996 on the Ducati.

Honda put Shawn on a CBR 600 in the 1997 Australian SuperSport Championship, Shawn duly won the title for Honda. Funnily enough the second place rider that year was current Castrol Honda Team Manager, Paul Free.

Shawn also raced an RC45 in Australian SuperBike to a 3rd place finish that year, and piloted a Fireblade in Formula Xtreme. After winning 12 out of 15 FX races Shawn struck some bad luck in the final round with a broken exhaust costing him the win. He ended up losing the championship by one point to Yamaha’s Benn Archibald.

1998 saw Shawn again on a Honda Team, but this time the effort was a little more low key. This showed in the results, 4th in SuperBike. Next year Shawn signed with Ansett Air Freight Suzuki and his now long-term association with master tuner Phil Tainton started taking shape. He finished 4th in Australian SuperBike (1999).

In 2000 Shawn won the Australian SuperBike Championship in convincing fashion from Adam Fergusson and Kevin Curtain. Some said this was simply because Shawn was on the field's only FIM spec' SuperBike (GSX-R 750), but this was perhaps a little unfair as he was racing against production based machines of up to 1000cc in capacity.

Shawn then silenced his critics by backing up the 2000 Championship with a completely dominant win under the new Production SuperBike rules in 2001 with the GSX-R1000 from Craig Coxhell and Jamie Stauffer.

He then added to that success again by wrapping up the 2002 Australian SuperBike Championship from Josh Brookes and Jamie Stauffer.

He is defending that title with Team Suzuki again this year. For the first time in a few years he has a team-mate, young Craig Coxhell. Shawn currently leads the 2003 Shell Advance Australian Superbike Championship by two points over his young compatriot.

After riding the first two rounds of the 2003 Championship on the 'K2' GSX-R1000 Shawn turned his hand to developing and racing the new 'K3' machine.

In June 2003 Shawn turned 33 and also celebrated the birth of his first son, Cooper. He joins daughter Kayla and mother Sharon to round out the Giles clan.