Admittedly, the cancellation of the opening weekend of the 2017 Yamaha Australian Off-Road Championship (AORC) season meant that only 10 of the scheduled 12 rounds were run, but that hardly takes away from Daniel Milner’s historical feat of clean-sweeping both the E2-class and Outright victories at the country’s premier off-road series. It’s something very special when a rider can not only upstage all-comers in the huge variety of terrain in which the series is raced, but also across its Enduro, Sprint and Cross-Country race formats. And when you add into that mix the fact Milner is a diabetic in a very physically demanding sport, it underlines the magnitude of the KTM Enduro Racing Team rider’s achievement this season.

Since the AORC’s inception in 2005, there have only been five Outright champions – AJ Roberts, Chris Hollis, Toby Price, Daniel Milner and Daniel Sanders – who’ve all posted what you’d call dominant seasons en route to their titles. But only Milner has managed the unbeaten record in what will always be remembered as a historical 2017 season for the Victorian larrikin. In claiming his second Outright AORC title, Milner also handed KTM their fourth on the trot.

As is often the case when a Pro rider achieves such a memorable milestone, Milner’s feat prompted us to reflect on his formative years; on Doogs’ meteoric charge to the top of the national and international off-road heap. Entitled “Lightning-Fast Larrikin”, this Daniel Milner profile was originally published in the April 2013 (Issue #30) of Transmoto Magazine.

Lightning-Fast Larrikin

Despite battling diabetes and disbelievers, 21-year-old knockabout country boy, Daniel “Doogs” Milner, has rocketed to the top of Australia’s off-road race scene. Arterial blood spurts from Daniel Milner’s forearm like a scene from some low-rent horror movie. Friends, family and paramedics scurry to the racer’s aid, and work to stem the crazy flow of claret. The 19-year-old is shaky on his feet. His face is a pale shade of grey. He’s not in good shape. And as his rivals tear past the pits, all he can do is lie there and listen to his title chances evaporate. No wonder there’s agony written all over the bloke’s face.

It’s the opening round of the 2011 Australian Off-Road Championship (AORC) in sweltering, 40-degree Bulahdelah heat, and the young charger everyone expects to challenge the AORC frontrunners has crashed on the far side of the course. He’s sporting what looks like an axe-wound on his elbow and he’s lost a lot of blood on the way back to the pits. The kid’s a diabetic, so there’s genuine concern for his well-being.
When paramedics finally get him stabilised, I ask Doogs if he minds me taking a few photos before he’s carted off to hospital. “Why would I mind? Get into it, mate. No worries,” he says, chirpy as you like, with his trademark Aussie drawl. “Just don’t ask me to do backflips … cos I’m feeling average.”

Given the circumstances, the candid and amusing response speaks volumes about the character of a bloke I’ve come to know much better in the two years since; as he’s charged to the pointy end of the Australian off-road scene and bettered the world’s best at the ISDE.
In spite of the rapid-fire success, Daniel Milner remains a down to earth, no-bullshit, fun-loving joker. He hasn’t a skerrick of pretence or that misguided Gen-Y sense of entitlement. He uses the timeless sayings of his father’s generation instead of the fashionable “whatevs … for shizzle” dribble of his urban counterparts. And even his mates’ mums call him “Doogie” or “Doogs”. This 21-year-old larrikin loves the sport and the life he’s built around it. And with his recent successes, it’s with damn good reason.

FORMATIVE YEARS

Milner only got serious about the AORC in recent years, so very few people outside Victoria know much about his background. So where did this prodigious talent spring from and how’d he get into bikes?

“When I was a young punk, I was into my football – AFL, that is,” he says. “Dad was a great player and he got me into footy, but seeing as I’ve lived on a farm my whole life, Dad also bought me a PeeWee 50. Actually, he bought it for my two older sisters, but I ended up burning around on the thing as soon as I got big enough. Dad then bought me an XR100, and when my uncle Nobby – who lived up in Darwin and was into the dirt bike scene – moved back to Victoria, he suggested that Dad take me along to an enduro race. I entered my first Victorian Off-Road Championship race in 2003 – on the old XR100 in the 65cc class. We rocked up with bald-as tyres, and I just swung off it. But I did alright. I was 11 or 12 and got third in my first race. From then on, it just snowballed. I started enjoying the sport more and more and we did the whole series. I loved the travelling and camping with all the other families.”

He reminisces about those early days with a twinkle in his eye and broad smile; as if the sport has been both a revelation and salvation. It also reinforces how much of a family pursuit racing has always been for the Milners. “I’m very lucky that Mum and Dad brought me up right,” he says, solemnly. “There was no getting away with it if I did something wrong. That taught me about consequences, and prepared me well for the off-road scene. Unlike a lot of young motocrossers – who can be a bit up themselves – off-road people are generally more down to earth and friendly.”

BALLS OR BIKES?

“Whether it was footy or bikes, I’ve always wanted to get to the top and be paid for doing what I love doing,” Milner says, matter-of-factly. “When I was 16 or 17, the footy club wanted me to play in the ‘Ones’ – the top team – which means playing fully grown men. I was up for being smacked around, but in 2006, I was forced to make a decision between my football and motorbikes.

“I’d been playing footy on Saturday and then racing on Sunday, but it was getting increasingly tough to do both. One day, obviously thinking I was some sort of footy hero, I went to take a speccy mark, but I landed on my head. Actually, I’d put my hand down to break the fall and my head ploughed into it, buggering the ligaments in my wrist. That injury screwed my chances for the 125cc championship that year. As much as I loved my football, I decided to focus on racing bikes.”

The decision didn’t initially go down too well with his old man, Lou, who’d hoped Daniel would tread in his footy footsteps. “Considering how expensive racing bikes is compared to footy, it was a tough call to make,” Doogs recalls. “Probably tougher on the old boy because racing was all on his pocket at that time. But he came around when he saw how much I loved racing and it’s definitely starting to pay off now.”

ENTER THE NATIONALS

Still, in the Junior ranks, Milner’s first foray into national-level competition was more of a dabble than a full-blown assault, and it remained that way for a few years. “In 2007, I rode my first AORC on a Honda 250F in the Junior class. Mitch Bowen was the man back then and I got second to him, but that was the one national I raced. I got back on a Yamaha for the 2008 season, but busted my collarbone badly at an arenacross and missed a fair bit of the AORC series.”

The following year, Milner won the first of his three consecutive Victorian Off-Road Championships with the Christensen’s Motorcycles team. But when it came to the AORC, he still didn’t see himself as a Pro rider. “In 2009, I rode a Yamaha 450 in the Expert E2 class. After busting my wrist at the Orange 4-Day, I dropped a round of the AORC, but still came second to Luke Tomlinson. I was pretty inconsistent when I look back on it now, and I didn’t peg myself against the Pro guys’ times as much as I should have that year.”

On home turf, however, the 18-year-old country kid was unstoppable, even though he competed in the Expert class. “I was the first Expert rider to ever win the Victorian Off-Road Championship Outright, so a few of the Pro-class guys protested, saying that an Expert can’t win the Outright,” he explains. “Thankfully, no one thought much of that shit and my title win stuck. I was pretty damn happy with it, too.”

THE MOMENT OF SELF-BELIEF

Milner stepped up to the Pro class for the 2010 AORC, and he went into the series without too many expectations. But that all changed at the season opener, where he shocked himself with an Outright podium. And that was the catalyst for the youngster to really start believing in his ability. “At Round 1 that year, my Suzuki 450 had a mechanical and I DNFed on the Saturday,” he recalls. “I had another issue with it on Sunday’s parade lap, so I quickly swapped to my teammate’s RM-Z250 for the ace. There was no time to set the 250 up for me or get used to it, but I went out and finished third Outright on the first loop.”

Not only that; Milner kept the hammer down and finished the day in third Outright behind factory KTM teammates, Toby Price and Jarrod Bewley. There was a look of astonishment on the kid’s face as he stood on the podium that afternoon, but there was also a new air of confidence about him.
Looking back, Doogs sees that day at Port Macquarie as a turning point. “That result opened my eyes to what I could do with a good run, and it made me even keener to do better,” he says. “From then on, it was game on. I went onto the 4-Day with more confidence and ended up doing pretty well.”
‘Pretty well’ is an understatement! At the Portland A4DE, the young Victorian was a sensation. He finished fourth Outright in a high-calibre field and, for the first time ever, noticed the sport’s top Pros looking over the shoulders at him. Daniel Milner was officially on his rivals’ radars. “I was stoked with that result,” he says proudly. “To finish fourth behind Price, Merriman and Bewley was pretty cool. I beat Ben Grabham by just a second or two, with Kirk Hutton and Matty Phillips were close behind him.”

“Arterial blood spurted from his forearm like a scene from some low-rent horror movie.”

A CAREER ON HOLD

After Milner’s stellar back-half of the 2010 season, the eyes of the off-road world were on him when the AORC got under way at Bulahdelah in early 2011. “For the first time ever, I entered the AORC season thinking I was a chancing at running with the top guys, if only I could stop crashing. But I didn’t get the chance. I crashed,” he says with a sigh. “I was feeling pretty good halfway through the three-hour cross-country. But out of the blue, I tucked the front-end. I put my elbow down to break my fall and she’s speared into a sharp rock,” he explains. “At first, I thought it was just gravel rash, but when I bent down to pick the bike up, I noticed a puddle of blood on the ground. I lifted my sleeve up to check out the elbow and blood was squirting out. So from that stage, I knew I was in trouble. I should have ripped my jersey off and tied it around the gash for compression. But I wasn’t thinking straight, and I just slid my sleeve back down and made a beeline back to the pits. I was on the far side of the loop when it happened so it took almost 10 minutes to get back to the pits, and I was pretty close to fainting from the loss of blood. Thankfully, the medics sorted my out from there and got me off to hospital. The doctors said the rock I’d hit was so sharp, it had not only split the skin, but acted like plane on my bone as well!”

The injury sidelined Milner for the next two rounds and stopped his momentum in its tracks: “After that injury, it took me a fair while to get back to where I had been – especially my confidence – and I ended up seventh Outright that year in the AORC. Aside from a couple of podiums in South Australia, I didn’t really do much all year. Late in 2011, I did alright at the 4-Day in Mackay, placing fifth, but it was a pretty disappointing season all in all.”

DEALING WITH DIABETES

There are very few top-shelf endurance athletes with diabetes, for the simple reason that wildly fluctuating blood-sugar levels detracts from their performance rather than enhances it. Which is why I pressed Doogs about how he’s managed to adapt his racing to accommodate the disease. “It’s definitely not fun and it does make things more difficult,” he concedes. “But it’s just something you need to manage. If you don’t, you die. With longer events, like the three-hour cross-country, my blood-sugar levels can run really low. I get so down on energy, it feels like I’ve done a five-hour cycle and then got drunk. It took us a few years to figure out how to stay on top of it. It’s not like I’m doing food, fuel, goggles and needle when I stop in the pits (laughs), because insulin needles take sugar out of your blood. I just need to be a lot more mindful of eating the right sort of foods at the right intervals to keep my sugar levels up. If I’ve got five minutes at a control, I’ll test my blood-sugar and smash as much food as I can. And I always keep jelly beans in my bumbag as a precaution.”

“I never do needles while I’m racing. I just need to eat the right sort of food at the right intervals and I’ll test my blood-sugar levels if I get time at controls.”

LANDING THE PLUM RIDE

Having ridden Yamahas for much of his racing life, the offer to join the Ballard’s Yamaha Off-Road team for season 2012 came from left field to some extent, but Doogs seized the opportunity and made the most of it. “Mate, when you get the chance to join Geoff Ballard’s team, you jump on it. And that’s what I did,” he says. “The team’s level of organisation, bike set-up and off-road experience are as good as it gets in the off-road pit paddock. Initially, they were looking to put me on the WR450F and a young motocrosser on the 250, but I put my hand up to ride the YZ250F as I don’t weigh too much and I think my riding style suits a 250 better. They went for it and it’s all worked out well.”

Milner flourished from the get-go with the Ballard’s outfit, and his speed, confidence and consistency visibly improved from round to round. He took nine E1-class wins from the 10-round AORC and clinched his maiden national title. But by mid-season, Milner had already set himself a bigger goal.
And at the series finale in South Australia, it materialised. “I was determined to win an Outright last year because coming second to Toby Price was starting to do my head in,” he says. “To win the Outright at the cross-country in South Oz was so cool, especially as I had to come through the pack from dead last to do it. You couldn’t take the smile off my dial for days.”

ANALYSING SUCCESS

Having managed off-road race teams for 24 years, Geoff Ballard is an astute judge of riding talent. But GB was the first to admit that he was surprised at the sheer pace of Milner’s improvement during the 2012 season (see Team Managers’ Take… sidebar on page 62). So how did Doogs compress three years’ progress into one? “I’d worked in construction and earthmoving to make ends meet, but last season, I made the decision to stop working and focus solely on racing,” he explains. “The other key thing I did was taking on a personal trainer who pushed me to the point of throwing up. As I got into the season, I really noticed how that training helped me push through the pain on the bike and make fewer mistakes. “It’s always hard to get through a season without some mechanical issues or personal injuries, but I also learned to minimise the effect those things can have on my results last year. I started thinking more about my racing and got smarter. About bloody time (laughs)!”

“I was determined to win an Outright because coming second to Toby Price was starting to do my head in. I had to come from dead last to do it, but I did it!”

PADDOCK PRESSURE

Like many young aspiring riders who land their first ride on a top-flight race team, Doogs wasn’t his customary happy-go-lucky self at the opening rounds last year. But he soon found a way to put the pressure to one side. “I did feel more pressure to perform when I signed on with the Ballard’s team,” he admits. “But I also knew it was important to remember that having fun is why I got into the sport in the first place, and that I tend to ride faster and more consistently when I’m enjoying myself. So I just tried to be myself – not my ‘professional self’, if you know what I mean – and not get cocky. I’ve noticed that when I’m having fun, so are the people around me. It helps create a relaxed atmosphere, which I thrive on.

“That’s why I’ve tried to keep racing in perspective and continue to do what I enjoy doing off the bike. I like my golf and I go pig shooting with my old man up a Broken Hill a fair bit. It’s good to have those interests outside racing to break things up. Same with chilling out with my mates – whether it’s surfing or being idiots jumping off a jetty or getting out for a beer. I learned pretty early on that you can’t be all about bikes; you’ve got to live your life outside racing as well.”

THE SEASON AHEAD

When Milner punctuated his AORC win with a world-class performance at the 2012 ISDE in Germany and a landmark Outright win two weeks later at the A4DE, it’s no surprise that the guy was on the top of team managers’ shopping lists for 2013. And even though it’s taken an eternity for the new-look CDR Yamaha Off-Road team to take shape, the fact Milner held off on signing elsewhere confirms he’s got a soft spot for blue bikes.“Yeah, it’s taken a while to get everything sorted, but it’s really exciting to sign on with the CDR Yamaha Off-Road team,” he says. “I plan to ride the YZ250F again and, to help get our speed and intensity up, we plan to tag onto some test sessions with Craig Dack’s motocross team.
“I think it’s great for the off-road scene that an icon of the sport like Craig Dack has become involved. Plus, as our Sprint-formats are not that different to motocross, I’m sure the two teams will benefit from sharing technology and bike set-up information. CDR is known for being the most professional and successful team in the motocross and supercross paddock, so it can only be a good thing for the off-road scene in my eyes.”

But what expectation does Milner have for his 2013 season? Casual as he is, Doogs has clearly put thought into it. “Winning the 4-Day last year has always been a dream of mine because the event has a special place on the off-road calendar and it’s been around for something like 35 years. And I was stoked to win it on a 250. So I guess my dream for this season is to win the Outright in the AORC on a 250. No one’s done that before.”

“I like my golf and I go pig shooting with my old man up at Broken Hill a fair bit. You’ve got to live your life outside racing as well.”

LIFE BEYOND AUSTRALIAN RACING

In the wake of his blistering performance at the ISDE, there were widespread expectations that Milner would land a ride in Europe or America. But despite his best efforts, viable opportunities were few and far in between. “Right now, the economy is making it pretty tough for too many riders outside America or Europe to score a ride, which makes Matty Phillips’ deal to race for the CH Husqvarna team such a good opportunity for him,” he says, philosophically. “At this point of my career, I want to race as a full-time job; to earn money from racing. The only opportunities I had in Europe and America would mean that I’d have to get another job to support myself there.
“It’s important to put yourself in front of the team managers over there during the year,” he goes on to say. “So I’d like to do a few GNCC rounds in America when the local calendar allows for it. If I can do well, the plan would be to race the whole GNCC series in 2014. I raced a GNCC in America late last year and, even though I had a bit of a bad run there, the three-hour events seem to suit me better. Eventually, I’d like to win a GNCC title like Shane Watts and Josh Strang have. That’d be cool.”