Copyright Jan Burgers printed on 250gsm Kodak paper:
 
A tall New Zealand motocrosser with four years of tarmac experience pilots a machine he engineered and becomes the first Kiwi to win a premier-class Grand Prix and challenges for the world 500 championship. Up until then, The Kim Newcombe Story was a scriptwriter’s dream.
 
Kim Newcombe and the unlikely outboard motor-powered Koenig led fifteen-time world 500 champions MV Agusta in the points’ standings for six days in mid 1973. But just as the season was building to an amazing climax, the fairy tale came to a tragic end. Kim Newcombe, 29, died on August 14, 1973, two days after sustaining head injuries in a race crash at Silverstone in England. He was survived by wife Janeen and their son Mark.
 
The motorcycle mechanic from Auckland was an unlikely grand prix hero. Newcombe left his home country in 1963 for Australia as a motocrosser. When he left for Europe in mid-1968, he had still not road raced having competed in motocross, speedway and dirt-track, and outboard-engine hydroplane boat racing..
 
Round six for the 1973 world 500 title was held on Sunday, June 17, on the hillside streets of Opatija, Yugoslavia. The MV team stayed home. Newcombe won narrowly, bettering Alberto Pagani’s 1972 winning race average speed set on an MV in a race ten laps shorter than the previous year. The New Zealander lapped within half a second of Agostini’s 1972 lap record.