There were few Oxfordshire stars in motor sport who shone as brilliantly as John Avery in his chosen pursuit of scrambling, or motocross as it came to be known.

My illustration shows him landing after an airborne leap at the Cotswold Scramble. John was a well-known motorcycle dealer in Summertown, and I remember purchasing my first motorcycle from him in 1965.

John Avery was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, and educated in Cheltenham. His interest in engineering was inherited from his father, Harold, whose story I told in the last issue.

John began his career as a mechanical engineer in his father's garage in Headington, where on one occasion they took in a 1939 250 BSA B21 Empire Star from a local fruit and veg merchants. John tells the story in Bob Light's book First Rich Mixture: "The BSA's engine had seized, otherwise it was like a brand new bike. We tipped some Red Ex down the plug hole to free it up and that's how it all started.

"It was scrambling that I wanted to do initially. In fact, my first scramble was the Berkshire Grand National in 1946 on the same BSA."

The little bike served John well for a number of years, he won many cups and awards with it in national trials from 1946. These included the Open Trade Supported Trials 250 cup; a class cup in a national trial; the Cotswolds Cups, Southern, West of England and Greensmith Trials; the 250 Cup in the Manville Trial run by the Coventry and Warwickshire Motorcycle Club. Another 250 Cup was won in the Mitchell Trial of 1949, as well as winning a first class award in the Scottish Six Days Trial during the same year. His very first win was the junior challenge for under-21s, held in Cheltenham in 1946. He rode his bike to the event and back, from Oxford. In the open to centre trials held by the Oxford Ixion Club, he won the Harold Avery Trophy Trial and the James Cup Trial three times in succession, thus winning both trophies outright.

The book BSA Competition History by Norman Vanhouse (1986, Haynes Publishing Group, ISBN 0-85429-479-1) records John Avery's achievements in detail.

Such was the superiority, of the Gold Star, that in 1952 when John Avery took the British 500cc scrambling Championship with his Gold Star, three more BSA's finished in the top ten.

John's peak year was 1952, his first year as BSA works rider, for which he was paid a £50 retainer.

He rode factory prepared BSA Gold Stars and that year he won the 350 race at the Hants Grand National; the Senior race of the Sunbeam Point to Point; the Senior race of the Cotswold Scramble; both the 250 and 350 races at the Experts Grand National and both the Junior and Senior races at Hawkestone Park in Shropshire.

He was the first British Rider to win a GP abroad, which was the Swedish Motocross Grand Prix at Saxtrop, followed up by a third place in the French Round. He was sixth overall in the Motocross des Nations at Brands Hatch and it was fitting that he should win the ACU Scramble Driver's Star contest for 1952 and to follow it up with a third place in 1953.

Right from the outset his aggressive and tigerish style was manifest, the stocky fairhaired John seeming to thrive on difficult courses which abounded in steep banks and hollows precipitating massive leaps through the air.

No rider hurled himself higher in the air than John Avery.' During the mid-1950s, with works BSA Gold Stars, he continued to score top-level victories at home and abroad. Then, after taking second place in the 350 race of the Experts Grand National in 1957, he has a bad crash at the March Hare scramble at Streatley, a course which had given him victories in the Berkshire Grand National during 1950, 1951 and 1952. Enough to win the trophy outright.

The accident at the March Hare scramble shattered his right arm and the scars from the injury show to this day. It was time to retire from racing and to concentrate on the motorcycle business he had established in Oxford in 1949.

His story did not end with motorcycle scrambling, however, for John took up water-skiing, specialising in the slalom, and in 1969 won the senior British water-skiing championship in the slalom category.

He recalled the experience of taking a corner at 50mph on water, then accelerating hard out of a corner, airborne across the wash to negotiate the next buoy, as very similar to racing his BSA flat out around some of the twists and turns of the scramble track!

For commissions and information on D E Langford's work, call 01865 434359. (www.britishartists.co.uk). First Rich Mixture was first published in 2000 by Ariel Publishing at The Swan, St Harmon, Powys LD6 5NG