Some jobs you take because they pay. This one I took because of who it was for.
Clive Ng-A-Kien has taught both of my kids to ride. He won the Canadian 250 Grand Prix championship five years running, 1980 through 1984, back when 250 GP was one of the premier road racing classes on this continent, and he went into the Canadian Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2019. None of that is the impressive part. The impressive part is that he can explain a corner to a seven-year-old in one sentence and the kid gets it — and then does it, on the next lap, correctly.
That is a rarer skill than being fast. Clive and Toni have built a pipeline at Super Sonic Road Race School that turns kids who have never sat on a bike into national champions, and they do it by saying the simple thing at the right moment. So when Clive needed a suit designed, it was an easy yes.
Clive Ng-A-Kien. Photo: Canadian Motorcycle Hall of Fame.
The leaf
This is the piece of the suit I am most pleased with, and it is the simplest thing on it.
Clive was born in Guyana and got his first bike, a 50cc Yamaha, at sixteen. He won the Guyanese Grass Track Championship three years running — 1973, 1974, 1975 — and the Guyanese Dirt Track Championship twice in the middle of that. His family immigrated to Canada at the end of 1975. Within two years he was winning Canadian championships, and five years after that he was untouchable in 250 GP.
So this is not decoration. The mark is the actual shape of his career.
The obvious solution is two flags side by side on the shoulder, which is what most suits do and which reads, honestly, as two stickers. Two flags say he is from there and he lives here. They sit next to each other and stay separate. So instead: one maple leaf, holding the flag of Guyana inside it. The green field fills the body of the leaf, the golden arrowhead runs up the centre, and the red survives in the outer points where the maple leaf keeps its own colour.
It works because the two flags happen to share a geometry. Guyana's arrowhead is a triangle pointing forward; a maple leaf is a set of triangles pointing outward. Line the arrowhead up with the centre lobe and the shapes agree with each other instead of fighting.
One mark, two countries, no explanation needed. It sits alone at the top of the back, right below the collar, where it is the first thing you see when he pulls away from you.
The crest
On the chest, over the heart, the Canadian Motorcycle Hall of Fame crest with his name under it.
Not many people get to wear that mark. Laurel wreath, café racer silhouette, checkered flag and a maple leaf at the base — it is an old-fashioned badge and it should stay that way, so it goes on the suit at full detail rather than being simplified into something more "modern." A Hall of Fame crest is not a logo you get to redraw. You give it room and you leave it alone.
It sits beside the Super Sonic Road Race School roundel, which is the correct pairing: the honour on one side, the school he is still teaching at on the other.
What the rest of the suit is doing
White chest, black legs, red as the accent. Clean enough that the three badges on the chest are the only thing competing for attention up front, and the name across the shoulders is the only thing competing on the back.
The rest is sponsor obligation handled properly. KYT on the collar, Motul and Pirelli running full-length down the forearms where a photographer shooting from the outside of a corner will actually capture them, Gryphon on the aero hump and down both outer legs. Race photography is shot from the side, so the side of a rider is the most valuable real estate on a suit — that is where the paying marks go, not the chest.
The red pixel-camo on the shins is the one purely decorative move on the whole thing, and it is there because knee sliders and boot scuffs destroy plain colour. A broken pattern ages better than a flat panel.
Thanks
Built by Gryphon, who make proper custom leathers in Canada — the same people who now sell fully custom race suits to anyone, not just their sponsored riders.
And thank you, Clive, for what you have taught my two. They can both ride because of how you explain things. Half the grid at a MotoMini round can say the same.
Got a suit or a helmet that needs designing? I design print, event and social media graphics for racing programs and small businesses across Ontario.