Ivan Gerald Mauger OBE (4 October 1939 – 16 April 2018; last name pronounced "Major") was a New Zealand motorcycle speedway rider.

[3] Mauger first arrived in the UK as a 17-year-old aboard the SS Rangitoto, which docked at Tilbury in 1957, with his teenage bride Raye, renting a one-bedroom flat in Wimbledon around the corner from Plough Lane where Ronnie Moore and Barry Briggs were the star names.

[4] A major breakthrough in his career occurred in 1963 when he returned to England with Raye and his young family to join Mike Parker's Provincial league team Newcastle Diamonds.

He averaged 10.42 that season and won the Provincial League Riders' Championship, held at Hyde Road on 28 September 1963.

In 1968 he was considered the league's best rider and after a public falling out with Parker, Mauger put in a transfer request in December 1968, stating that the mental strain of riding with Newcastle was endangering his health.

[9] Mauger joined the Belle Vue Aces in 1969, where he enjoyed his greatest league team achievements.

Ten years later in 1973, Mauger would win the Western Australian State Championship, held at the Claremont Speedway in Perth.

Ironically the same fate awaited Mauger in the 1961 Australian Long track Championship when his clutch gave out after leading 4½ laps, but he would make amends and win the title in 1962 at Port Pirie.

Mauger's second place in 1971 at the Ullevi Stadium in Sweden was to the man whom he not only taught to ride a speedway bike but would become his great friend and rival throughout the 1970s, Denmark's Ole Olsen.

Mauger was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1976 New Year Honours, for services to speedway riding.

[16] In the 1989 New Year Honours, he was promoted to Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to speedway sport.

In 1970, two men in the USA named George Wenn and Ray Bokelman said that if Ivan Mauger won his third World Final in a row at Wrocław (Poland), they would have the winning bike gold plated.

Mauger duly won the World Final that year, and true to their promise, the bike was taken to America and Gold plated, and so was born the "Triple Crown Special".