Smiths Triumph have this morning announced the retirement of reigning British Supersport Champion Glen Richards after an illustrious 15 year career within the British Championship. The Australian won the 2007 National Superstock and 2008 British Supersport titles during his career and enjoyed considerable success in the British Superbike Championship where he competed for, amongst others, Hawk Kawasaki, HM Plant Honda and WFR Honda.

"I've been trying not to think about it too much and get this weekend out of the way. I've enjoyed my racing and will probably still do a bit of riding, I don't want to fully hang my leathers up, probably just not at this level. I've been in the UK, racing British Championship for 15 years now so I've seen a lot of people come and go in my time," said Richards speaking to bikesportnews.com while wolfing down Sanatogen and leafing through a Stannah catalogue.

"I feel now is probably a good time for me to move on and do other things with my life, try and spend some more time with my two daughters. It's one of those things, everything comes to an end one day."

Former Spanish Supersport Champion, Graeme Gowland, has will replace the veteran Australian in the official Triumph team. Gowland has picked up two podiums this year in British Supersport and will return to the World Supersport stage in selected rounds in 2014.

"I'm looking forward to it you know. I can't thank the Appleyard Macadam team enough for getting me through to the end of the year but I've been given an opportunity to go and do some World Supersport. After competing at that level in 2008, my dream has been to return with a British team so to be given the chance by Smiths Triumph is fantastic. It should be a good year.

"Obviously, I've ridden a lot of bikes recently so I'm kind of getting used to adapting to new bikes. It's something really different to the R6 but if you look at the results of the new Triumph in the second half of the year it's been really strong, the bike has got better and better," said Gowland.