McGuinness on the TT Moment He’ll Never Forget

He’s one of the biggest legends in Isle of Man TT history. 23-time winner, Morecambe Missile, and all-round top bloke, but even John McGuinness MBE admits the Mountain Course once scared him so much he had to pull over and stop mid-race.

In a YouTube interview with Lucas Stewart, McGuinness opened up about what he calls ‘the terrifying truth’ of the TT, sharing both his earliest memories of the races and the moment that properly rattled him.

‘The earliest memory for me was going to the races in 1982, I was ten years old and my dad actually raced an event before the TT starts in what’s called the Jurby Road Races,’ he said.

‘When that finished the TT practice started… you’ll go somewhere like Bray Hill, which is flat out inches from the riders going past you, and I thought wow, that’s a bit of me that, I’m going to be a TT rider.’

And he wasn’t wrong, McGuinness went on to become the third most successful rider ever, behind Joey Dunlop (26 wins) and Michael Dunlop (25). But even for the greats, the course can bite.

‘I remember one in 2005 in Crosby, I’ll never forget it, it’s absolutely engrained in my brain,’ he said.

‘Was going past the church and it sort of rolled a little bit, some guys can do it flat and I just rolled a bit into there and lost the front, it scared me that much I stopped, pulled out of that race.

‘But it was where my best mate got killed in 2003, my mate David Jefferies, godfather to my son… I had Dave Jefferies’ crash in my head and just stopped.’

McGuinness was first on the scene when his best mate died in a practice race in 2003, and has previously described it as a ‘war zone’ when him and his machine got to Woodlea Villas in Crosby.