isle of man

One of the things that inspires me most outside of the tech and marketing world is reading the stories of motorcycle racers. Way back in the 1950s and 1960s, they’d line up on a race grid at the start of the season knowing that some of the people alongside them would probably be dead by the end of the year, and then race at three figure speeds on cobbled streets between houses.

Compared to that, the struggle to upload a video to Facebook doesn’t seem quite so traumatic! One great example is Jim Redman: Six Times World Motorcycle Champion, which includes his return to winning at Daytona at the age of 63!

As a British motorcycling fan, it’s an unwritten rule I have to mention Barry Sheene, and this is probably the best book about him: Barry : The Story of Motorcycling Legend Barry Sheene. And I can’t ever mention motorcycling racing without the greatest of the current riders – and one of the greatest of all time, Valentino Rossi: Valentino Rossi: Motogenius. All three books are in my own collection (Disclosure – Mat Oxley and Michael Scott both wrote for MCN during my time there, but I never really spoke with them…)

If you want a flavour of roadracing, you need to see a DVD of the Isle of Man TT: Isle of Man TT 2007, and I’d recommend watching the current MotoGP championship on the BBC (Also on iPlayer). If you watch it and claim to still prefer car racing, for example, you’re obviously mad.

Here’s a trailer for the MotoGP-based film, Faster, which sums it all up quite nicely: