Guy Martin gets his kicks riding superbikes at 250km/h, despite his sport recording a staggering number of deaths, writes TARA BRADY
IT’S AFTER nine and already dark in Caistor, Lincolnshire, when Guy Martin gets off from work. “I have three jobs,” he says cheerily. “I work nights on a farm in the summer when harvest starts. I work on a civil engineering site down the Humber Docks where all the refineries are. So that’s my day job from seven to four. And then I build engines at night.”
"Eh," he exclaims in an angular Lincolnshire pitch. "That's not too busy now, is it?" If he's an industrious fellow, there's a reason. Guy Martin is a motorcycle racer; for many, indeed, he's themotorcycle racer. Out on the roads and between the hedges, the 29-year-old has, to date, won five Ulster Grand Prix and seven consecutive Scarborough Gold Cups. He's worked on the track and off for every one.
“There’s no more expensive sport than racing bloody motorbikes,” he says. “I’ve been racing a few years so it’s not as bad as it was. When I first started back in 1999 every penny I had went into it. I was driving trucks and working in the Hard Rock Cafe at night. I’d work on the docks at nights at the weekend. You have to do it. You get out what you put in. It’s massive enjoyment. And it doesn’t cost me a great deal now. I still have to work but I get a few quid out of it.”
His independence is a crucial aspect of his popularity. A charismatic working-class hero, he’s a favourite with back pages and sports broadcasts, where he variously appears as the “cheeky chappie” or “loveable rogue” of the superbikes circuit.
In what is probably the world’s most dangerous sport, Guy Martin is “the people’s champion”. No matter how many times he hears the phrase he still finds it bewildering. “Eh,” he laughs. “I can’t really see why myself. I suppose it’s because the people who take time off work to see the races know that I’ve taken time off work to be in the race. I suppose people see me as being in the same boat they are.”
Martin’s fans are typical of those who follow the sport. For the uninitiated the Superbike scene looks at least eight kinds of crazy. But for the faithful, standing in ditches to catch a glimpse of bikes speeding by at 250km/h it’s a noble calling. “Does it really look crazy to you?” Martin asks. Just a bit.
“Well, you could look at it like that couldn’t you?” he laughs. “If you can’t drive, you can’t drive. But I don’t know how you can think that and walk out the door of your house in the morning. I mean if you don’t want to do anything dangerous you may as well do it properly. But you can’t look at life like that can you? If your time’s up, your time’s up. That’s all there is to it.” He’s similarly blasé about the staggering number of deaths in the sport and his own near-fatal crash last year.
“It did seem like a spectacular crash if you look at the footage,” he shrugs. “But it wasn’t that bad. I’ve had worse. I don’t have cancer. I’m not in Afghanistan. Those people have it tough. I don’t. The media made a fuss about it. But there’s takers and there’s doers. People who race bikes don’t talk about crashes. They keep going. My best friend was killed in 2007. It’s all part of the job.”
Martin was 19 when he decided to follow his father Ian into motorcycle racing. His father wasn’t keen on the idea. “He did it for 15 years and he had a bad accident in 1988 and that was that. Broke his hip and was left with a limp,” he recalls.
“He was very encouraging once I started. He got me a few tyres and bits and bobs and what have you. But he didn’t want me doing it. It ended up that I had to. When I left school I had a moped and I was going flat out everywhere and I crashed it a good few times. So I thought doing this in a race has to be safer than doing this on the street.”
In 1999 his need for speed brought him to Ulster where road racing is a thriving subculture. He stayed on for three seasons in a province he hails as “bike mad”.
“They’re dead friendly over there,” he says. “And everyone there races bikes for the love of it. There was no bullshit about getting on in the sport. In England it’s a bit different. Some of the lads that are racing bikes have forgotten why they started. A lot of lads just want to be seen to be doing it. I’m with the Irish. I just want to race. I don’t care if anyone’s looking or not.”
It’s not too surprising that when a documentary crew turned up at last year’s Isle of Man TT Martin quickly became the star of the show.
TT3D: Closer to the Edgegoes behind the scenes and out on the tarmac to capture the rivalries and tragedies of the sport's golden ribbon event, a race that claims lives almost every year. Presented in visceral, watch-between-your-fingers 3D, the finished film has already generated a flurry of box office activity in Ireland, where it has clocked up the kind of pre-release ticket sales one normally associates with Harry Potterflicks. "It was bloody interesting to see them filming," says Martin. "There were 15 blokes operating one 3D camera. They came to work and followed me and a few of the lads around the place. I couldn't understand why they wanted to do the film on me.
“They’re nice blokes. But they wouldn’t look at things the same way I do. I look at things in a dead matter-a-fact way. They’re very arty farty. You know those jobs to do before you die? Being in a movie was never one of my jobs. But I’m happy enough to have done it.”
Being "dead matter-a-fact" has won Martin plenty of admirers. In this spirit BBC One have just snapped him up to present the upcoming educational documentary series The Boat that Guy Built. But as TT3D: Closer to the Edgereveals, not everyone is quite so enamoured.
“Some of the lads in racing don’t like me because I speak my mind,” admits Martin. “There’s not a lot of aggro. I’m not bothered. They’re nice lads. It’s just that there are a lot of guys who are professional. For me it’s a hobby. I don’t have to say or do the right things. It’s not my job. Me and my dad and my mates build the bikes. Some people think I’m not taking it seriously. But nobody wants to win more than I do.”
To that end, he’s looking forward to his eighth Isle of Man TT at the end of next month. To date, he has stood on the podium every year since 2004, but has yet to win the race outright. It’s a situation he’s determined to rectify but it is not, he says, as important as the thrill of the chase.
“I need to race,” he insists. “I’ve done Mega Avalanche. I’ve done Bungee Jumping. I’m going Base Jumping in the fjords soon. I race pushbikes more than I race motorbikes, but it’s not the same. I can’t find anything to recreate the same buzz. You just can’t imagine how thrilling it is to race motorbikes. It’s the most amazing feeling there is.”
TT3D: Closer to the Edgeopens April 22nd
