Maverick Guy Martin ready for Isle of Man TT

In the back of a transit van sits a man with satanic sideburns and a packet of Russian Caravan tea. He used to take tablets to keep awake on Grimsby docks, but now survives on the life-affirming fix of the near-death experience. He is the last of the working-class heroes.
For most of the year Guy Martin fixes trucks. Then, for two weeks in June, he is fêted by the thousands flocking to the Isle of Man for the TT festival. “I think it was Laurel and Hardy who said, 'Don't believe the hype,'” he said. “I get a lot of smoke blown up my a*** here, but then I go back to work and the lads don't give a s***. Some go back to polishing their motorhomes; they don't like it when I say that, but it's true.”
The TT still splits opinion. To some it is a twisted mongrel of a race, an outdated throwback of recycled tragedy. To others it is racing in its purest form, along wall-lined roads marked by memorials for those who duelled and died.
Today Martin will meet Valentino Rossi, regarded as the greatest bike racer of modern times. The MotoGP world champion is visiting the island for the first time but he will not be racing. The GP stars have not done so since the TT was removed from the calendar three decades ago after the likes of Giacomo Agostini and Barry Sheene turned their backs on it, bemoaning a death toll now standing at 225.
Martin likes Rossi because he shuns the corporate mores of modern sport, but finds it hard to explain the TT to laymen. “It's so fast and long, the thick end of 200mph, sucking the rabbits out of the hedges,” he said, parked up across the road from the cavernous cemetery in Douglas. “But really, I was driving down the dual carriageway and saw a guy about my age, in a people carrier, kids in the back, bonnet up, steam coming out of the engine, wife at his side giving him all that. What's he do at the weekend? Mow the grass? Wash the car? I mean, how can I explain something like this to someone like that? It's just not in his DNA.”
Martin is the most unguarded sportsman you will come across. Hence, he explains a wager he has struck with his mechanic about whether he can stay celibate for two weeks. He then recalls how he borrowed some tablets so he could stay awake when working on the docks, before segueing seamlessly into a tale of how he worked in a restaurant where the staff had to dance on the tables whenever one of four songs came on. “Every time I hear Build Me Up Buttercup on the radio, I'm away,” he said.
PR-pampered professionalism is anathema to the 27-year-old from Lincolnshire. At a Honda function to mark 50 years of racing at the TT, he turned up in grubby shorts and a grey T-shirt, instead of his team uniform. Was it deliberate? “Aye, it was a bit,” he conceded. “People who are good at a sport, whether it be football or motorcycling, think it's their only way to make money. And to make money they have to say the right things, so any time a microphone comes out, they come out with the same old s***. It's like they're reading off a card.
“Maybe if I didn't go back to the job then I'd lose a lot and be the same. The only GP rider who is not dull is Rossi.” Footballers, he believes, are “poofters who kick a bag of wind” and “as for Formula One, Jesus!”
Martin has been on the podium five times at the TT but has never won and will have to overcome six laps, 227 miles and John McGuinness, the 14-times winner, to break his duck. He has five chances this week on his Hydrex Honda, starting with today's Superbike race, which was postponed from Saturday because of heavy rain. He counted down by waxing lyrical about the merits of tea and showing off his Tea Appreciation Society T-shirt. “The British troops used it [tea] to camouflage themselves in India because they realised their red jackets made them stand out,” he said. “It's part of what Englishness is all about.”
So is the eccentric maverick. Perhaps fittingly, Martin turned to racing on the roads of Ireland after a run-in with a race director at Rockingham Motor Speedway in Northamptonshire. “He was being very smarmy so I slammed his laptop shut on his fingers and told him to stick his championship,” Martin said.
The road ahead is long, winding and potted with potential disaster. “That's what it's all about,” he insists. Had he ever had a close call, where he thought it was over? “Oh my God, yes,” he said and his eyes lit up. “That's the thing that keeps me coming back. That near-death thing. Getting out of a bad moment. There's nothing I've found that gives me the same buzz.”
Racing around a track is like “riding round Morrisons' car park” in comparison. The juxtaposition of Rossi, with his fame, millions and entourage, and Martin, with his transit van, borrowed camper and shared house, is just as jarring. The TT money is good and Martin could make up to £200,000 if all goes well this week, but the racers live in different worlds. “Rossi could learn this place in two years and win,” Martin said. “He's got the natural ability. Trouble is those GP guys are all brought up on health and safety.”
When Martin previously met Rossi they talked about the TT. Martin expects the Italian to find that seeing is still disbelieving. “He had one word for the TT,” he remembered. “Crazy.”
Source:The times