Description
By: Mac McDiarmid . 2nd hand book in very good condition
In June 2000, at the unlikely age of 48, Joey Dunlop won three Isle of Man TT races, taking his all-time tally to a record 26. Less than a month later, at an obscure road circuit in Estonia, he was killed instantly when he crashed his 125cc Honda into a tree. His funeral — attended by 50,000 mourners, including government ministers — was broadcast live on national television. It was for all practical purposes a state occasion.
But the 'King of the Roads', as he was affectionately known, wasn't simply great because, in a career spanning 31 years, he won almost twice as many TT races as anyone else, or even because he won five consecutive Formula One world titles. He was great because he always won generously, lost graciously, and never stopped being Ireland's favourite son. In this tenth anniversary reissue of Mac McDiarmid's best-selling biography, the modest Ulsterman is celebrated as a throwback to another age. He raced for the love of the sport.
Joey was happiest to talk with his hands, whether piloting a motorcycle at prodigious speed, getting stuck into some practical task or — and this was the stuff of legend — holding a pint. His practicality combined with his humanity when he became a one-man charity taking aid to Bosnia, Romania and Albania. As Joey told it, dodging bullets to deliver blankets was the most natural thing in the world: 'I saw the troubles on television and decided to help out.' For this he was awarded the OBE, to add to the MBE his racing success had brought.
Mac McDiarmid, himself a former TT racer, is a renowned motorcycle journalist, a former editor of Bike magazine and TT correspondent of Motocourse. He was privileged to see Joey's first TT race in 1976, and his last. In preparing this authorised biography — approved by Joey's widow Linda and by Honda UK — he interviewed family, friends, school teachers, mechanics, sponsors, rivals and dozens of others whose lives Joey had graced.
