Can we have a moment?

Top TT stars tell us about the times it almost went wrong!

Motorbike racers are a brave lot, and none are braver than the gladiators who take on the Isle of Man TT course.

Riding on the edge means pushing the boundaries in a way us mere mortals will never understand. The result are ‘moments’, those dramatic looking situations where it all looks like ending in disaster.

They’re situations that would have most of us rolling off and cruising around for the rest of the day, but for top level racers they represent just another day at the office and a chance to learn where the limits are.

What separates them from us is that ability to get straight back on it and attack the next corner like nothing ever happened. The ability to compartmentalise fear and let the adrenaline take over truly is a motorbike racer’s superpower!

Many ‘moments’ look dramatic from the outside, but ask the rider when they come in and they’ll have erased it from their memory banks already – or will dismiss it as ‘ach, I just went in a bit hot…’

But some moments are so big they remain etched in that rider’s memory bank for the rest of time, so we asked two of the biggest names in TT racing to tell us about the big ones that they can still recall today.

Dean Harrison, the 2019 Senior TT winner and now lead rider for the factory Honda team, recalls the moment he found himself in the lap of the gods back in 2012. He told us: “I was riding a supertwin at my second TT and I came over the Milntown jump.

There’s a little right hander there and I had a massive tank slapper. Still to this day don’t know why, how or what happened. I didn’t fall off but I was a complete passenger. There was no skill involved in how I carried on. It just straightened itself up and I carried on again…”

TT lap record holder Peter Hickman can clearly remember his biggest ‘moment’ too, which happened in practice for the 2016 races. He recalls:

“My first proper one came in my third year here. I hit my shoulder on the bank through the Bishopscourt section, which is sixth gear.

I actually pulled myself off the back of the bike and had to let go of the bike because I hit the bank so hard. I almost fell off the back of the bike but somehow managed to pull myself back on, while still doing 180mph. The trajectory I was on was correct, so I got away with it, but that’s probably my biggest one. There’s been a few over the years, but thankfully not too many.”

No-one can ever doubt the bravery of the TT racers. Here’s to fast and safe TT 2025!