It’s been 30 years since John McGuinness’ first low-key appearance at the Isle of Man TT, and he’s still going strong. The road racing legend exclusively talks AMCN through his TT debut
“It just seems like yesterday since I started racing – sleeping in the back of a van freezing my balls off,” John McGuinness says, looking back on a racing career that started in 1990 when he was just 18 years old. “It’s what I wanted to do. I started off with nothing, so it was never like I was going to lose anything, was it? But never in my wildest dreams did I think that it would work out like this.”
By ‘this’, McGuinness means having 23 TT wins in the bag, as well as six North West 200 wins as we went to press, five Ulster GP wins, a Macau GP win, an MBE, and a factory Honda ride at the age of 54.
It’s been quite a journey, and one that McGuinness never thought he was capable of, given the humble background he came from. Born and raised in Morecambe in the north of England, McGuinness trained as a bricklayer, but when he qualified in 1990, a recession bit hard in England and McGuinness found himself picking mussels in Morecambe Bay just to make ends meet.
Seventy miles west of Morecambe Bay, the Isle of Man stands proud in the middle of the Irish Sea. It’s the island that has made McGuinness who and what he is, and the love affair started early. “I remember going to the TT with my folks when I was a kid and we watched from Bray Hill and, like anyone who watches a race bike go down Bray Hill for the first time, I nearly jumped out of my skin. But, at the same time, I decided there and then that I wanted to do that some day.”
While he knew he wanted to race at the TT, McGuinness couldn’t see how it would ever be possible. Silver spoons were in short supply. He was unemployed when he started racing in 1990 and used his dole money to fund his efforts. “I was brought up on a council estate and used to go club racing on Giros (social security cheques), so the TT was completely out of my reach at the time,” McGuinness recalls. “You need a good team and a good bike for the TT, and I just didn’t have the money.”
After rising through the club racing ranks in the UK and then finding some success in the British championships, by the mid-1990s McGuinness was in a slightly better position financially but, as the prospects of racing at the TT became more real, he started having doubts. “It took me a while to make up my mind about racing at the TT,” he admits. “One day I’d decide that I wanted to do it, then I’d think about the dangers and decide against it. I made a really late decision to do the TT in 1996. I went to the North West and found myself dicing for the lead in the 250cc race with Joey Dunlop, Robin Milton, Robert Dunlop, Woolsey Coulter, Phillip McCallen – all these top guys. I ran out of petrol in one race but finished fourth in the other and I said to Paul Bird (McGuinness’ team manager at the time), ‘Do you fancy doing the TT then?’ It was a semi-joke, really, but I quite fancied trying it, just on the 250, no other classes. I thought I’d suck it and see, so I spoke to the organisers. It was a real last-minute affair.”
It was also a very low key and low budget affair. “I can remember it like it was yesterday,” McGuinness says. “There was a mate of mine called Glyn Ormerod and we grew up together on a council estate. He was out of work at the time and I had no one to help me at the TT – I was completely on my own – so, about two days before I was due to leave I said, ‘I’m going to the TT. Do you fancy coming along to give me a hand?’ and he said yes. I had no ferry ticket for him, so I hid him in the sleeping pod in the roof of my truck and sneaked him onto the ferry boat.”
When the pair arrived on the Isle of Man, they didn’t even know where to park their truck. “We arrived in Douglas at about six o’clock in the morning,” McGuinness says. “Nothing was open and there was nowhere to park up the truck. I saw (fellow racer) Mick Lofthouse and asked where he was staying, and he told me the Monaville Hotel. So I parked up there and slept until about 9am when Mick came out and woke me up and invited me in to get a bit of breakfast. I ended up staying in a box room with Mick free of charge for the whole TT. Blagged the whole thing.”
McGuinness may have stayed in the box room for the whole TT, but Mick Lofthouse wasn’t there come race week. The former 125cc British champion and TT podium finisher was tragically killed during the final day of practice. McGuinness bore witness. “I came across Mick’s crash, saw the bike lying in the middle of the road and thought, ‘What am I doing? Why am I doing this?’”
New Zealander Robert Holden lost his life on the same day, yet McGuinness forged ahead, undaunted. “You’d think that would put you off for life,” he says. “But I suppose bike racers are just not right in the head.”
McGuinness laughs now at the very suggestion he had anything as sophisticated as a planned budget for his TT debut. “I never had a budget!” he says. “I had a couple of hundred quid in my pocket and that was it. No credit cards, no plastic. The plan was just to sleep in the truck and go to the supermarket and live off beans on toast. I had to buy some avgas fuel, but I was getting free Bridgestone tyres. It was a total wing and a prayer job – I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I didn’t sign many autographs that year.”
McGuinness wasn’t the only newcomer in 1996 who would have a dramatic impact on the TT. “David Jefferies made his debut that year too, and so did Bruce Anstey,” he says. “We all started out at the same time, and we all went round the course on the bus (a bus is laid on for newcomers each year so experienced riders can talk them around a lap). I knew DJ well from racing in the MCN Superteens Championship but we both did our own thing when it came to learning the TT course. He was riding four-strokes, and I was on the 250, so there was nothing really to compare with – DJ was just doing his own thing and I was doing my own thing.”
McGuinness only took his Honda RS250R to the Isle of Man in that first year. He was familiar with it from racing in the British championships and it wasn’t as fearsome as a Superbike, so it was the perfect machine on which to learn the daunting 37.73-mile mountain course. Just as well, because McGuinness didn’t have access to any other rides. “It was just down to the availability of bikes,” he admits. “Paul Bird got me a 250 but I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, so I didn’t know how to go about getting other bikes to ride. I never was one for really pushing myself onto other people – I’m still not, to this day. I hate blagging and I hate begging for anything. At least the free bed at the hotel that year was offered; I didn’t have to go asking for it. You’ve really got to sell yourself as a rider and I was never any good at that.”
As is so often the case, the Manx weather wasn’t kind while McGuinness was feeling his way around the 300-odd corners that make up a lap of the TT course. “It was a real shitty practice week,” he remembers. “The weather was crap all through the week and a couple of lads got killed (the aforementioned Lofthouse and Holden) and I had to try and block that out of my mind, which wasn’t easy.”
Despite the tragic circumstances, McGuinness became hopelessly hooked on the TT. Right from the off, he knew it was for him. “I knew straight away, really,” he says. “On my first ever lap it was wet at the start – it was blowing a gale halfway round the track – but with bright sunshine on other parts, and it was misty on the mountain. It was everything I’d been told about, but all in one single lap!”
Unlike some rookies, McGuinness didn’t try to get a tow off another rider to help him learn his way; he very much did his own thing at his own pace. “I didn’t really follow anybody,” he says. “My all-time hero was Joey Dunlop, and I picked his bike up from Frank Wrathall’s (engine tuner) that year, so I was proud as punch because I had the great Joey Dunlop’s bike in my van. He didn’t help me at the TT that year because I didn’t know him that well then, but he did help me at Scarborough later in the season. I did the Gold Cup that year and the 250 race was towards the end of the day. I think Joey had taken to the drink though and decided to miss out on the race, so he loaned me his clutch because mine was knackered. I remember him with his bike lying on the floor, taking the clutch out for me. I raced with it then gave him it back.”
He might have lapped the course at over 132mph in later years, but McGuinness’ first lap of the TT course was at a more sedate pace. “I think it was about 85mph – but it was wet!” he laughs. “I did 109mph when it finally dried out during practice, so the organisers bumped me up the grid from my original start number of 71, up to number 18. By the end of the race, I’d lapped at about 111mph,” (the fastest lap of the race was set by Phillip McCallen at 116.94mph).
McGuinness finished in a very credible 15th place in the only TT he was entered for in 1996. The race was won by Joey Dunlop with Jim Moodie second, Jason Griffiths third and McCallen fourth. “I caught a few people during the race,” he says. “I remember catching the late Dave Morris and Alan ‘Bud’ Jackson and maybe one or two other riders. I don’t think anybody passed me, so it was a fairly lonely race, but I was quite happy just doing my own thing. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Right, there’s plenty of time; there’s no rush. Whatever happens, the race will be yesterday’s news tomorrow.’ So, I just enjoyed myself and ended up getting Best Newcomer in my class and I got a bronze replica too and about 600 quid in prize money. I was pumped.”
He might only have had one bike to ride, and he was under absolutely no pressure to deliver results, but McGuinness says his first TT was still a huge challenge. “There might not have been any pressure to win in 1996, but it was still hard because I was learning something completely new to me,” he says (McGuinness’s only road racing experience ahead of tackling the TT was a couple of outings at the North West 200).
“When you’re learning the track and you don’t quite know where you’re going, you get a horrible feeling of being in no man’s land. You’re not going quick enough to be on the pace but you’re still going quick enough to be slightly out of your depth. It was nice to come into the TT under the radar. It would be difficult now as a high-profile newcomer, because everybody’s watching you to see what you can do. I came and served my time under the radar.”
McGuinness has fond memories of his TT debut; so much so that he has built a replica of the Honda RS250R he raced that year. Sadly, the original bike no longer exists. “The original was sold to (sponsor) Martin Bullock, but a rider called Mike Casey was sadly killed on it during practice for the 1998 TT and the bike was destroyed,” McGuinness explains.
Since making his debut in 1996, McGuinness has won 23 TT races and he still has a factory seat with the Honda Racing Team for 2026. The TT has changed greatly in the intervening 30 years, but McGuinness feels the event is now stronger than ever. “I think there’s loads of ways of looking at it,” he muses. “You’re going to get your die-hard TT fans who’ll complain that we’ve lost the morning practices, we’ve lost the two-strokes, we’ve lost some spectator areas where you can’t watch from. On the whole, though, as a rider, I think the TT has evolved and is getting better.
“You used to consider yourself honoured just to get an entry at the TT but now the riders are much more part of it all; we get asked how it could be made better, how it could be made safer – we get listened to a lot more now. We all know it’s dangerous, we know what can happen, but if the organisers are making the effort with Recticel bales and stuff, then fair play. I mean, I liked the morning practices (which used to begin at 5am to minimise disruption to local traffic but were discontinued in 2004) but I wouldn’t want to see myself out there now on a 220bhp Superbike at five o’clock in the morning with all that dew and dampness in the air.”
After dicing with death on the TT course for 30 years, McGuinness still has the utmost respect for the mountain course, and his eyes remain wide open to the dangers he faces. “I know a motorbike will get you in the end,” he readily admits. “It might not be this year or next, but it will happen eventually. I’ve been with guys who are no longer with us, like Lee Pullen, David Jefferies, Mick Lofthouse… If you don’t think about the bad things that could happen, then you’ve got something wrong with you.
“When I’m getting ready for the TT, I wash the cars, put the finances straight, stuff like that, because you never know.”
While McGuinness hasn’t won a TT in over 10 years (the 2015 Senior was his last victory), he’s still a strong top-10 runner. In 2025 he finished a respectable seventh in the Superbike race and eighth in Superstock Race 2. He also lapped at 131.17mph on the Superbike. In pre-season testing this year he lapped Donington Park faster than he’s ever done in his life.
If conditions play into McGuinness’ hands at the TT, a podium is still very much on the cards.
All Hail King John!
THE John McGuinness legend will be the focus of this year’s Classic TT Festival, which will celebrate his 30 years of success on the Isle of Man. Many of his famous race bikes will be ridden by top riders in a parade lap and there will also be an exhibition featuring his bikes, leathers, helmets, trophies and other associated memorabilia. McGuinness is down to recreate his record-breaking 130mph lap from the Centennial TT in 2007 by completing a circuit on the very same Honda Fireblade and wearing the same colours as he did on that famous day. He said he’ll be hoping to lap at 130mph too, just for old time’s sake! The event runs from 19 to 28 August.
McG’s TT Wins
- 1999 Lightweight 250cc
- 2000 Singles
- 2003 Lightweight 400cc
- 2004 Formula 1, Junior 600. Lightweight 400cc
- 2005 Superbike, Senior
- 2006 Superbike, Supersport, Senior
- 2007 Superbike, Senior
- 2008 Senior
- 2009 Superbike
- 2011 Superbike, Senior
- 2012 Superbike, Superstock
- 2013 Senior
- 2014 TT Zero
- 2015 TT Zero, Senior
