Former Isle of Man TT racer, now TV star, Guy Martin has opened up on drug use early in his career.
Martin rose to fame in the 2000s and early 2010s thanks to his profile as a road racer and at the Isle of Man TT in particular. He never won at the TT, although it was long thought that it was a matter of time for him as he achieved 17 podium finishes in total, including eight between 2009 and 2011.
The first part of Martin’s career was self-funded, and he worked to be able to pay to race.
“I wasn’t very good at school,” Martin wrote in his Letter to my Younger Self edition for Big Issue.
“I didn’t do very well, but for some reason I convinced myself that I was going to go to college. I think I lasted one term.
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“Then I got an interview at the local Volvo truck garage and worked there. And I learned so much.
“They’d let me do anything – taking engines to bits, building engines, and I loved it. I could not get to work quick enough.
“And we were earning great money – because I was doing 78 hours a week at 16. And that helps you save money to go motorbike racing.”
Martin’s enjoyment of racing meant an increasing amount of the money earned from his garage job was being spent on it. That meant he had to work more to be able to pay his way.
“I used to take drugs just to be able to work more,” he wrote.
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“Because the more I raced, the more expensive it was, so the more I had to work.
“So I was working three nights a week down the docks after my day job. And I used to take ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin just to be able to work enough to earn more money to go racing motorbikes. That’s how it was.”
“My heroes weren’t racers”
Although Martin ended up racing for well-known teams like Wilson Craig Racing and TAS Racing, he maintained his interest in the mechanical side of motorcycle racing throughout his career.
In fact, he writes that his idols growing up were engine builders rather than riders: “My heroes weren’t the motorbike racers, they were legendary motorbike engine builders.
“A bloke called Chris Mayhew, who I still see now, and Tony Scott and Nicky Kennedy – and they got me interested in Phil Irving, who wrote a book in the 1940s called Tuning For Speed.
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“All I ever wanted to do was race. It wasn’t really an obsession.
“It took for me to stop racing six or seven years ago to realise it wasn’t the buzz of racing I was chasing. It was the buzz of fiddling about with mechanical things and trying to understand them and make them faster or more efficient. “