IAN HUTCHINSON

TT history man who has been fighting injury after injury since 2010

some people know when to say enough is enough. ian hutchinson is not one of them. in 2010, hutchy became the first rider to win five tts in a week. But ever since then, he has lived through a nightmare of one serious injury after another, followed by one agonising comeback after another.

and he is still going. why? Because he does not want to even think about life without racing.

three months after his mighty tt achievement, he crashed at silverstone and got run over. his left tibia and fibula were so badly smashed that surgeons told him there was no alternative but amputation. hutchinson told the surgeons to buzz off and found someone willing to undertake the challenge of reconstructing the leg.

twenty-four operations later — including one 16-hour-long epic from which he awoke convinced he was no longer of this world — he was ready to race again.

‘i presumed i had died and been taken away on a spaceship!’ he writes in his autobiography

Miracle Man. ‘my only thoughts were about getting back on a bike, racing as hard as i ever had and taking the same chances that had become such a crucial part of my existence.’

and then he rebroke the leg, while riding a minibike, because the fracture site had been weakened by infection.

in may 2012, he removed the external fixator from the messed-up leg to score three top 10s at the tt, changing gear with his right foot and operating the rear brake with his left thumb. immediately afterwards, he was back in hospital for another six operations.

hutchy came back from this latest nightmare in november 2013 at macau, arguably a more dangerous racetrack than the tt, where he took an emotional victory.

now he was really on the way back. at the 2015 tt, he won his first victories since 2010 and another three the following year. in 2017, he proved he was fully back to his best by winning his first superbike tt, the most demanding of them all, since 2010.

five days later in the senior, he crashed at a missile-fast corner on the mountain mile. this time he fractured his left femur and smashed his already mangled ankle.

Back to the operating table, where surgeons rebroke the tibia so they could lengthen the bone and fuse it to the foot.

this comeback also had its setbacks. when hutchinson returned to action, the leg was still weak, so at the 2018 tt he could not put enough load into the foot-peg to control the bike. his best finish was 11th in the second supersport race. the following year’s tt was not much better — one 10th place.

Due to coviD-19 there has not been a tt since, but hutchy is still at it, contesting the 2021 BsB superstock championship. surely, no other racer has been through so much without giving in.