‘You wouldn’t have known it was two riders at the controls’
Tony was always at son David’s side in the race paddock, and there was not a prouder man to be found when DJ got his many successes. But in 1994, despite being wheelchairbound, Tony Jefferies got the chance to ride with his superstar son himself in the Darley Moor Past Masters Cavalcade, as he remembered to MCN: “We thought we’d better have a practice, so we jumped on the bike and rode out of the paddock onto the main road. I was on the front of the bike – a Triumph 1200 Daytona – and Dave was on the back, shifting gears. We had the rear footrests modified so that David could change gears from the pillion seat via a linkage. My own feet were tied onto the front footrests.
“We went out onto the road and DJ just started booting up through the gears and timed it perfectly. You wouldn’t have known it was two riders at the controls. We were giggling under our helmets. On the way back, I decided to give it some, so we were doing about 120mph. On the circuit, changing direction was difficult for me, because I have no movement from the chest down so, when we approached the chicane a bit too fast, I just rode straight over the kerbs.
“We didn’t get passed by very many people and, at the end, the tyres were absolutely shagged. When we got back to the pit, a woman was standing there with tears streaming down her face. When I asked her why, she said she was so overjoyed to see me back on a bike again and enjoying myself after all those years.”
‘DJ was booting up through the gears’
TONY JEFFERIES