Getting Older, Getting Faster.
Isle of Man TT · Feature
The Long Road: Why Age Is Just Another Marker on the Mountain Course
Two riders, three decades apart, and a sport where careers don't peak early and rarely end on schedule.
Most people slow down with age. John McGuinness keeps getting faster. At 54 years old, the Isle of Man TT legend just recorded the fastest six-lap race of his entire career.
Let that sink in. A rider with 23 TT victories, decades of experience, countless injuries, and more miles than most racers will ever dream of is still finding ways to improve. During the 2026 Isle of Man TT RST Superbike race, McGuinness averaged 129.497 mph and finished fifth against a field of riders, many of them young enough to be his sons. No excuses. No talk about age. Just passion, preparation, and the determination to keep pushing limits.
That alone would be a story. But it landed for us in a particular way this month, because we had just spent a lap of the Mountain Course in a car with a rider at the very other end of his journey, and it changed how we understood what McGuinness is doing.
A Lap That Made Me Feel Old
We just posted our interview with "Spartacus" Marcus Simpson, the 27-year-old Manxman chasing the same 37.73-mile course McGuinness has spent thirty years learning. Simpson drove us around a full lap, calling every corner from memory, naming jumps, crests, braking markers and the exact bush he uses as a turn-in point at 180 mph.
As a 50-year-old man, I will be honest: sitting in that car, listening to him read the road like Braille at speed, I felt every one of my years. It is humbling to watch someone half your age operate with that much certainty in a place that punishes the smallest mistake. For a few miles, the gap between us felt like the whole point.
And then I learned what Marcus shares with John, and the feeling flipped into something closer to encouragement.
New Episode
Inside a lap of the Mountain Course with Marcus Simpson
A full lap of the TT course, corner by corner, with one of the most exciting young road racers on the Isle of Man, on family legacy, fear, breathing, and the patience this place demands. You can read more about Marcus on his official bio page.
Listen on Spotify →Careers Here Don't Work Like Other Sports
In most sports, the clock is cruel and early. Footballers are veterans at 32, sprinters fade in their late twenties, and the whole structure assumes a short window of peak performance. Road racing at the TT runs on a different calendar entirely, and the two riders prove it from opposite ends.
Listen to how Marcus describes the path just to reach the start line. You ride for years before you can even apply. The licensing ladder demands you finish a fixed number of race days, then prove your pace within a percentage of the leaders, then hold a national licence for a full twelve months before you are allowed near the Mountain Course, and the Manx Grand Prix now requires real road-racing experience on top of that. His own route ran through motocross, club circuits, the Irish roads, the Southern 100 and the Manx Grand Prix before the TT would have him. Simpson put it plainly: this isn't a sport you simply turn up to.
That long runway at the start is exactly why the far end stretches so long too. The skill that matters here, an encyclopaedic memory of 37.73 miles of road, takes a decade or more to truly build, and once built it does not evaporate at 40. It compounds. Which is how a 54-year-old can still be improving while a 27-year-old is still, by the standards of this place, a relative newcomer.
The way I always describe road racing is two different ways. A gorilla playing chess. You're thinking so many steps ahead, setting the next two or three corners up. Marcus Simpson, on the Mountain Course
A Result Bigger Than the Number Beside It
On paper, a fifth-place finish is the kind of result that quietly disappears, especially for a former winner. But context changes everything. McGuinness outpaced the likes of Ian Hutchinson, Jamie Coward and Nathan Harrison, and his six-lap average wasn't far off race winner and Honda teammate Dean Harrison, who took victory at 131.681 mph.
The day carried extra weight. McGuinness marked the 30th anniversary of his TT debut, riding a special livery on his Honda Fireblade that mirrored the colours he raced in 1996 on the Paul Bird Honda RS250. Setting off at number one on the road, three decades after his first lap of the Mountain Course, he then produced the fastest six-lap race of his life.
Here is the part worth understanding clearly, because it is the heart of the story. McGuinness didn't set a new outright lap record that day; his best lap of the race was 132.248 mph, close to his personal best around the Mountain Course but not beyond it. What he set was a career best over the full six laps, his fastest ever race time across race distance. A single quick lap can come down to a clear road and a brave moment. Stringing six strong laps together, with two pit stops, at an average that holds up against men half his age, is a measure of something deeper: consistency, fitness, and race craft sustained over more than 226 miles.
The fight for position was real, not a procession. McGuinness battled Josh Brookes for fourth in the early stages, but Brookes stretched away in the second half and finished 19.5 seconds clear, with McGuinness easing off on the final lap as fatigue set into his left shoulder. Fifth, earned honestly, against the best road racers on the planet.
Why Experience Wins on the Mountain
There is a real, repeatable reason older riders stay competitive here, and it has less to do with raw reflexes than people assume. Marcus described the TT not as a sprint but as a marathon, more mentally draining than physically draining, a place where you can take a breath on the fast straights and where the time is found in carrying two extra mph through one corner so it becomes eight more by the end of the next straight. That is judgment, not youth.
He even talked about wearing a heart-rate band and putting reminder stickers on his dash to breathe, lowering his heart rate to stay calm at 180 mph. Calm is the currency of this course. As Marcus said, it isn't rock music, it's classical: methodical, deliberate, point to point to point. Those are precisely the qualities that deepen with age rather than fade.
It's worth remembering who set the benchmark. Back in 2007, McGuinness became the first rider ever to lap the Mountain Course at over 130 mph. Nearly twenty years later he is still circulating near those speeds, still inside the conversation, still refusing to treat his age as a finish line. Marcus, for his part, talks about chasing his own 130 mph milestone in five-mph increments, letting it come rather than forcing it. The patience is the same; only the chapter is different.
What the Fans Saw, and What I Took Away
Numbers tell one story. The grandstands told another. Fans greeted McGuinness with a hero's welcome after the Superbike TT, and he admitted being humbled by the spectators who waved him home on the final lap, a rider clapped around the island like a newcomer chasing a dream. In his own words it was a week of "tons of mixed emotions," pride in the team and Dean Harrison's dominance set against the frustration of a Senior TT cut short by weather and a red flag.
That is the thing I carried out of the car with Marcus, and out of McGuinness's result. Sitting beside a 27-year-old reading the road at speed, I felt old. Reading about a 54-year-old still setting personal bests, I felt the opposite. This sport doesn't hand you a date by which you're finished. It rewards the years. The runway is long at the start because the road ahead is long too.
The Real Achievement
Records are impressive. Trophies are memorable. But inspiring riders across an entire span of ages, from a young man learning the course to a man who helped write it, to never stop chasing their goals? That might be McGuinness's greatest achievement.
While many people treat getting older as a reason to step back, he keeps proving that experience, dedication and love for what you do can keep you competitive at the highest level. And in Marcus Simpson you can see the same long, unhurried road just beginning. Thirty years on from his first ride around the island, the Morecambe Missile isn't coasting toward the exit. He's still finding tenths, still racing the clock, still reminding everyone watching that the calendar doesn't get the final say.
Looking Down the Road
Which brings me back to that car, and the young man calling every corner from memory. If McGuinness shows us what three decades of dedication can build, Marcus Simpson shows us what it looks like at the very start of the climb, hungry, fearless, and already reading the Mountain Course like he was born to it. He was, in a way. The talent is obvious. What excites me more is the time he has in front of him to sharpen it.
Because here is the gift this strange, magnificent sport gives its riders: the years ahead are not a countdown, they are a runway. I genuinely cannot wait to watch Marcus's next twenty years on the TT course. To see him chase that 130 mph milestone, then push past it. To see the calmness deepen, the lines tighten, the marker boards he reaches for shift later and later into each corner. He will get faster, and then, like the great ones, he will keep getting faster long after most people expect him to slow down. I am as sure of that as I am of anything in racing.
So if you are reading this and wondering whether your own best years are behind you, take it from a 50-year-old who felt ancient in the passenger seat and came away inspired anyway: they may not be. Not here. Not in life. The road is longer than you think, and the riders who matter most are the ones still learning, still improving, still turning up at the start line with something left to prove.
Most people slow down with age. John McGuinness keeps getting faster. And twenty years from now, I fully expect to be writing the very same words about Marcus Simpson. Here, the old guys are fast, the young guns are patient, and the calendar never gets the final say.
Listen to our full lap of the Mountain Course with Marcus Simpson on Spotify, and read his story at marcussimpson23.com.
