But Peel-based motorbike racer Chris McGahan is gearing up for one of his busiest years yet after surgery to correct his failing vision.

He’s back in training to race classic bikes and sidecars at meetings around the UK from next month, culminating in a return to solo racing at the 2015 TT.

Saying that motorsport is his life might be an understatement.

Since taking part in his first TT in 1975, the 64-year-old tiler has raced in 17 editions of the TT and 22 Manx Grand Prix meetings.

He’s recorded four wins in the Classic MGP and five other podiums, plus a third in the Classic TT and even completed a battery-powered lap in the 2013 TT Zero.

And if that wasn’t enough, he’s been racing sidecars for decades with a best result of third in the 1990 TT.

But McGahan was facing early retirement from the sport he loved after developing cataracts in his eyes over a number of years.

He said: ‘I was really struggling to see in bright sunlight. The worst part was riding towards Ballacraine in the evening practices.

‘A couple of years ago it was really terrible, and it was looking like it would have to come to an end.’

Overcoming a lifelong fear of needles, he underwent lens replacement surgery at an eye hospital in Manchester.

McGahan said he needn’t have worried as there wasn’t a needle in sight, and the effect was almost instantaneous.

He said: ‘It was only once I’d had the first operation that I realised just how bad it was getting. In the eye that hadn’t been done it was like looking through a dirty net curtain. But in the other eye, the colours were unbelievable. Everything seemed so brightly lit, I just couldn’t believe it.’

The new season will see him racing classic bikes, sidecars and return to the TT, Southern 100 and the North West 200 in Northern Ireland.

‘From this week I’m back in proper training - no drinking, no dairy, and running up and down Peel Hill every day to get myself back in shape,’ he said, ‘and from next month I’m racing every other weekend.

‘Everything has changed completely since the surgery. Hopefully I’ve got another 49 years of racing in me!’


Dave Kneale

Its good to see Chris has no intentions of giving up just yet. I remember watching him at Brands in his early days on his little Montessa thrashing round Paddock Hill bend. I think he also did a wing walk on an airplane over Brands, Could have been at the 89, Superprix !!