Joey Evans has always loved bikes, from his first second-hand Raleigh Strika at the age of six to the powerful off-road machines that became his passion later on in his life. His dream was one day to ride the most gruelling off-road race in the world, the 9000km Dakar Rally. In 2007 his dream was shattered when he broke his back in a racing accident. His spinal cord was crushed, leaving him paralysed from just below his chest. Doctors gave him a 10 per cent chance of ever walking again. Many would have given up and become resigned to life in a wheelchair, but not Joey Evans.

Not only would he get back on his feet and walk, but he would also keep his Dakar dream alive. It was a long and painful road to recovery, involving years of intensive rehabilitation and training, but he had the love and support of both family and friends and an incredible amount of determination. Joey shares the many challenges he and his family faced, relating the setbacks, as well as successes, along the way to the Dakar start line. But the start line was only the first goal – his sights were set on reaching the finish line, which he did in 2017 – the only South African to do so.

From Para To Dakar is so much more than the story of one man reaching the Dakar finish line. It is a story of friendship and respect, compassion and kindness. It is about defying the odds to reach a dream, it is about grit, endurance and raw courage, and it is inspiring in its true heroism.

This book, The Seanachie of Motorcycling, is a collection of tales from a master story teller, Harry Lindsay of Dublin. Described in his youth by his headmaster as the boy with oil in his veins", Harry grew up with motorcycles, becoming a trials and road racer, a grass track champion, holder of the Irish land speed record, racing team leader, an importer and retailer of motorcycles, a restorer of antique bikes and an historian along the way. Many of his stories bring to life the characters and heroes that were the racing world from the thirties through the turn of the last century. They offer a rare glimpse of life behind the scenes and more than one tale is told with a twinkle in his eye. This, then, is an Irishman's view of the world as it was. Pour a pint of Guinness, put your feet up and be prepared to enjoy the Seanachie's tales and learn and laugh with him. Seanachie (pronounced sha-nah-key): Irish for master story teller in the great tradition of orally passing folklore and history on down through the generations.

This book, The Seanachie of Motorcycling, is a collection of tales from a master story teller, Harry Lindsay of Dublin. Described in his youth by his headmaster as the boy with oil in his veins", Harry grew up with motorcycles, becoming a trials and road racer, a grass track champion, holder of the Irish land speed record, racing team leader, an importer and retailer of motorcycles, a restorer of antique bikes and an historian along the way. Many of his stories bring to life the characters and heroes that were the racing world from the thirties through the turn of the last century. They offer a rare glimpse of life behind the scenes and more than one tale is told with a twinkle in his eye. This, then, is an Irishman's view of the world as it was. Pour a pint of Guinness, put your feet up and be prepared to enjoy the Seanachie's tales and learn and laugh with him. Seanachie pronounced sha-nah-key: Irish for master story teller in the great tradition of orally passing folklore and history on down through the generations.

This book, The Seanachie of Motorcycling, is a collection of tales from a master story teller, Harry Lindsay of Dublin. Described in his youth by his headmaster as the boy with oil in his veins", Harry grew up with motorcycles, becoming a trials and road racer, a grass track champion, holder of the Irish land speed record, racing team leader, an importer and retailer of motorcycles, a restorer of antique bikes and an historian along the way. Many of his stories bring to life the characters and heroes that were the racing world from the thirties through the turn of the last century. They offer a rare glimpse of life behind the scenes and more than one tale is told with a twinkle in his eye. This, then, is an Irishman's view of the world as it was. Pour a pint of Guinness, put your feet up and be prepared to enjoy the Seanachie's tales and learn and laugh with him. Seanachie (pronounced sha-nah-key): Irish for master story teller in the great tradition of orally passing folklore and history on down through the generations.

In this follow-up to his autobiography, Michael Rutter changes his focus and now reflects on his father's life - the victories, defeats, scrapes with the law and practical jokes. He also looks at his father's close brushes with death, including the horrific career-ending crash of 1985, and its aftermath. The Life of a Racer, Volume 2: Flesh & Blood is a reflective and sentimental journey during which Michael tries to learn about his father's life and career in motorcycle racing, while at the same time asking himself if his own destiny was always to race too because of his DNA. Tony Rutter (1942-2020) is best known for his four world TT-F2 championship wins, eight Isle of Man TT wins, nine North West 200 wins, five Ulster Grand Prix wins and two British Championship titles during his twenty-two-year career - but the man himself has remained something of an enigma to everyone including his own son, who himself went on to have a hugely successful career and has kept the Rutter name alive in the world of motorcycle racing to the present day. Through his own memories, as well as those of longstanding teammates and friends, Michael pieces together his father's values, what mattered to him the most, and his odd - sometimes maddening - traits. What unfolds is a profile of the man behind the incredible talent and singular focus of an elite racer. With a foreword by Carl Fogarty, this is the first-ever book about one of the finest racers in a great generation of racers, by those who knew him best and loved him most.

If you can recall the golden era of motorcycle sport then this is undoubtedly the book for you. Featuring sixteen scramblers and one and six days trials stars, this is a must read for all who lined the circuits on muddy Sundays and were glued to their TV sets on Winter afternoons. Author Andy Westlake is regarded as one of the UK's leading classic motorcycle journalists and this book is the perfect follow-up to his two previous books "Off Road Giants" volumes one and two. In this third volume Andy has once again managed to track down and interview some of the stars of this golden era in off road sport, including the former works Greeves rider and 250cc European champion Dave Bickers, ex works BSA star John Banks, and has even journeyed to Spain to interview Les Archer, the man who lifted the European 500cc crown on his works Norton in the mid 'fifties. A superbly written book brought alive by many excellent period photographs.

The decade between 2004 and 2014 was one of the most dramatic eras in the century-old history of the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, which began with the races in decline, and many observers fearing that they would soon be killed off by a combination of rising costs, political correctness and logistical practicalities. But, just a few years later, the triumphant 2007 celebration of the races' centenary launched the TT into a whole new era of public and commercial success.

With growing public interest and awareness, road racing became established as a specialist sport in its own right. Media interest soared; a feature length documentary took cinemas by storm worldwide, and a new generation of technocrats hastened to the island to develop zero emissions motorbike racing.

All of these events unfolded under the gaze of Charlie Lambert, appointed TT Anchor Commentator by Manx Radio in 2004. In TT Talking, Charlie tells the story of the TT's sensational turn of fortune, whilst simultaneously lifting the lid on his role behind the microphone in this story. Revealing the pressures, the controversies, the laughs and the sadness that go with being at the heart of the world's most famous a and controversial a road races."

On 19 May 1928, just three months after the sport had been launched in this country at the pioneering High Beech meeting, Fred Mockford and Cecil Smith introduced speedway racing to Crystal Palace with the first international match between England and Australia, the forerunner of the Test matches. It was an immediate success with the public who flocked in their tens of thousands to witness these latter day black-clad gladiators hurtling their way round the track on bikes with no brakes at breakneck speed and flinging their bikes into a slide at the corners at impossible angles. This book looks at how speedway came to open at Crystal Palace and follows its history through the next six years as a league team operating in the world's first speedway league until its closure in 1933 and its brief revival in the late 1930s. Although one of the pioneering tracks little was known about its history until now as Norman Jacobs provides a comprehensive history covering the major events at the track, facts and figures, behind the scenes anecdotes and its larger than life characters including Johnnie Hoskins, Ron Johnson and Tom Farndon, who became the Star Riders' champion in 1933.

Since its first release in 2008, the official book of the Superbike World Championship has been an indispensible resource for all fans of the championship reserved for production derived bikes, the championship for bikes you can buy from your local dealer. Like every year, this book opens with a chapter devoted to the winner of the World Championship title. Plenty of space has been devoted to reports on the 12 scheduled races of the 2016 season, and to the bikes and riders that constitute the fundamental pieces in the complex SBK jigsaw. The "strong suit" of the official book, one of the parts that will delight fans of the series, is without doubt the one dealing with the engineering of these authentic jewels, described in the most minute detail - thanks to the contributions of specialists working for the various teams - and illustrated with numerous photos revealing all the secrets of the championship's leading players. The chapters on the "other world championships," Supersport and Superstock 1000 and 600 complete a book that should be on the shelves of every true fan.

Already the winner in 2010, Max Biaggi confirmed he was still at the top of the Superbike World Championship by winning the 2012 title in the saddle of an Aprilia. But after taking his second world title, he announced his retirement from competition. So the 2013 Superbike World Championship opens without a reigning champion, but it is still packed with excitement. The Superbike World Championship story is once again told in the official annual, a reference book published by Giorgio Nada Editore on the world of bikes "derived from normal production," the machines that for many years have been the heart and soul of sports motorcycling, uniting competition with a high technological content. To illustrate the book there are the inevitable, spectacular pictures by Fabrizio Porrozzi, with the precise, accurate text by his brother Claudio.

Since its first release in 2008, the official book of the Superbike World Championship has been an indispensible resource for all fans of the championship reserved for production derived bikes, the championship for bikes you can buy from your local dealer. Like every year, this book opens with a chapter devoted to the winner of the World Championship title. Plenty of space has been devoted to reports on the 12 scheduled races of the 2015 season, and to the bikes and riders that constitute the fundamental pieces in the complex SBK jigsaw. The "strong suit" of the official book, one of the parts that will delight fans of the series, is without doubt the one dealing with the engineering of these authentic jewels, described in the most minute detail - thanks to the contributions of specialists working for the various teams - and illustrated with numerous photos revealing all the secrets of the championship's leading players. The chapters on the "other world championships," Supersport and Superstock 1000 and 600 complete a book that should be on the shelves of every true fan.

Invercargill, at the far southern end of New Zealand. It's the late 1960s and two blokes sit in a modest shed drinking tea. The old bloke is telling stories about his life; the young bloke, a junior reporter, is typing earnestly on his Olympia portable typewriter. Dramatic tales abound - of youthful scrapes, motorcycle races and ingenious repairs, of international travel and friendships and road trips, of high speeds and accidents and meetings with dutiful policemen. Burt Munro became known around the world through the 2005 movie The World's Fastest Indian, but had long been known to motorcycle fans as a colourful character and speed record-holder. Our young journalist, Neill Birss, moved away from Invercargill and the interviews he had typed out were never published. In fact, they were lost during the move and only resurfaced under strange circumstances many decades later. Here they are in this book - the lost interviews with Burt Munro, legendary Kiwi motorcycle rider - his voice as fresh and his stories as vivid as the day he told them to the young reporter. Also available as an eBook.

In 1992, when Michael Rutter was just 20 years old, he followed in his dad's footsteps and began a career as a professional motorcycle racer. He has been racing ever since. This is his story of highs and lows, survival, luck and persistence, set against the raw, infectious atmosphere of the racing paddock. It is also a story of growing up with a global superstar for a Father; Tony Rutter. Read Michael's account of spending his childhood watching his dad's career - from fighting for world championships to fighting for his life after a devastating crash in 1985. Undeterred, Michael would go on to build his own career and forge his own unique path. This is the remarkable tale of how Michael has stayed competitive for 30 years, and stepped out of his 4-time world champion dads shadow to add his own name to the list of all time greats of the sport. Michael has started 431 British Superbike races, 20 World Superbike races, and 16 MotoGP races while also competing in road racing, where he has started 90 Isle of Man TT, 83 Northwest 200 and 24 Macau Grand Prix races. The Life of a Racer is a gripping journey into the mind and life of someone who was born in to the race paddock and who has been there ever since.

Graham Jarvis has been at the peak of off-road motorcycling for the best part of twenty-five years and has won the fabled and ridiculously perilous Erzberg Rodeo a record-equalling five times. Since moving into the high-octane world of Hard Enduro in 2011, Graham has won its five major races - the Erzberg Rodeo, the Red Bull Sea to Sky, the Red Bull Romaniacs, the Tough One and Hell's Gate - no fewer than twenty-six times. It has made him one of motorsport's most successful riders. In CONQUERING THE IRON GIANT, Graham takes us from his early years in Canterbury, where he started out on an old BMX bike that his dad had rescued from the tip, to competing against up to 1,800 riders in races where dozens are often airlifted to hospital, and only three or four finish . . . with Graham usually at the head of the field.

The 2010 World Superbike Championship ended in victory for Italian rider Max Biaggi aboard and Italian motorcycle, the Aprilia. Now the 2011 championship is well under way with Carlos Checa and Ducati as the leaders and up to now unchallenged. Among the new aspects of this season there is the debut of another Italian rider, Marco Melandri on a Yamaha. The Superbike World Championship Official Book is now in its fourth year and, as always, aims to be the reference book of mass production-derived bikes. It is these machines that have, for many years, constituted the soul of motorcycle racing, uniting competition with a high technological content without ever overlooking their closeness to the normal road bikes. This is another book in the series that recounts the new world championship race-by-race, in particular through the spectacular pictures taken by Fabrizio Porrozzi, with precise text by his brother Claudio. As well as news of the maximum championship, the book also includes chapters on the other categories in the series, Supersport, Superstock 1000 and Superstock 600, which complete the packed program of the SBK World Championship.

Jeff Scott serves up yet another portion of methanol inspired lunacy to satisfy your speedway craving appetite with his latest book CONCRETE FOR BREAKFAST. Although some view speedway as little more than a fairground sideshow attraction, Scott continues to validate the sport's authenticity as he celebrates the romance of its racing, the bravery of its competitors, and the idiosyncrasies of its partisans on and off the track. An equal opportunity offender, motorcycle speedway thumbs its nose at the nanny-state bureaucrats of Health and Safety as well as the ubiquitous corporate media that enlists the drama and daring of the sport to validate its mission of spin, profit, and mediocrity. But, of course, any sport composed of individuals who willingly embrace the physical and mental challenges of speedway must by definition be considered daring, maverick and subversive. Consider the physical challenges of speedway: riding a high powered motorcycle without brakes or gears, steering only by balance, gravity, and gyroscopic luck four times round a shale covered track at speeds exceeding 60 miles per hour. The bike itself, a huge single piston 500cc machine, without suspension, powered by methanol, roars its sweet hymn to oblivion to those who ride and to those who watch. The mandated helmets and kevlars are the merest genuflection in the direction of self-preservation. In short, the entire enterprise constitutes a complete commitment to barking madness. Let Jeff Scott introduce you to this most anachronistic of sports in 21st Century Britain. If you do you will eventually succumb to the spectacle, the people, and the journey across its peculiar landscape and geographies. You will learn the rhythms of the unvarying repetitiousness of the team meeting format as well as the uniqueness of each individual race. With his gift for location, dialogue, and the human comedy, Jeff will escort you into his world of speedway. There you will accompany him as he watches every speedway team in Britain compete. He lends you his nose as he savors the aroma of methanol, burgers, chips, stressed toilets, and excitement. From his favorite vantage point in the lee of the stadium grandstand or lost in thought on the road to (or from) yet another event behind the wheel and the wipers of his much abused car, Jeff will help you begin your own pilgrimage to speedway. And even though there may well be CONCRETE FOR BREAKFAST for some unlucky riders whose quest for glory ends in a bruised heap of broken bones and bike, Jeff will cleave the chaos for you in a such a way that the event will be invariably portrayed with the charm, irreverence, humanity and compassion that informs the style of this most unique of sports' most unique diarist. This volume is the fifth book in a planned trilogy gone terribly, terribly wrong. It's a "must have" companion to Jeff's masterpiece Showered in Shale as well as his others: Shifting Shale, When Eagles Dared, or the poignantly photographed Shale Britannia.

At the end of the 2016 Speedway season, the Coventry Bees Speedway team ceased racing due to their stadium at Brandon being purchased for housing development. Although it sent shockwaves through the Speedway world it didn't come as a complete surprise, as rumours about its future had been circulating for two years or so. Tony Watson is a keen supporter of Speedway Racing and the Bees in particular. In this book he sets out all of the final season's racing results, its team members, the guest riders used and the scoring statistics of the riders. He also touches on the attempts to keep the team's name alive by 'track sharing' at nearby Leicester, a venture which did not succeed. A must read for any Speedway follower

This title is reprinted for 2011 - back due to popular demand. Mick Walker - leading authority on all forms of motorcycle sport - examines the long career of the quickest and most determined competitors of all time in this enthralling biography. In the late 1950's John Surtees was the dominant rider in top-level British and European motorcycle racing. A precocious talent, he began riding competitively on Vincents in the early 1950's, then REGs and NSUs and Nortons. He swiftly established himself as one of the quickest and most determined competitors. He confirmed his outstanding qualities as a rider when he won his first 500cc title for MV Agusta in 1956, and this triumph was followed by six more titles, three at 350cc and three at 500cc. From 1958 to 1960, he won by a huge margin. In this fully illustrated and in-depth new study, Mick Walker reassesses Surtees' remarkable record and explores the background to his achievement. He recalls Surtee's early introduction to the sport, his rapid development as a rider and his years of dominance. The technical side of Surtees' career - the bikes he rode and his considerable skills as a mechanic and engineer - is covered in detail. The book gives a fascinating insight into the intense motivation that often gave Surtees the edge over his rivals and laid the foundation for the success that followed. As a rider Surtees was not only exceptionally fast, safe and consistent, but he was also technically adept and innovative. His race preparation was meticulous and single-minded, and this professional attitude to the sport marked him out from his contemporaries.

This is a paperback reprint - back due to popular demand. It includes analysis of his greatest races and the changing technology of his bikes. It is an in-depth, richly illustrated biography of one of motorcycling's best-loved characters. Fourth in a series intended to cover the careers of the world's greatest motorcycle racing champions, "Bob McIntyre - The Flying Scot" tells the story of the man who never actually won a world championship - but certainly deserved to. In many ways he was the two-wheel equivalent of car racing driver Stirling Moss, who is seen as one of the greats in his sport although he never won an official world title. Well over four decades since his untimely death, following an accident that occurred while racing his 500cc Manx Norton at Oulton Park, Cheshire in August 1962, Bob McIntyre's memory lives on. An annual Bob McIntyre Memorial race meeting held at East Fortune attracts racing enthusiasts from as far afield as Australia. Not only was 'Bob Mac' a brilliantly gifted rider and self-taught mechanic, he was also a man of the people, someone who would always help a fellow competitor or take the time to sign an autograph or chat to a fan. He was also honest, loyal and modest; his word was his bond. Unlike the three riders already covered in this series, John Surtees, Mike Hailwood and Giacomo Agostini, Bob Mac was very much a self-made man; someone who started from the very bottom and reached the very top in his chosen profession. He was the first man to lap the Isle of Man TT circuit, the most fearsome in the world, at over 100 mph; and this was just one of his great achievements. This in-depth account of his career focusses on the bikes and the races but also provides an insight in Bob's life away from the track. Lavishly illustrated with many previously unpublished photographs, it is a must-read for any motorcycling fan.

In the late 1950's John Surtees was the dominate rider in top-level British and European motorcycle racing. A precocious talent, he began riding competitively on Vincents in the early 1950's, then REGs and NSUs and Nortons A precocious talent, he began riding competitively on Vincents in the early 1950's, then REGs and NSUs and Nortons. The technical side of Surtees's career - the bikes he rode and his considerable skills as a mechanic and engineer - is covered in detail. The book gives a fascinating insight into the intense motivation that often gave Surtees the edge over his rivals and laid the foundation for the success that followed. In many ways Surtees is the precursor of later generations of fiercely dedicated, perfectionist riders like Kenny Roberts Snr and Mick Doohan, and the time is right for a reassessment of his contribution to the sport.