Guy’s been pushing himself to the outer limits, as usual. There's no medals, no big ceremony at the end of it all. He's just driven by putting himself through the misery. And coming out smiling.
The TV job took him to Columbia, where he was waterboarded, shot and shown round a cocaine factory in a jungle clearing. He's also been to the Arctic to join the Royal Marines at their winter training centre, where he plunged into icy waters, marched up mountains and camped out in the freezing wilderness. We can exclusively reveal here that he had a fractured shoulder at the time.
Off the telly, he’s gone on two epic bike rides, the first to Istanbul, then Istanbul to Baku, led by his sat nav along multi-lane motorways and up remote goat tracks, sleeping on the roadside. He’s been racing (and crashing) on Mablethorpe Beach, he’s entered the Scott Trial twice, one of the toughest motorcycle endurance events in the world, and he’s been working on the ‘300mph job’ – that’s the world record he's going for on two wheels and he’s building a bike to get him there. So far he's reached 276 mph, and he's the only person who can tell you what that feels like.
Guy Martin is publicly known primarily as an English motorcycle racer, who also works as a lorry mechanic and TV presenter. He has mainly competed in road racing events such as the Isle of Man TT, Ulster Grand Prix and North West 200. Since 2011, Martin has also found success as the front man of several television programmes focusing on his passions of engineering, motor vehicles and speed.
This latest installment into Guys adventures is nothing more than rehashing his TV shows with the odd chapters about personal bike rides thrown in for good measure.
The whole narrative doesn't sound like Guy and it's very obvious that the ghost writer is putting more of his own mannerisms into this book than Guy's which I find a shame. I briefly met Guy at Snetterton back when he was racing for Shaun Muir in BSB and he didn't sound anything like the Guy in this book. Yes, people can change but not the way they speak.
Overall I'd say that this is the weakest one of his collection, not counting the Speed book which was just awful, unfinished did nothing more than cash in on Guy's name, which is a pity because his first three are thoroughly good reads