Racing bike rider cheats death by staying in saddle after slamming into giant seagull at 150mph
GULL SPLAT MIRACLE Racing bike rider cheats death by staying in saddle after slamming into giant seagull at 150mph
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A DAREDEVIL TT rider cheated death after slamming into a jumbo-sized seagull at 150mph - and somehow stayed in the saddle.
Mark Parrett, 55, was tearing through the famous Isle of Man course when the feathered missile hit him head on.
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Mark Parrett is a TT veteran with 98 starts under his belt
Credit: Ben Lack
The 3kg bird busted his lower arm, snapping one bone in two, and dislocating his wrist.
Mark, a TT veteran with 98 starts under his belt, miraculously managed to stay in control of his powerful BMW superbike.
The speedster, from Midhurst, West Sussex, was airlifted to hospital after the smash earlier this month.
He told The Sun: 'It's a bit of a miracle I stayed upright.
'It was a huge seagull - they're all massive on the Isle of Man - and it just shot up out of nowhere.
'I was doing 140 or 150mph so there was no way of avoiding it. I had to just grin and bear it.
'It felt like being hit by a cannonball. If it had hit me in the chest or the helmet, I'd be history.
'I was lucky that I didn't come off the bike.'
Pictures posted on social media show his racing leathers drenched in bird guts.
Mark, a self-employed electrician by day who now faces surgery to plate and pin the break, later joked: 'Parrett one. Seagull nil.
Football rolls inches from Isle of Man TT legend riding at 130mph in frightening near miss
'It does go to show Parrett's are birds of prey after all.'
He added: 'I've had enough laps around that place to know the worst thing you can do is panic.
'It's the nature of the circuit - you can hit all sorts of things.'
Mark is aiming to return to the Isle of Man next year for his 100th start.
He added: 'I'm getting too old to be doing this, but it's like an addiction. I will be back there next year, whatever happens.'
A post on the Facebook page of Mark Parrott Racing read: 'A local seagull lay in wait for 'The Parrett' on the approach to the 33rd milestone and hit Mark on the left arm.
'He soon realised that it was rather serious when he tried to pull in the clutch and his left hand wasn't working.'
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