'It's been a nightmare really' - Hutchinson after NW200 podium
Ian Hutchinson says he "kept believing" that he could return to being competitive in motorcycle road racing after suffering adversity in the form of a number of serious injury and illness setbacks which threatened to derail his career completely.
The Yorkshireman was speaking after finishing third in Thursday's Superstock race at the North West 200 in Northern Ireland.
The 45-year-old had multiple operations after suffering compound fractures to his leg in a crash at Silverstone in 2010, the same year that he won a record five races in one week at the Isle of Man TT.
Hutchinson displayed unimaginable resilence by heroically bouncing back to take his overall tally of TT wins to 16 in subsequent years but a major crash in the 2017 Senior TT saw him suffer another crushing blow in the form of a fractured femur.
After two lost years because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the three-time North West winner then suffered a stroke in 2023 which resulted in him have his racing licence revoked.
He returned to road racing action again in 2024 but had to settle for a series of top-15 TT finishes.
"It's been a nightmare really. Eight years of being nowhere near the pace but I kept believing in myself," Hutchinson told BBC Sport NI.
"I carried on going, training hard, everything, its been hard.
"I hope my daughter is watching and has seen that Daddy can still ride."
Hutchinson was riding for the MLav Racing team, who were making their bow at the North West under team manager Michael Laverty.
"MLav gave me a ring in November about doing this project and it sort of came together in the last four weeks or so," he explained.
"It's been very rushed but we've got there and I've been believing ever since my 2017 crash that I could come back.
"Two years after that I was bad with a frame on my leg, then there was Covid, then I had the stroke.
"This [the podium] is massive."
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