Dougie Lampkin Steps Back – The Very Human Side of a 12-Time World Champion

There are sporting legends who make absolutely certain you know they're sporting legends.

Dougie Lampkin isn't one of them.

Motorbike Mad met Dougie at MCL26 last year. We had a chat, grabbed a selfie and came away thinking what so many people who have met him probably think – what a genuinely down-to-earth bloke.

No superstar attitude. No sense that you're talking to someone who expects to be treated differently. Just a bloke who loves motorcycles and trials.

Except this particular bloke happens to have won 12 FIM Trials World Championships, 14 Scottish Six Days Trials, been awarded an MBE, ridden a motorcycle through Goodwood House and onto its roof, and wheelied all 37.7 miles of the Isle of Man TT Mountain Course.

Which makes his latest announcement rather fitting.

Dougie Lampkin is stepping down from his role as Course Director with ML Events. Not because he's finished with trials, and certainly not because he's lost his enthusiasm for the sport.

Part of the reason is much simpler.

He wants more time to follow his sons and support their riding.

And when you understand the Lampkin family story, there's something rather special about that.

Dougie Lampkin – born into a trials dynasty

It would have been difficult for Dougie Lampkin not to have motorcycles in his life.

His father, the late Martin Lampkin, became the first official FIM Trials World Champion in 1975. Dougie arrived the following year.

His uncle Arthur Lampkin was another formidable motorcycle competitor, successful across trials, motocross and enduro.

Motorcycles weren't simply something the Lampkins did at weekends. They were part of family life.

Dougie began riding young and appeared on the BBC's Junior Kick Start, but having a famous surname is one thing. Creating a career capable of eclipsing even that family heritage is something entirely different.

In 1993 he became European Trials Champion.

Then came one of the most dominant periods the sport has ever witnessed.

Twelve world championships – and seven in a row

Between 1997 and 2003, Dougie Lampkin won seven consecutive outdoor Trials World Championships.

As if that wasn't sufficient, between 1997 and 2001 he also collected five consecutive indoor world titles.

That gave him 12 individual World Championships.

Add six British titles, two Spanish championships, three Trial des Nations team world championships for Great Britain, six Scott Trial victories and an extraordinary 14 Scottish Six Days Trial wins, and the scale of Lampkin's career becomes difficult to comprehend.

Trials doesn't enjoy the mainstream exposure of MotoGP, the Isle of Man TT or British Superbikes, which perhaps explains why Lampkin isn't always mentioned alongside Britain's most celebrated motorcycle racers.

In terms of sustained domination of his chosen discipline, Dougie Lampkin belongs among Britain's greatest motorcycle competitors.

Yet somehow the enormous list of achievements doesn't quite explain the man.

The things he did when he wasn't chasing championships might.

Fancy riding a motorcycle through Goodwood House?

Trials riders tend to look at obstacles differently from the rest of us.

Most visitors approaching the magnificent Goodwood House presumably see an historic stately home. Dougie Lampkin apparently saw a trials section.

In 2008, Goodwood allowed him to ride his motorcycle through the house itself.

And we don't mean carefully pushing it through the front door.

Lampkin rode through rooms, negotiated staircases and eventually emerged onto the roof of Goodwood House.

It's worth correcting a story that sometimes gets muddled. Lampkin did receive his MBE at Buckingham Palace, but he hasn't, as far as we can establish, ridden his trials bike across the roof of Buckingham Palace. Even Dougie presumably has limits.

Goodwood House, however, was fair game.

Watching the footage perhaps tells you more about trials riding than pages of explanation ever could.

The precision is extraordinary.

A trials motorcycle becomes less a vehicle and more an extension of the rider's body.

And Lampkin wasn't finished finding increasingly ridiculous places to demonstrate that ability.

Then he wheelied the entire Isle of Man TT course

In 2016 came an idea which sounds perfectly reasonable until you actually think about it.

Wheelie the entire Isle of Man TT Mountain Course. That's 37.7 miles without putting the front wheel down.

At the beginning of the project Lampkin later admitted he could sustain a wheelie for only around 100 metres. What followed was seven months of planning, extensive modifications to a Vertigo trials bike and roughly 1,000 miles of practice.

Then on 25 September 2016, he attempted it live. For more than an hour and a half Lampkin kept the front wheel in the air. He dealt with rain, an oncoming bus, fatigue and – perhaps most frighteningly – winds gusting at more than 40mph across the Mountain.

There were moments when even Lampkin thought it was over. It wasn't.

He crossed the famous TT finish line with the front wheel still pointing towards the sky.

Lampkin subsequently ranked the achievement alongside his World Championships. Coming from somebody with 12 of them, that's saying something.

From winning sections to building them

Eventually even the greatest competitors have to decide what comes next.

For Lampkin, leaving full-time World Championship competition didn't mean leaving trials.

Among his many activities, he became heavily involved with ML Events and spent the last four years leading the course-building team as Course Director.

That included the three editions of the DL12 Indoor Trial, X-Trial Leeds earlier this year and, most recently, the British TrialGP at Anglesey in July.

There's a nice symmetry to that role. For years Lampkin had been the man trying to work out how to conquer apparently impossible sections. Then he became the bloke creating them for somebody else.

But this week he announced it was time for a change.

Why Dougie Lampkin is stepping down

Lampkin has confirmed that following TrialGP Anglesey, he is stepping down as ML Events Course Director.

Importantly, this isn't retirement from trials.

He has made clear that he still loves designing and building sections and expects to remain involved in some capacity. He'll also help with the transition and support the team behind future events.

The issue is time.

Course Director is an enormously demanding role and Lampkin now has somewhere else he increasingly wants to spend that time with his family.

His sons Alfie and Fraiser Lampkin are themselves competing on motorcycles, and Dougie wants the opportunity to support their riding and follow them around the world.

In fact, he's previously joked that supporting the boys has made life busier than when he was competing professionally himself.

Any parent who has spent a weekend driving children to sport may recognise the principle.

Admittedly, most don't have to follow them around international motorcycle championships.

The Lampkin baton passes again

And this is where what initially looks like a fairly routine motorsport announcement becomes something much warmer.

Martin Lampkin became World Champion in 1975.

A year later, Dougie was born.

Martin supported his son's journey through trials and watched him develop into one of the most successful competitors the sport has ever produced.

Now the roles have moved through another generation.

Dougie's eldest son Alfie will remain part of the ML Events team, while both Alfie and Fraiser continue developing their own riding careers.

And Dad wants to be there.

Not as 12-time World Champion Dougie Lampkin MBE.

Not as the bloke who conquered the TT course on one wheel.

Not as Course Director.

As Dad.

There's something wonderfully ordinary about that.

Perhaps that's why people warm to Dougie Lampkin

Motorcycle sport has never been short of colourful characters.

But sometimes the people who make the greatest impression aren't necessarily the loudest.

When we met Dougie at MCL26, we weren't expecting a long conversation with a 12-time World Champion. Yet he was approachable, friendly and happy to chat and pose for a photograph.

There seemed remarkably little separation between Dougie Lampkin the motorcycle legend and Dougie Lampkin the bloke standing talking about bikes.

Perhaps that's part of the reason he's remained such a popular figure within trials.

His record certainly doesn't need embellishment.

Twelve World Championships.

Fourteen Scottish Six Days victories.

An MBE.

Goodwood House.

The TT course on one wheel.

And a lifetime devoted to motorcycle sport.

But his latest decision arguably tells us something about Dougie Lampkin that a trophy cabinet never could.

After years spent being the Lampkin everyone else travelled around the world to watch, he's stepping back partly so he can travel around the world watching the next generation of Lampkins.

There are plenty of ways to measure a sporting career.

Championships are one.

Records are another.

But knowing when something else matters more?

Perhaps that's not a bad measure of the man either.