Joey Dunlop, who died on July 2nd aged 48, was one of the few motorcycle riders to defy the received wisdom on the dangers of racing in the Isle of Man.
The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, on the island's 37.73-mile road circuit in the mid-1970s was described by one champion as "total madness".
The champion had arrived, he recalled, 1,400ft above sea level, past Brandywell, heading towards Windy Corner, and the six miles downhill to the finishing line. Fog was shrouding the mountain. Only by coming out from behind his fairing could he see anything of the country road.
He did not care if he was called a coward: he would never race on the island again. And he didn't. He was not the only one.
An average of two riders a year are killed at the TT races. In 1976, after 27 years, the TT lost its British Grand Prix world championship status; great riders and world champions like Phil Reid and Giacomo Agostini said it was just too dangerous.
Some observers assumed that the races, which had begun in 1907, were doomed. The advance of Japanese and Italian technology had overtaken a public road circuit where - even more than on custom-made tracks - riders' reaction times literally separated life and death.
For a quarter of a century, Joey Dunlop, was one of those riders who challenged the post-GP theory.
He first raced on the island in 1976, and his name - like that of Geoff Duke, Bob McIntyre, John Surtees and Mike Hailwood - was inextricably linked to postwar TT racing.
For, shorn of its grand prix status, the TT did not shrivel, as predicted. Certainly, without GP riders it lost something of its internationalism but, instead, it became a vast celebration of working-class motorcycle sport.
Devoid of the hype of Formula One - or even motorcycle GP racing - the Isle of Man TT is a place where, before lapping at 120 m.p.h. its stars, like Joey Dunlop, would calculate gear ratios on the back of envelopes as they perched on their vans.
In 1977, he won his first TT race on a Yamaha. Since then, he never missed the event, except in 1989 when, after a crash at Brands Hatch, he arrived on crutches and was stopped from racing.
For the last 18 years, he had been a factory rider for Honda.
Eight years ago, he equalled the record of Hailwood - probably the greatest British motorcycle champion - with 14 TT wins. Last month, he won the Formula One, Lightweight 250cc and Ultra Lightweight 125cc TTs, making a total of 26 TT wins.
He was five times TT Formula One world champion, won the Ulster Grand Prix 24 times and, also in Northern Ireland, won 13 North-West 200 races.
Joey Dunlop was born in Ballymoney, Co Antrim. His first motorcycle, at the end of the era when British machines dominated world markets, was a BSA. He began racing at the age of 17 at Magaberry on a 192cc Triumph Tiger Cub - which he bought for £50. He initially financed his passion with building and driving jobs.
His motorcycle successes led to an MBE in 1986. In 1996, a CBE followed for his charitable work, which had taken him to Albania, Bosnia and Romania. Last month, he was given the freedom of Ballymoney. He enjoyed it all, he said - travel, distant places, and racing.
Modest and unassuming, he ran the Railway Inn in Ballymoney.
On the Isle of Man, a pub, Joey's Bar, was named in his honour. He is survived by his wife Linda and their three daughters and two sons; his parents, William and May; his two brothers and three sisters.
William Joseph "Joey" Dunlop: born 1952; died, July 2000