Isle of Man TT winner ‘died twice’ after serious crash two years ago

One-time Isle of Man TT winner Lee Johnston “died twice” en route to hospital after a 2023 crash at the North West 200, a new podcast revealed.

Popular Northern Irish racer Johnston, who won a Supersport TT in 2019, suffered a serious incident during practice for the North West 200 in 2023.

Initially reported as not being in a serious condition, it later became apparent that the crash had been more severe than first thought and Johnston had suffered life-threatening injuries.

After a lengthy recovery, Johnston did return to racing in 2024 at the Classic TT, though he has been absent from the Isle of Man TT since 2023.

He has served as a commentator and pundit for the TT over the past few years.

On The Outside Line podcast with former Superbike star and British Superbike pundit James Whitham and Jack Burnicle, the former revealed that Johnston “died twice” during air ambulance transport to the hospital following his North West crash.

“He was just about out of intensive care and was in a high dependency unit and still in quite a bad way,” he said.

“We were in there chatting with him, and everything’s great, and he couldn’t remember much about the accident.

“Then this woman, a nice woman in normal civilian clothes, just walks in, sits down, pulls a chair up and sits right beside him at the right-hand side of his bed.

“She took over the talking and asked him how he was feeling, and said, ‘You weren’t like this the last time I saw you’.

“So we’re listening, just a weird thing, and we’re thinking ‘Is she maybe a relative or something?’

But it turns out she was the doctor on call on the helicopter, there’s only one for the Northern Ireland area – the Air Ambulance – and she’s the doctor on call on the ambulance.

“They got a call to go to the North West because there’d been a big accident and her first contact with Lee, he’s got a screen around him, he’s in the road, and he’s in a bad way.

“She said, ‘Yeah, you were a lucky lad that day’, and he said, ‘Yeah, I know, thank you’.

“She said, ‘No, no, no – you died twice on the way to the hospital, and we had to give you several litres of blood’.

“She said they’d only just got the money to put the machine in the helicopter a year ago to condition the blood, which goes off really quickly.

“She said, ‘If you hadn’t had that, you were done’. And then she said, ‘and we got another call at the same time, which we figured was just a bit less serious, so we left that to go to you, so if we'd gone to him (the other injured person) first, you’re done’.”