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I don't think he knew he was dying. I went in the ambulance with him to the hospital, but the roads were choked and it took two hours. After 20 minutes or so, the surgeon came out and said that they'd revived him momentarily, but that he had died. You can imagine how I felt. We'd been friends, team-mates and rivals for ten years. I was shattered."

There are three memorial sites dedicated to Guthrie. One is on the mountain on the Isle of Man, at the point where he retired from his final TT - a race in which he participated between 1923 and 1937. This memorial was paid for by public subscription and, on a clear day, one can see Scotland from it. Another public subscription paid for a statue of him which was erected in 1939 in Wilton Park, Hawick. A recent addition to the park is a statue of Steve Hislop, also a Hawick resident. Hislop died in a helicopter crash in 2003 and the statues of these two great riders stand facing each other. At the nearby museum there is also a Jimmie Guthrie exhibition with artifacts and three of his motorcycles. The Germans also paid for a memorial to Guthrie at the site of his accident; it was erected in 1949 and it is still immaculately kept. It is known as the Guthrie Stone.

There was also another interesting tribute to him. After his death German dictator Adolf Hitler - apparently a big fan of the Norton rider - presented Jimmie's mechanic with a brass statue of Mercury. It appears that this object is currently in the possession of Knockhill racing circuit in Scotland where it is used as the trophy for the 600 cc class.

References:

Jimmie Guthrie, Hawick's Racing Legend (Hawick Archaeological Society, 1997)
Jimmie Guthrie Exhibition, Hawick Museum

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