Wendy Crockett knows her way around a motorcycle. She was the first woman to win the 11-day, 11,000-mile Iron Butt Rally in 2019. The next year, she was awarded the prestigious AMA Bessie Stringfield Award in recognition of her contributions to the sport of motorcycling. And she hasn’t slowed down yet. Now, she’s added a Guinness World Record to her list of achievements.
Wendy Crockett and Ian McPhee rode a total of 97,319 miles through Australia, Canada, and the U.S. in the summer of 2022. Guinness World Records has certified that the team of two rode 75,846 miles together in the lower 48 states, making them the first two people to be awarded the record for The Longest Journey by Motorcycle within a Single Country (Team). Crockett rode a 2005 Yamaha FJR1300 and McPhee was on a 2000 BMW R 1100 RT.
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The team faced many obstacles on the trip, including animal strikes, record-breaking heat and rain, emergency surgeries, hospitalization, illness, and plenty of mechanical issues. Despite all the stumbling blocks, the two kept ticking down the miles.
Both Crockett and McPhee have years of mechanical experience, so they were able to do most of their own repairs and services. However, when McPhee’s frame broke in half, the team had to rely on the skills of a NASCAR chassis fabricator for help.
“I doubt there are any two riders better suited to successfully pull off a massive, calamitous ride like this one,” Crockett said. “Our tenacious spirits and goofy humor kept us pushing forward as a team through one absurd left-field disaster after another, and we are absolutely over the moon to have our efforts recognized by Guinness.”
It takes a special kind of person with an iron will to complete a ride of this magnitude. Woman Rider congratulates the team on their most recent achievement while we impatiently wait to see what Crockett and McPhee get up to next.
