Representative image: a 2000 Suzuki Hayabusa GSX1300R, the first-generation body Skeels-Piggins' record bike wears. Photo: Yama kujira via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
The timeslip Talan Skeels-Piggins posted from Elvington Airfield carries two numbers, not one. Next to “Standing Mile” it reads 200.254 mph. Directly below, next to “Standing 1.25 Mile,” it reads 157.504 mph.
The first number is the one that matters to him. Skeels-Piggins, a former Royal Navy lieutenant and 2010 Winter Paralympian who has been paralyzed from the chest down since a motorcycle crash in March 2003, ran it on September 19 at a Straightliners event on the old RAF runway near York. His team’s press release, published in full by Ability Today, calls it the first time a paraplegic motorcyclist has topped 200 mph over a measured mile from a standing start. The bike is a turbocharged Suzuki Hayabusa, and he rides it using only his upper body and arms.
He posted the slip the next day alongside a photo of himself tucked on the bike in the pits and another of him flexing beside it in a “200mph+ Club” T-shirt.
What the slip shows
Straightliners’ standing-mile format is a one-way pass: launch from a stop, and the speed is taken as the bike crosses the one-mile mark. The slip is headed with the event’s “Full Throttle” branding, rider number 149, and a small “5” in the corner. That squares with the release, which says Skeels-Piggins made five passes that day, building speed each time, with the weather threatening to stop the event.
The 1.25-mile figure is 42.75 mph lower than the mile figure. The bike was shedding speed hard in the quarter-mile after the timing point. Neither the release nor his posts explain that second number, and neither publishes the speeds from his first four passes.
Ten years under a tarp
This is not a new project. According to the release, Skeels-Piggins reached 175 mph on a stock Hayabusa in June 2015 and then stalled: money ran out, he had serious accidents, and work was hard to find. The bike was taken apart and left under a tarpaulin in the corner of a workshop.
In 2025 he met Lee Baxendale, a motorcycle engineer and racer, who the release says put more than 600 hours into rebuilding it as a turbo bike assembled from the parts of several motorcycles. Baxendale’s son Jay did test riding. There was no title sponsor. Sparks Welding Services, one of the smaller backers, says it made modified parts and supplied oils and lubricants.
The photos show what that looks like. The bike wears a white first-generation Hayabusa body with a “GSX1300R” tail decal and a Rock Oil sticker, two generations of styling behind the current 2027 model. His own follow-up post thanks “Lee, Jay and Dan” and tags #hayabusa, and that is about as technical as the public record gets.
What nobody has published
For a machine built around a turbo, the release gives no boost pressure, no horsepower figure and no dyno sheet. It doesn’t say which engine generation is inside the old bodywork.
The bigger omission is the controls. A Hayabusa asks for a left foot on the gear lever and a right foot on the rear brake. Skeels-Piggins has neither available, and the release’s only explanation is that he controls the bike with his upper body and arms. How he shifts through six gears on a one-mile pass from a standstill, and how his legs are kept in place at 200 mph, is not described anywhere.
Which record
The release headlines a “new land speed record” but doesn’t name a sanctioning body or a class. It says 200.254 mph beat his own 2015 best by 24.624 mph and topped a 198 mph mark set by South African rider Sampie Erasmus on August 15, 2026. It doesn’t say where Erasmus ran, over what distance, or who timed him, and we could not find a primary record of that run.
That distinction matters in land speed racing. FIM world records for motorcycles are averaged over runs in opposite directions, the same principle that made JCB run both ways across Bonneville for its FIA-observed 406 mph hydrogen record. A standing mile at Elvington is a single timed pass. What Skeels-Piggins can claim without qualification is the number on the slip, from Straightliners’ own timing.
His circuit record is better documented. He was the first paraplegic to earn an ACU road race licence, in 2012, and his University of Warwick honorary-graduate biography lists 600cc world titles in the paralyzed class in 2015 and 2018, plus a 90 mph average lap of the 37.73-mile Isle of Man TT course in 2019. He also co-runs The Bike Experience, a charity that the release says has put more than 550 people with physical impairments back on motorcycles since 2011.
Straightliners’ next Elvington date is its Full Throttle event on October 5. Neither the release nor his posts say whether the turbo Hayabusa will be there, or what number comes after 200.
Should a one-way standing-mile speed count as a land speed record, or does it need a sanctioning body and a two-way average before anyone uses the word?
Sources: Talan Skeels-Piggins’ Instagram posts and timeslip (September 20, 2026); team press release dated September 19, 2026, as published by Ability Today; Sparks Welding Services sponsor statement; University of Warwick honorary graduate biography (July 2025); Straightliners Events calendar.
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