Midsummer Night's Dream
Midsummer Night's Dream
An insider's guide to the Isle of Man
GORDON RITCHIE
IT’S THE MEMORIES OF THE PLACE THAT NEVER REALLY LEAVE YOU. How could they, because the memory is given something of an annual overhaul each time any motorcyclist, from any of our communal obsession’s many factions, is fortunate enough to converge on the Isle of Man while the TT is on. The memories only multiply and intensify with each recollection.
Watching people very publicly risk their lives as they ricochet through narrow villages and whistle alongside sheer drops at an average speed better than 120 mph is usually a little on the attention-grabbing side, especially the first time you see it done. Changed my ideas about what fast meant, first sight of a bike full chat at the bottom of Bray Hill.
Isle of Man speed has special significance when the bikes are powering out of the comers a mere 2 feet from, well, your own two feet, with the flashing bodywork stealing kisses from the green earth and old stone that line the entire course.
On a less kinetic and more bacchanalian level, I can also remember boozing myself insensible on countless occasions with insistent and suicidally hard-drinking buddies-something of a TT rite of passage for even the soberest of people, and one frequently replayed in every packed-out bar and heaving nightclub.
There’s nothing quite like the TT. By its very location, history, atmosphere, 37-mile length and its ability to endure beyond any eredible lifespan, the TT is simply unique.
Other memories of mine prove that TT participation is a sport for all, and a contact sport at that. Being knocked off my 12-horsepower restricted Yamaha RZ125LC on the Mountain section by a loco local driver (about eight hours after getting off the ferry for my first-ever TT visit) is a classic recollection from my personal archive.
Only at the TT have I ever made lifelong friends in one hour, many I’ve never seen or spoken to since, yet some of whom would still give me their last dime. Or at least share the drink it would buy us.
Memories of the TT? I’ve got a thousand of ’em, 995 of them good.
But I also remember the multiple deaths in a 1300cc Production race, which got big roadbikes banned from the race calendar until relatively recently.
And I also hark back to visiting a fellow bike journo in a rapidly filling hospital, after his second big race crash in a week, a prang that almost finished the job the first one had started.
The years these events happened? Can’t remember offhand; and dates themselves, when applied to a place with the timeless appeal and anachronistic cruelty of the Isle of Man, are just grains in the sandstorm of Manx history.
Nope, there’s nothing at all quite like the TT. By its very location, history, atmosphere, 37-mile lap length and its ability to endure beyond any credible lifespan, the TT is simply unique. Especially in the day of the safety-Nazi and the age of the nanny-state.
What cannot be denied is that the TT is a form of Midsummer Madness, like it’s always been really. But in the era of the 180-bhp Superbike, with a near double-ton speed ceiling, the contemporary races are simply institutionalized Russian roulette. And before we get letters, I am, have always been and hopefully always will be a supporter of the TT. Or rather, a supporter of people’s right to choose to race at the TT, if they so desire. I just happen to be cursed with a sense of realism, which some of the TT’s most blinkered supporters have had surgically removed.
In British and Irish terms (the two main landmasses that surround the
tiny, quasi-autonomous Island), the TT is still a big deal, although as an overall biking festival rather than any kind of significant motorcycle competition.
I choose those words carefully because the quality of entry into the events nowadays demonstrates the point perfectly, with 90 percent of all riders having no short-circuit International or National pedigree to speak of. And sorry if I am unwittingly offending people with far greater skill and bravery than myself, that’s no longer an opinion, that’s a measurable statistical fact, even if the remaining 10 percent are going faster than ever.
Statistics mean a lot at the TT. In fact, every time a racer is killed (six is the max I remember in any one race week) statistics appear from behind the normal wall of cheery impregnability the organizers like to maintain at all times, proving that the TT is no more or less dangerous than any other form of tarmac racing, when you divide “a” by “b” and then introduce function “c” to get the final total of “tragedies” per miles covered.
Maybe they’ve got a point, because according to what I’ve seen with my own eyes of the U.K. short-circuit scene, and read about the American one, those riders who despise the TT for its very nature often line up at tracks that can be considered little safer. But people-racers and road riders alike-get killed at the TT every year. Put simply, the TT confronts us with some stark realities about motorcycling in general. Go figure.
Although risk and danger play their part in the overall TT scene, the racing is becoming less and less important.
To the manufacturers, majority of riders and all but the hard-core of “real” roadracing stalwarts. Still a hook for the chorus of British racing at least, but not the backbone of the global symphony anymore.
And a good thing too, because the bad old days when riders had to race there to stand a chance of winning world titles is now long gone, missed by few. The last of the old school of TT men to go onto real international success was one Carl Fogarty, holder of the outright lap record for seven years after his last appearance in 1992.
I’ve been to the TT maybe 10 times, both as a paying bike rider and a paid race journalist, and the main reason for traveling to the Island in the first place is for the party. More importantly, a party that is inseparable from motorcycling. So good is it that a very significant number of proper “foreign” visitors (as opposed to the non-Manx Brits and Irish) are making it a must-see event. When the wall came down between the two Germanys, for example, there was a sudden invasion of Saxons (that is former East Germans from the heartland of German motorsport in Saxony), riding everywhere at full speed on the right (or in this instance, the wrong) side of the road and generally getting killed and hurt a lot. But you can see the attraction of riding the TT course, especially to those starved of international bike racing for years.
To the smorgasbord of the TT, they were just another splinter group, in what is the least homogenous, yet outwardly similar, collection of people in the world, who all gather in some loose fratemity/sorority/hermaphroddity called motorcycling. Whether your particular bag is drag racing, trials riding, air displays, moped racing, stunt riding, beer drinking, beach racing, motocross, wheelie watching, Owner’sO Club rallying, endless conversation in many tongues (frequently slllurrredddd... ), then the TT is the place to be in late May and early June.
To even attempt to take in all the events and attractions would be an exercise in futility and a good basis for a degree course in Exhaustion by Internal Combustion. And that’s only during the daylight hours. The rest of the time is spent on the real hard work of drinking and eating to excess. The TT on any night during race week is a never-ending beerathon with around 20,000 nightly participants and daytime recuperators. From the sleepy fishing villages of Port Erin to the fleshpots of the capital Douglas, the international language of beer and BS is spoken fluently and incessantly. And although things are changing for the better, the TT is still fairly exclusively a maleoriented testosterone factory. Hence every nightclub, casino and hotel of a certain size suddenly becomes transformed into a downmarket Hooters-style amateur wet T-shirt venue.
Whether your particular bag is drag racing, trials, moped racing, stunt riding, motocross, whcelic watching or endless conversation in many tongues, the TT is the place to be.
An equally vulgar transformation afflicts the very fabric of these establishments one day before race week-by the miraculous method of plastering everything in bike-related posters and paraphernalia, to be ripped down and replaced with their more genteel wallcoverings the day after the last race.
Yet by some strange dichotomy you can spend the entire TT on the Isle of Man and hardly see a motorbike or a pair of soda-siphoned breasts. If, that is, you stay on the periphery of what is a scenically beautiful and naturally charming lump of green-covered rock. Which also happens to be a major European tax haven and offshore bank nowadays.
Lucky for some then, because the Isle of Man’s attraction as an important race venue has gone. It endures because it’s a unique means of escapism for the visitors, a wormhole from reality, from life on a Big Island to life on a small island, a trip back in time in every material and spiritual fashion.
Tales of the TT’s imminent extinction have been doing the rounds since well before I went for the first time. Yet it remains, despite its faded glory and diminishing importance, a must-see for any biker with the means to get there. Even once. □
