A fatal crash at the Kells Road Races last Saturday did not stop Sunday's event going ahead. Here, the riders, who risk death every time they don their leathers, explain the sport to KATHY SHERIDAN.
‘I SUPPOSE you’re here because of the, um, death?” says a young biker wryly, above the relentless revving of engines. Not so; Kells has been on our schedule for a while. But the biker has a point. It might have a huge following, but road racing makes news south of the Border only when someone dies.
In any other sport, a death would convulse all involved, prompting immediate cancellation of the following day’s programme in a welter of defensiveness and finger-pointing. But when 32-year-old Pádraig Campbell was killed during a practice lap last Saturday at the Kells Road Races in Co Meath – the first death in Kells’s 15-year history – his family insisted that Sunday’s event should go ahead. “We wouldn’t be here but for that. And all the riders and fans . . . ” says Aileen Ferguson, the race secretary, gesturing at the crowds around us, “this is their tribute to him”.
Remarkably, no one doubted her. There’s nothing in it for her, except love of the sport. The event is given a seal of approval by the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, who launches the races with a few words and departs. For the rest of us, with distance comes prejudice: a pre-conceived world of vaguely sinister figures in helmets and black leather, aggressive revving and poisonous exhaust fumes, all underpinned by ageing males getting their kicks watching silly youths court disaster.
In reality, you’ll find more edge at a football match. Road racing is where the fraternity of biking fans from North and South were mingling happily before any peace agreement, a modest world where shepherd’s pie is the fare in the VIP tent and Gran Palais cava is the winners’ champagne, where the heroes travel from race to race in motorhomes or vans, and the pampered bikes bag the living space.
These riders truly live life on the edge. Safety advances enable drivers to walk away from crashes in most motor sports, but come off your bike in a road race, and you’ll most likely end up in the morgue or on a hospital trolley. They wear dog tags engraved with their blood group and birth date. Some of them race up to 15 times in a weekend. Yet, there is no Ronaldo-style preening or posing. Fans are free to roam the paddock and chat to their heroes outside their “homes” minutes before the off. This is where they break your heart.
On-bike pictures can’t begin to convey the heart-stopping sight of exposed fragile bodies taking sharp corners or “jumping” a slope, full throttle, at over 240km/ph on twisting, narrow roads with only trees, poles, walls and hedges to break a fall.
There are bales and padding, “but padding won’t save you when you’re bounced off at 180m/ph [290km/ph]”, murmurs a Northerner whose son split his liver racing Motocross. Little wonder that the most-coveted viewing spots overlook the “jumps”. The split seconds between the bike’s take-off and landing define the viewers’ thrill. As riders wobble on impact and fight desperately for control, the crowd – securely corralled behind walls and hedges – gasps, swears, holds its breath. The question niggles: what exactly are we here to see?
Later on, Michael Dunlop, already a star at 21, describes how the landing impacts on a rider. The handlebars are “going like a chopper” and the challenge is to wrestle a beast equivalent in power to two BMWs, except on one wheel rather than four.
“You just have to hold on or roll off. When the bike is doing 180m/ph and when it doesn’t want to go forward, that’s when your body is getting a lot of abuse.” One of his testicles fell victim today; it “disappeared” inwards, apparently when he had the misfortune to experience a “tank-slapper” over a jump. “You’re up in the air about three feet, you’re dropped at 180m/ph and you land on top of your tank.” All this is related with a coolly mischievous grin in front of his serenely indulgent girlfriend, Jill Attley, aka “the Handbrake”.
For all his youth, the likeable 21-year-old embodies the spirit of the sport. Two days after his father Robert died in a 258km/ph crash during a qualifying round at the North West 200 last year, Michael charged to an emotional victory in the race that Robert – who had survived a catastrophic crash in 1994 – had been due to ride. Robert’s brother, Joey Dunlop, another legend in the island’s royal family of road racing, was killed in 2000 while racing in Estonia.
None of this deterred Michael, his brother William, or their cousin Sam, all of whom featured on the Kells podium. Ask Michael about previous injuries and he lists (repeated) broken wrists, cheekbones, ankles, knees, fingers, ribs, toes, dislocated shoulders. His wrists still trouble him – “I’ll get them welded” – but in the world of road racing, he knows, that might be considered light punishment.
Three motorcyclists have died in Irish road racing in just two months. Pádraig Campbell from Moate, Co Westmeath was killed at the Kells event on Saturday. A week before that, 27-year-old Andrew Neill from Dungannon sustained fatal head injuries during a practice lap at Walderstown, Co Westmeath. In May, 22-year-old Mark Young died in the North West 200, where another rider, John Anderton, was critically injured.
Robert Dunlop’s death at the North West 200 last year came only 12 days after 29-year-old Martin Finnegan from Lusk died at Tandragee, Co Armagh. Another top racer, Darran Lindsay, a 34-year-old father of three young children from Dundrod, Co Armagh died in September 2006 at the Killalane races near Dublin. Richard Britton, another Northern Irish rider and father of a young son, lost his life in September 2005 at a road race in Co Kerry when the engine on his 250cc machine seized.
But far from being forgotten, these dead men assume an honoured place in the mythology of road racing. At race meetings, stands sell commemorative posters, photographs and crystal pieces. Fans wear T-shirts bearing their names.
Funeral footage on YouTube – such as that of Martin Finnegan’s funeral – bears testimony to the fraternal spirit of bikers, who turn up in their hundreds. In the Kells race programme are tributes to those recently dead alongside fund- raising pleas for Seamus Greene, who sustained serious head injuries in the Isle of Man TT in 2006 and remains in a “minimally conscious state” in Dungloe community hospital, Co Donegal.
It would hardly be surprising if devastated families turned against the sport. But the connections within the biker fraternity run long and deep. Sharon Neill, the wife of the rider killed two weeks ago, was in Kells supporting her brother-in-law, Timmy Turtle. Mark Young’s girlfriend agreed to help out with the flags.
The Kells event was founded by Aileen Ferguson, a retired garda, her husband and others just a few years after her own 19-year-old, bike-racing nephew Brian was killed.
The objective was to bring racing back to Meath and make the sport as safe as possible, she says. Her 12-year-old daughter Emma is showing an interest, and Ferguson says she would like her son to start too. “I’ll support them. They could be at a hell of a lot worse. They grew up in the paddock and know everyone around them.”
Are they all mad? Maybe so, but it’s certainly not for the money. “What a footballer gets in a year, you wouldn’t make in a lifetime,” says Michael Dunlop. “You’d be lucky to make £15,000-20,000 [€17,300-23,100] a year.” The Isle of Man TT – where more than 220 riders have died in 100 years, 30 in the last nine years alone – is worth only £25,000 (€29,000) a race to the winner. At Kells, steady winners might come out with a few hundred euro if they’re lucky, after paying the entry fee of €75. “It actually costs them to race,” says Aileen Ferguson.
For a racer of Michael Dunlop’s level, running costs are around £250,000-300,000 (€288,000-346,000) a year. A set of tyres – built to last a single race – cost more than £200 (€230). The high-profile riders get by with sponsors, fundraisers and a multiplicity of odd jobs. Dunlop is a mechanic, steel erector, and lorry driver. He does up cars and sells them, cuts silage, and will soon be driving a road sweeper for Street Sweep of Lusk, one of his sponsors.
So why do they do it? “It’s what they do. Nothing in life is 100 per cent safe,” says Ferguson mildly. They simply live to race. “You’re here for a good time, not a long time,” was one of Martin Finnegan’s much-quoted sayings.
Last year, after winning the North West 200 two days after his father’s death, Michael Dunlop said nothing would have stopped his father racing. Is he fearful now? “You could die going across the road to have a crap . . . Anything can happen,” he says.
Perhaps, at 37, Keith Amor, a clear-eyed Scotsman and one of the international stars at Kells last weekend, has the benefit of years: “It’s quite a selfish sport, quite dangerous – but I have no wife, no child. If I want a wife and children, I will move into team management.”
