Phillip McCallen pays tribute to William Dunlop
ASMILE has gone from the face of motorcycle racing. That smile belonged to William Dunlop. And for all his triumphs and talent on the track, it is his trademark smile that I remember most in this time of terrible tragedy.
He smiled as best he could when things maybe didn’t go well for him in a race and even more broadly when he won.
I snapped one of the pictures on these pages of William on the grid before a race and it just encapsulates him — so much so, I posted it on my social media in tribute to him when the awful news came through on Saturday night.
It brought back sad memories of the death of his father Robert in a practice accident at the 2008 North West 200 and of his uncle Joey, during a race in Estonia in 2000. Then, like now, I was on holiday when a text message came through from a work colleague.
Social media was in its infancy when Joey passed away and it took a while to get the full details. It was same on Saturday night here in Florida as I didn’t have access to the internet when the message came through and it was much later in the evening before I was able to read the full, heartbreaking story.
Ironically, Joey’s widow, Linda, and her family are also here and we were due to meet. Instead, my wife Manda and
I or family, found ourselves sending them our concerns and condolences.
And then came the realisation that William had been taken on the exact date of Joey’s funeral 18 years ago at Garryduff Presbyterian church and now another Dunlop family burial is being arranged.
I cannot begin to imagine what this latest blow must be like for William’s mother Louise, to lose a husband and now a son, and for his grandmother May, Joey and Robert’s mother, to lose two sons, and now a beloved grandson.
And let us not also forget another member of this close knit motorcycle racing family, Joey’s brother in law Mervyn Robinson, father of racer Paul Robinson. Mervyn was lost at the 1980 North West 200 where Paul grew up to win the last 125 race there, dedicating it to his dad’s memory.
Our hearts go out to William’s partner Ella, their baby Ella and the unborn child he will never see. It is a cruel sport on weekends like this.
I now consider it a blessing that Manda and I did not start a family until after I finished racing.
It wasn’t planned that way, it just happened.
William inherited his dad’s passion and talent for motorcycle racing but in some ways he was more like Joey.
His brother Michael would be more up front and outgoing, as Robert could be.
William, by comparison, was a much more subtle personality.
And he was such a good young lad. I never hear him say a bad word about anyone in a sport where there can be a lot of intense rivalry that sometimes results in verbal clashes.
In fact, I hardly heard him say very much at all.
He’s like Joey in that respect, that he could communicate what he was thinking by his expression or just the look in his eyes.
I remember William and Michael as small boys, coming to race meetings and being looked after by Louise when I was racing against Robert back the 80s.
It was inevitable, given their birthright, that they would get into racing and it was no surprise to me to see them on the grid when they came of age.
Michael, as we all know, won race after race and continues to dominate in the toughest of them all, the Isle of Man TT.
William found reaching that
level a little more difficult, though no-one in the sport considered he was living in the shadow of his younger brother. He was always seen as a competitor in his own right.
He just didn’t seem to get the breaks you need in this game.
He had problems with injuries, with his machinery and sometimes securing sponsors.
But on his good days, when everything was right, William could win races as he showed at the North West and Ulster Grand Prix.
His world seemed to fall apart, though, when Robert died.
I read recently where he said how he and Michael had to become men overnight. Robert had always been there to sort things for them on the racing and home front. Now they had to fend for themselves and he quickly found out how tough it was.
I also noted where he said the fun had gone out of racing for him... he lamented how racing had turned into a business... not like throwing a bike in the back of a van, turning up and taking off from the grid.
In many respects, he was right but when he went out, he still gave his all.
And he showed he had his priorities right when he withdrew from the TT over concerns for Janine and her pregnancy.
William wasn’t a risk taker. He will have gone out at Skerries satisfied all was well with himself and his machine but in a high-speed sport there are things you cannot legislate for. A racing accident has occurred and sadly, due to circumstances that have yet to be fully determined, it has proved to be fatal.
We await now the usual clarion calls for road racing to be curtailed or even banned.
What critics of the sport will never understand in that racing is in the DNA of everyone of us who clambers aboard a racing motorcycle. No-one forces us to do it.
Their silence was deafening after a hugely successful North West 200 earlier this year and I hope they remain circumspect.
Here we have a fine young family man who has lost his life in pursuit of the sport he loved. His family gave their blessing to the Skerries race continuing yesterday as they believed would have been his wish.
Sowhy use his loss to attack a sport he loved? For now, though, the thoughts and focus of the road racing family, our hundreds of riders and many thousands of supporters, are with the Dunlops.