McPint on Classic TT woes
The Isle of Man’s spirit is too strong to be held down for long
Well we got the news last week that the Classic TT has been cancelled. To be honest, it didn’t come as a surprise. It’s difficult to find the words needed to explain how we’re all feeling and to say something that hasn’t already been said, but at the end of the day it’s pretty depressing.
In a way it’s OK for me because I’ve been there and done it. This year would have been my 25th time at the TT, but for the lads who are starting out it’s a big thing. There will no doubt be riders out there who have taken five years to get everything in place to go and race at the Manx, riders who have saved their pennies, got a bike, ticked all the boxes and then it gets pulled from under their feet. And for some it might be their only chance. Whenever I rode for Clive Padgett he’d always bring out the positive in any situation. If I had a poor ride he’d say ‘well you weren’t bad through sector two!’ He’d never kick you in the balls, even if you deserved it!
And that’s the way we need to all look at it. Take a rider like
Glenn Irwin – he’s someone that up until recently didn’t want to do the TT, but now he does and this forced break has given him the chance to prepare himself a little bit better, make more visits, watch more onboard laps. Back to the Classic TT, unfortunately we’re all having to be accepting of events like this being cancelled. But what we have to remember is that racing has stopped on the Isle of Man before – two world wars saw to that, but it came back then and it will all come back again.
‘Whenever I rode for Clive Padgett he always looked for the positives’