Euro skulduggery leads to invention of racing’s greatest

º In September 1904 motorcycling’s first world championship – the Coupe Internationale – took place on a triangular 33-mile road circuit linking the villages of Dourdan, St Arnoult, Boutervilliers and Ablis, south west of Paris. The championship was a team event, with the French taking on Austria, Germany, Denmark and Britain.

Local Léon Demester was declared the winner after four hours of racing around the rutted, dusty country lanes. But what’s this? Every team had lost riders to multiple punctures… except the French. ‘Nails strewn across one half of the road, leaving the other half clear… thus proving that this dastardly act was carried out with the intention of rendering certain machines hors de combat while others might avoid them,’ fumed The Motor Cycle. ‘The French also had a system whereby their riders could obtain spares from motorcycles laden with necessaries that toured the course in the opposite direction of the competitors, whom of course they met at regular intervals.’

The Motor Cycle had first noticed fishy goings-on at scrutineering. ‘Prior to the race Demester’s machine was weighed and found to be too heavy. Its high-tension wire was shortened, and having received other small attentions, it was weighed again, and then declared to be within weight.’

In other words the entire Coupe Internationale was as bent as a nine-franc note.

Two years later the event moved to Patzau, in the Austro-hungarian Empire, where the Austrian Puch factory reigned supreme. Once again the British team suspected Johnny Foreigner was up to something. And they were right: Puch mechanics had learned from the French and toured the course in sidecars, laden with spare parts to fix their bikes as and when required.

On the long train ride home the disgruntled British team discussed their plight with their Anglophile French team manager the Marquis de Mouzilly St Mars. They came to the conclusion that they would never win the trophy on foreign soil.

The obvious answer was to organise an international race in Britain, but this wasn’t possible because, unlike most Continental countries, racing on the road wasn’t allowed in Britain.

However, the Isle of Man had its own legislature, so it could make its own laws. In 1904 a bill to allow racing on Manx roads was passed by the Island’s governor, Lord Raglan, a motoring enthusiast and son of the man largely responsible for sending several hundred British cavalrymen to their deaths in the Charge of the Light Brigade. Raglan hoped that racing events would extend the holiday season in the island’s new resort of Douglas.

The first ever Isle of Man Tourist Trophy motorcycle race took place on 28 May, 1907. The event took its name from earlier Manx car races and the Marquis de Mouzilly St Mars struck a huge silver trophy based on the car trophy, featuring Mercury, the Roman god of trickery and thieves, financial gain and the guide of souls to the underworld. Just 25 riders entered that first TT event, riding a 15.5-mile course – mainly consisting of just cart tracks – that linked Peel, Ballacraine and Kirk Michael.

‘On the long train ride home the British team… came to the conclusion they would never win on foreign soil’