THE TRUTH BEHIND THE TT
The Isle of Man TT was born out of cheating foreigners and Lord Raglan, son of the man responsible for the Charge of the Light Brigade. No wonder it’s always been a strange event...
How French road races, untruths and scattered nails led to the racing on the Isle of Man
Adusty French village high street at dawn on a chilly, misty morning in September 1904. An eruption of noise, mass panic among the farm animals; chickens flutter this way and that, a startled horse unseats its rider, geese squawk, dogs bark and a crowd of people surges towards the source of the racket. Then pandemonium as a squadron of motorcycles rumbles past, engines running with an uneven beat and every now and then a strangled bang and a puff of smoke. The rutted, unpaved road leads out of the village of Dourdan, 40 miles south-west of Paris, where the world’s first international circuit road race is about to get underway.
Leon Demester, runner-up in the tragic Paris-madrid race of 1903, emerges first from the choking fog of dust and fumes to take the start aboard his Griffon. The crowd, almost exclusively men, each of them wearing hat and moustache, throngs around the motocyclette, agog with excitement and gazing at its rider as we might gawp at an astronaut, just landed from space.
After almost four hours riding five laps of the 33-mile course that links Dourdan with the neighbouring villages of St Arnoult, Boutervilliers and Ablis, Demester is declared the winner. But wait, what’s this? It looks like there is skulduggery afoot. Someone has been depositing handfuls of nails in the paths of rival machines, puncturing tyres and raising blood pressure.
Taking into consideration the fact that France was the world’s first force in motorcycling, it was only reasonable that the French should organise this event, the first road racing world championship, the Coupe Internationale. Sadly, however, although the French had the best bikes and the best riders they weren’t beyond seeking a little extra advantage when there was a whiff of competition in the air. And this villainous behaviour at Dourdan and subsequent Coupe Internationale events led to the creation of the Isle of Man TT.
The four nations that agreed to race the French at the 1904 event – Austria, Germany, Denmark and Britain – suspected the locals were up to something from the moment they arrived. The three-man British team, riding a JAP, a Lagonda and a Quadrant (rider and motorcycle had to share the same nationality) discovered that the French team had used the exact same course to select its team only the previous week. No wonder the locals were so keen to see the racing get underway.