CHRIS SWALLOW

The loss of Chris Swallow in the Classic TT Senior Race hit so many people so hard. The Wheeler family and the Swallow family have been great friends for 50 years, and Bill and I were deadly rivals on the track when we raced in the same class, but great friends off it. We stayed in each other’s homes and celebrated each other’s successes at trophy presentations.

I chatted to Chris in the paddock the morning of that terrible day and Bill just before the start of the race. To be brutally honest I didn’t know how I was going to be able to write a worthy tribute to the lad, but as I mention in my column, Bill rang me and, in an emotional conversation, we both know the pain of losing a child, I suggested he might like to pen a few words, which he readily agreed to do.

These are Bill Swallow’s own words: “Malc, we go back a long way. I started with a Velocette in 1968 but I was at school and then university so I didn’t do much until about 1972 on a homemade frame, followed by the featherbed version in 1975 to 1977, and then the ‘improved featherbed’ from 1978 on, which I have still got, and on which Chris started in 2000 after I had got it out of the shed where it had been retired since 1988 to do the parade lap at the 1999 TT. I lapped at 95, no fairing, and remembered how good a bike it was.

“We had that epic dice on the old Cadwell short circuit in 1976, where you beat me by half a wheel and we were both credited with a record lap of 1.14.6. I don’t think many would do that now! I rode Cleve Brightman’s Aermacchi in the Manx in 1978, and you rode it in the F3 TT.

“I rode Cleve’s Laverda as a 500 in 1979

– or was it 1980, and then you rode it as a developed 600 in the F2 TT. I remember coming over for a day trip with Marie (Bill’s late wife and mother to David and Chris) and you lent us a monkey bike to get around on. I think that was 1979, as I remember watching Hailwood at Keppel on a RG500.

“Chris was good on anything straight away. He won schoolboy trials on a TY80 and then on a big wheel TLM50 Honda, which I had bored to 65cc and skimmed the head.

“He found it easier to go out with his mates on mountain bikes rather than wait for dad to take him with the trial bike in the van, and they developed urban riding, hopping on and off railings, bench seats, walls, up and down steps and filming themselves. I was sick of taking his bike back to the shop to get a new back wheel on warranty. They became the Trials Kings, and can still be seen on Youtube.

“Chris competed in National Bike Trial Champs and was always in the top few. I acquired a four-valve Weslake speedway iron as payment for an unpaid debt and got it going. We used to go to Sheffield to Saturday afternoon practice days. It took me a long time to get the hang of it, but I did, but he could do it straight away.

“He was taken under the wing of local National rider Julian Parr, and they took it to the long track at Kings Lynn in my absence. Chris was great apparently, but he had forgotten to gear it up and, with lack of mechanical experience, the constant 10000rpm did the big end and cracked a piston. It still needs fixing, but I am too old and stiff to try it again I think.

“His first race on the Velo was att Carnaby 2 ( RAF Leconfield near Driffield) run by Peter Hillaby and thhe Auto 66 club. He won his first evver race, beating Mike Smith on his Seeley (deja vu!) and in the open 500 he came out of the last ccorner in front to be pipped on the fifinishing straight by a TZ.

“When he raced it at Three Ssisters he was scraping the eexhaust pipe that I had carefully tuned to just miss with me on it, aand I didn’t hang around; maybe hhe was a bit heavier than me! I hhad to cut the bottom half of the Nnorton gearbox cover away, which oonly held the blanked-off kick-start mmechanism, and lift the pipe for ffuture meetings, as it is now.

“First time at Cadwell on thet full circuit I had told him to followf me; I was on the late Brian Richards’ Norton, for the first few laps, then I would clear off. After the first lap I lost him from my wing mirror, and stopped and waited at Mansfield, but with no sign I set off to find him sitting on the bank at Coppice with a rather bent Swallow Velocette next to him. I may have said that Coppice can be taken flat eventually, but not on a cold misty Wolds morning on cold tyres. He got better.

“He was at college by this time and I picked him up from Market Rasen station on Saturday evening for him to ride on the Sunday of the CRMC two-day meeting – I had qualified him on the second row from Saturday. The flag dropped and he was away mid-pack, the Velo noticeably slower than some of the others.

“All went quiet and then the rumble of bikes towards the bottom of the Mountain. one ,two, and bloody hell, Chris! He came round the left-hander almost horizontal, having apparently ridden round most of the field at Chris Curve and the Gooseneck, threw it right and gracefully spun up to the top of the hill on the footrest. He learnt, steadied down and became a very thoughtful and calculating rider, always making copious notes straight after each practice or race.

“I was riding Miles Robinson’s Manx in the Lansdowne, and he had plans to run two bikes the following season, one for Chris, but when it could only be one, I gave up my ride for him. He won the championship, the last round being at Cadwell, where he rode the wheels off it to trounce Vernon Glashier. He came back to the paddock and did a feet-up doughnut on the grass!

“Andy Farrer had spotted his ability and he really developed on Andy’s 350 Ducati, and with the Ducati connection he was offered a ride by Bob Millinship on his bored and stroked 500 in the Manx, which he got round at 99mph in practice first time there, but the rear wheel collapsed in the race. He gave me a hard time at the Pre TT Classic on Bob’s 350 Ducati on his debut, and had some brilliant rides on Dave Hirons’ 500 Norton for a season.

“He emigrated to New Zealand after his brother died in 2000, got a ride with Neville Wooderson on the BSA Gold Star that Paul Dobbs had been riding. Sadly, Paul had died in an accident at Glen Vine in that year’s

TT. Chris became like a son to Neville, and they became the team to beat, which didn’t happen often, in NZ. Neville passed away, aged 90 just a month ago, and he had gifted the Gold Star to Chris. Neville’s real son, Mark, and daughter Joy, had plans to bring the BSA back to the Island.

“Everything has changed for everyone now. I will try to be the best grandpa to his lovely little girls, Eibhlin, four, and Aoife, two, but it won’t be the same.”

Bill Swallow