Bike Trader


Isle of Man celebrates 100 years of TT magic

31 May 2007
News image Bike Trader salutes the Isle of Man TT and the men brave enough to take on the Mountain with a look back at some historic milestones.
 

1907 The first TT was held over 10 laps of the ‘short’ St John’s circuit and the ‘Grandstand’ was a row of beer crates for officials to stand on. Winner was Charlie Collier on a Matchless single. Rem Fowler won the Twin Cylinder class on a Peugeot engined Norton.

1910 Wooden banking was used to help riders get around Ballacraine. It was only used for one year after being named ‘The Wall of Death’.

1911 Indians finish 1-2-3 to prove that gearboxes are ‘a good thing’. It is first year for the 37.5-mile mountain course. Victor Surridge crashes his Rudge in practice – the TT’s first fatality.

1912 A two-stroke wins the TT. Frank Applebee’s Scott features a gear-driven rotary valve. He leads from start to finish and makes fastest lap.

1920 Last time a single-speed belt drive machine completed the Senior. Norman Black finished 13th. When he took the back wheel out to replace the tube, he found the bearings had broken up so he rode the last 30 miles without any balls in the cup-and-cone hub.  But his balls were big.

1921 Howard R Davies wins the Senior race on a 350cc machine. He used the same ohv AJS engine in a different frame to take second in the Junior. Davies later makes HRD motorcycles, which become Vincent.

1922 Style comes to the TT when coloured leathers make an appearance: Indian riders in red, Scott in purple, Sunbeam in black and gold, Rudge riders in green leather breeches, jackets and matching helmets.

1923 First year of the sidecar TT, but dropped in 1925 because manufacturers thought photographs of passengers hanging out at speed with their heads inches from stone walls would put off potential sidecar purchasers. It was re-introduced for 1954.

1926 Moto Guzzi rider Pietro Ghersi set fastest lap in the Lightweight and finished second, but was disqualified for failing to declare the correct make of spark plug used in his machine – it was a Fert.

1926 Birkin’s Bend, about a mile from Kirkmichael, was named after Archie Birkin. At the time, roads were not officially closed for practice and Birkin crashed into a fish lorry driving the wrong way round the course and was killed. Roads would be closed for all future practice periods.

1927 Freddie Dixon won the Junior TT and was sixth in the Senior, riding HRD machines fitted with a celluloid windscreen, seat backrest and footboards. He hated goggles, and when regulations demanded he wear them, he took the glass out.

1938 Norton rider Harold Daniell wins the Senior at 89.11mph wearing bottle-bottom thick glasses. He later failed an army medical because of his poor eyesight.

1939 When told that Georg Meier needed all of the road at the bottom of Bray Hill to get round on the supercharged BMW, Stanley Woods (dohc Velocette) replied: “Well he can have it, I won’t try to pass him there.”

1950 Norton works rider Geoff Duke gets his tailor to make him the world’s first skin-tight one-piece leather suit. “Might as well be made of wash leather for all the protection they offer,” commented one of the marshals.

1957 Bob McIntyre wins the Golden Jubilee Senior: eight laps at a race average of 98.99, including the first 100mph lap with a blistering 101.12mph on the Gilera four.

1962 First woman TT racer was Beryl Swain, who finished 22nd on a 50cc Itom after two laps of the Mountain circuit.

1966 Ralph Bryans sets a record that will never be broken – the lap record for the 50cc stands at an incredible 86.49mph, which he achieved on a dohc Honda twin that revved to 22,000 and had a top speed approaching 110mph.

1967 Mike Hailwood wins the 250, 350 and 500 classes. “They were getting three men’s work for one man’s pay,” noted Mike. There was a titanic battle between Agostini and Mike the Bike for the Senior, but Ago broke his chain on the fifth lap – and it was his birthday.

1968 Golden boy Ago won every Senior TT between 1968 and 1973, and every Junior except the 1971 race. No other bike or rider could come close.

1971 Formula 750 introduced, opening the TT to modified superbikes of the seventies.  Alan Jefferies wins on the Triumph Trident known as Slippery Sam.

1972 Peter Williams’ Formula 750 Commando timed at 146.9mph on the Highlander speed trap, while Ago’s Senior MV is clocked at 154.5mph.

1977 Joey Dunlop’s first TT win (of 26), on a TZ750 with a loose tank.  It was the start of another era of Manx magic.

1978 Mike Hailwood makes a dream comeback after 11 years away from bike racing to beat Honda-mounted Phil Read on a Sports Motorcycles Ducati.

1985 Joey Dunlop and brother Robert take their bikes over from Ireland on a fishing boat. It sinks, but they save the bikes.

1986 Trevor Nation breaks the 20-minute lap record on a new GSX-R1000.

1993 Dunlop breaks Hailwood’s record with a 15th TT win when he takes the 125 and Senior. And to think there were those who said he couldn’t ride the big bikes…

1994 Robert Dunlop crashes when the rear Marvic wheel on his Medd Honda breaks up. In 2002 the insurance pays out £400,000.

1997 Phillip McCallen wins the Senior on a Honda to complete a hat-trick of victories in the week.

2001 racing cancelled due to restrictions imposed as a result of the Foot and Mouth outbreak in the UK.

2002 David Jefferies completes a hat trick of victories on his Suzuki GSX-R1000s. He won the opening Formula One race, the 1000cc Production and shattered his own outright lap record in the Senior TT, putting in a breakneck lap speed of 127.29mph, to take the chequered flag with a margin of 22 seconds.

2003 Triumph win the 600cc Junior and Suzuki win the Senior. A German motorcycle cop, helping the Manx police translate for visitors to the TT, is asked what he thinks of Mad Sunday, when everyone has a blast around the circuit. “It would never happen in my country. The authorities would stop it in an instant.”

2006 HM Plant Honda’s McGuinness wins the Senior, Superbike and Supersport TTs and smashes the race record with a phenomenal 129.451 mph.

2007 The TT celebrates its centenary with brilliant racing and high-speed parade laps to honour great motorcycles and the men who rode them.  

 

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