The short story of the 23rd Island Classic is that Team GB won the teams pointscore by nearly 100 points. A totally professional team with top rate equipment and riders was always going to be hard to beat. Props to Roger Winfield and his gang for coming, seeing and conquering.
Sunday dawned drizzly and many were worrying about the possibility of a repeat of Friday. However, it was always going to clear by mid-morning and, of course, it did. The programme ran pretty much to time with few interruptions and a pleasing minimum of red flags. The usual reduction of race distances by a lap early in the day caused the usual gripes; the organisers are going to have to address this issue before 2017.
My day was spent chasing a few more interviews and catching up with even more friends and acquaintances. The downside of having a more public persona is that I have been constantly meeting people who know me but who I don’t either know, do know from Facebook or have met me sometime and I can’t remember when, where and how! The upside is that they are unfailingly friendly and forgiving of my lack of memory. It is truly a most wonderful thing to experience the camaraderie of fellow motorcyclists.
Quote of the day (possibly the weekend) Simon Davis, one of the top men in Team GB. “We have told the riders that there is only one team order and that is, if you’re going to crash, make sure you take out an Aussie with you, preferably TWO.” Not that it was necessary to do so, as noted above.
The racing was enthralling, as always and the constant variety of bikes and riders, sights and sounds, makes it a “must see” meeting on the calendar.
My leg was giving me hell most of the weekend so there was a lot less frenetic running around than in previous years, and the expected consequence of this is that there were fewer interviews than usual (10 compared to 17 last year). I am hoping that the boys will be happy with the quality and overlook the lack of quantity. As usual, the interviews can be heard on www.motopodcast.com once they have been processed.
Team USA came with such high expectations and a much stronger team, personnel and equipment-wise. However, the planets just didn’t line up for them and they not only failed to improve on their 3rd place in 2015, but slipped to 4th, being overtaken by a seemingly rag-tag Irish team whose equipment and riding roster appeared to be inferior. The Irish riders, led by ex-pat Paul Byrne who holds dual citizenship and lives here in Oz, punched way above their weight and will have a huge confidence boost for 2017. Very hard not to be impressed by the boys in green. The picture below sort of sums up the feelings of my wonderful American friends.
Saying goodbye to my friends, most of whom I will not see for another 12 months, is difficult, but 12 months usually goes quickly. After doing so, I hit the road intending to do a fair bit of the trip on Sunday night and the rest on Monday.
Amazingly, it all went according to plan. I stopped just north of Gundagai, slept for one and a half hours and then headed on, arriving home at 0520 this morning, total elapsed travel time of 13 hours. Also amazingly, the SES was running a Driver Reviver at the truck stop between Yass and Goulburn, so I pulled in for a sausage sandwich and a cuppa at 0200!! Refreshed and revived, I pushed on.
Suffice it to say that I feel like I have been dragged through a blackberry bush backwards today, and a sleep for two hours this afternoon really hasn’t helped.
Be sure to read my column on mcnews.com.au this weekend as I’ll be doing one on the American team at this year’s classic. I’ve also been asked to do a feature article on the Classic in Chris Pickett’s “Australian Historic Racer” magazine which should be appearing in and around the Sheene.
Oh, and a huge thank you to every one of my friends, acquaintance and total strangers who made the Classic so enjoyable for me. And thank you for a very unexpected offer from South Australian racer, Levi Day. When I told him that I was having trouble with my leg, he asked, “Don’t you have a scooter to help you get around?” I said that I didn’t but that it was a brilliant idea. Next Classic, Levi will be bringing his own scooter to the Classic next year for me to use! Have I said once or twice before that motorcyclists are the best?
Tomorrow I will try and do an “overview” entry to sum up the meeting but, suffice it to say, the weekend’s events have confirmed me in the conviction that there are only two meetings worth going to, The Classic and the Sheene. Don’t miss them if you can.