Tracking motorsport

BOOK REVIEW: This fills a huge gap in Irish motorsport history, writes Martin McCarthy

A History of Speedway: The Dublin Experience

George Kearns

Self published, €20

THE RTÉ TV programme Connectionsrecounted the trails and semi-random connections that lead some Irish people to achieve great things.

Unfortunately, they didn’t cover motor racing which is more the pity, as a tiny group of individuals achieved greatness though a number of amazing coincidences.

Eddie Jordan, David Kennedy and Derek Daly all lived within a stone’s throw of each other in Dundrum. They all borrowed bits for local car dealer/breaker Larry Byrne and began to wrangle concessionary testing and racing from another neighbour, Stuart Cosgrave. He made it all possible in 1968 by designing and building Ireland’s first motor-racing circuit, located outside Naas and christened Mondello Park.

Many non-Christian activities occurred at Mondello Park – on and off the track, but it gave this amazing trio the skills to blaze their way to glory and into the ranks of Formula One. If we see another Irish driver in F1 in the next 20 years we will be doing well – it is a most select club.

What I didn’t realize until a read George Kearns’s excellent book on speedway in Dublin is that Stuart Cosgrave first became involved in motorsport when he promoted speedway events at Shelbourne Park, Ringsend.

Shelbourne Park and Harold’s Cross stadium may be best known as greyhound tracks, but for many years these and other Dublin stadiums played host to Speedway – the rugby league of motor cycle racing.

George Kearns established himself as an author with his book The A to Z of old Dublin Cinemasbut his latest 222-page volume is a horse of a different colour.

Kearns describes the earliest speedway event in 1923 in the coal-mining towns of New South Wales, where motorbike riders found the coal shingle to be the ideal surface for powering motorbikes around compact existing greyhound or trotting stadiums.

The sport quickly moved to England – especially in the north and many industrial cities had local teams who competed week in, week out, up and down the country.

The opening of Harold’s Cross in 1928 and its short 440-yard lap was the breakthrough speedway needed in Ireland and the presence of Ireland’s greatest motorcycling star, Stanley Woods ensured the first meeting on October 13th, 1928 was a sell out.

Kearns records the various golden eras that speedway enjoyed – but these were generally followed by long years of decline as the sport struggled to find a suitable home or funding. It was extremely difficult to get a sponsor for speedway in competition with horse racing, GAA, soccer and the myriad of other native sports.

The opening of Santry stadium in the wilds of North Dublin in 1948 prompted another golden era – led in part by Alexandra College past pupil and Queen of British speedway Rathfarnham’s own Fay Taylor.

Two years later Shelbourne Park hosted its first speedway event and by 1952 it had a firm grip on the public imagination with 18,000 fans attending International (Ireland v England) events – with the likes of Les Moore, Alan Marr, Ginger O’Bierne, Ronnie Greene and others being the big stars.

George Kearns was fortunate to have Dougie Hughes, the iconic “Voice of Irish Motorsport” to fill in many of the details of the latter years at Shelbourne Park – most notably 1970 and 1978 when the Dublin Tigers would regularly meet and beat the visitors from London, Newcastle or elsewhere across the water.

Kearns’s book is excellent on the technical aspects of various bike designs and fills a major gap in Irish motorsport history while explaining the foundation stones that allowed Daly, Kennedy and Jordan ascend to the very top of world motorsport – Formula One.