Dunlop a hero in toughest sport

Joey Dunlop has always been a man out of time. At 48 years of age he still casts a dominant shadow over the sport of motorcycle road racing and is held in reverential awe by riders half his age. His broad, barely decipherable north Antrim vowels and mumbled delivery seem wholly at odds with the modern obsession with the easily-digestible soundbite and yet he is probably the most widely-loved contemporary local sports figure.

His is a legend which seems to grow with every passing year. Last week during the exhausting programme at the Isle of Man TT still more chapters were added as Dunlop won three of the races on offer including the prestigious Formula One race, the motorcycling prize reserved for only the very best of the best.

Unsurprisingly, Dunlop also picked up a few records along the way. He now has 26 TT wins spanning a 25-year racing career on the island and he became the first man to win a hat-trick of races on three separate occasions. His first win on the Isle of Man came 23 years ago and between 1983 and 1986 he dominated the Formula One event with six successive victories.

During the 1980s Dunlop towered over his contemporaries. Such dominance is not unusual in sport, but Dunlop has been unique in that he has maintained a level of performance which has not been diminished as he approaches his 50th birthday.

The extent of both the commitment and the devotion to duty required to do that is jaw-dropping. Motorcycle racing makes the same physical demands on riders as those asked of top jockeys. Both disciplines require a delicate amalgam of exquisite balance to negotiate the tight corners and sheer brute force to keep control of machine or horse on the straights. Every spring Joey Dunlop emerges from a winter's rest and recreation to embark on a fitness programme to prepare himself for the rigours of the season ahead. This year he set up a one-man training camp in Australia and returned invigorated. Last week the benefits of the self-denial were there for all to see.

The extent of that physical challenge would be enough to see most men swapping helmet and leathers for pipe and slippers. And for those who remained there would be the small matter of coping with "the fear". The road racing men don't like to talk about it, but it stalks every turn of the wheel on every lap of every race. When they occasionally do open up, the bravest talk about the respect they have for their machines, the roads and their sport. The most dangerous rider, the kind all the others are most wary of, is the one full of bravado, but with little respect.

For all his achievements, Joey Dunlop never looks wholly relaxed or at ease with himself during what should be triumphant post-race interviews. As he is probed and prodded for details on this pit-stop or that race strategy, he appears almost embarrassed by all the attention. The unspoken explanation may be that Dunlop knows that his apparent mastery of the roads is only a borrowed gift, a dominance he has on loan before the course bites back at a rider just when lets his guard down.

Injury and death are the ever-present ghosts at the road racer's table. Dunlop has had enough serious crashes himself and lost enough colleagues and friends over the past three decades to know that. During last week alone, four more riders died at the TT.

Dunlop's younger brother, Robert, walks with a limp and has a large proportion of the rest of his body pinned together after a nearfatal crash at the TT a few years ago - now his bike is specially modified and he finished third in a race won by Joey in the Isle of Man this year. When you talk about these men, you are truly talking about a different breed.

FOR some, though, the fear becomes too all-consuming. Once the doubts arrive there may be no way back. Personal safety and family concerns begin to loom larger than the relentless, selfish drive towards success and there is no place at all for fuzzy logic in motorcycling's clinical world. Joey Dunlop's greatest triumph has been to conquer all of those doubts and come out the other side as a winner time and time again.

Although there are times during his hesitant dealings with journalists when Dunlop makes your average intercounty Gaelic football manager look the talkative life and soul of the party, he is still an endearing figure. He has Northern reserve and reticence and abundance but there is also a playfulness which suggests that the joke might ultimately be on all the rest of us.

Despite non-commital answers when asked about retirement, he will have to be dragged kicking and screaming away from his bike, but the ironic thing is that other circumstances and external factors may yet force his hand.

Motorcycle road racing has always fought a running battle against the negative publicity that has accompanied the accidents and the loss of life. In most other parts of the world motorcycle races are now ridden in purpose-built closed circuits which come complete with safety-conscious designs, speed-reducing chicanes and perfect sightlines. Accidents are relatively rare on these tracks and when they do occur there are long run-off areas which minimise the possibility of further collision.

Contrast that with Ireland and the Isle of Man where the races are run over bumpy, narrow country roads. The view of the road ahead is minimal and the tight hedges leave little margin for error when a rider slides off. Every fresh accident brings renewed calls for reform and there were signs of movement towards improved safety provisions last year following the deaths of a number of high-profile local riders.

So this most elemental and primal of sporting activities may not survive for long in its current form. Something will be lost in the transition to circuits. Memories of Joey Dunlop, though, will remain pristine and peerless.

A real hero.