Having a bit of a
strange reflective week....
It all started
witnessing a terrible accident during a race last weekend when a competitor was
lucky not to be killed by a motorist during a cycle race on the busy A11. It shook me up a bit because of
the complete randomness of it all – it could have been any one of us. One of those times when all your knowledge,
skill, experience, care etc are of absolutely no use to you. Not nice.
It’s the Isle of
Man TT time of year. We used to go
regularly when we had the R1 but not been for a while. Bloody hell, it’s a mad place! There are no speed limits on the island once
you get out of the towns and villages etc and the 10 miles or so over the mountains from Ramsey to Douglas is about the best few minutes of fun you can
ever have. It’s only when you
watch your videos or stand by the side of the road as a spectator that you
realize how bloody insanely fast you are going with nothing but stone walls and
phone poles between you and oblivion!
One Saturday
afternoon in 2005, I blitzed round the circuit just before the roads closed and
parked up in Parliament Square
in Ramsey hoping to get a good position for the sidecar TT race. I sat on the side of the road in my leathers,
pint in hand, watching the outfits scratching through the town, the passengers
climbing all over the machines like maniacs!
No 53 came
screaming into view then braked hard, blipping down the gears before sweeping
right into Parliament Square. The driver made a slight mistake and ran a
few inches wide, causing the sidecar wheel to hit the kerb. The passenger lost his grip and was thrown
off, tumbling down the road. The driver
and outfit continued briefly, snaking around before hitting the brick wall of
the Ford dealership in the square pretty much head on with an appalling crunch
of broken fiberglass & carbon etc.
The outfit came to rest just in front of me, the motionless driver
hanging half in, half out.
The ensuing silence
was unforgettable. Screaming engines and
cheering fans one second, then complete and utter silence next. The passenger was writhing around in the road
as the yellow flags came out and the next outfit came flying through. Several people, myself included, attempted to
help but the marshals wisely kept us back as the competitors continued to fly
past.
Within seconds the
paramedics had arrived. They ran first
to the driver and assessed him. Almost
immediately they looked at each other, just shook their heads and left
him. He was clearly dead (although it
was later reported he died of multiple injuries on the way to hospital which I
found odd).
Anyway, they moved
on to the passenger and spent their time with him. The air ambulance arrived. All the time the driver was still lying
motionless half in, half out the outfit.
Dead, right in front of me.
That was a shocking
experience. Don’t think I’ll forget that
in a hurry.
 |
| Les Harah during practice the day before the crash |
The driver was a
bloke called Les Harah. I think he was a
plasterer or something like that – he just raced the TT for fun, a hobby. It makes you realize how quickly your life can change. A strange place to end your life, the wall of
a Ford garage in Ramsey. I always think about him this time of year.
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