I'm not saying they should be stopped, it's their choice. But I wouldn't spectate a game of Russian roulette.
On a percentage basis, about 1% of MotoGP races have a fatality.
For IOM, it's 300%. (Averaging 3 deaths for each race, which is one per year).
You can talk in the abstract about risk, yes everything has risk, but 300 times the risk of MotoGP ?
MotoGP has around 20 races per year, so about 600 races in the 30 years from 1990-2020, and over that period had 6 fatalities.)
I get where you're coming from, and I'm very conflicted as a fan of these riders. My all-time favourite racer was (is) fellow fat-boy David Jefferies, who was an incredible roads racer, but ultimately died at the Isle of Man. Ultimately for me, the marvel at the racing outweighs the heartbreak of the deaths, particularly as nobody racing is unaware of the risks they're choosing to take. It's not like the old days where GP racers were essentially forced to race there until they went on strike, and nobody is doing it for what little money there is. But I can also see how that scale would balance differently for others.
I'll make a couple other points to what you're saying above:
- The TT is blended with a
broader series of Irish Road Racing, including the Northwest 200, Ulster GP, etc. and most of the riders compete across multiple race events. Roads racing is massive in Northern Ireland, as proven by the 50,000+ mourners that paid their respects at Joey Dunlop's funeral.
- It's at the NW200 that Dunlop had a tire delaminate, forcing them to pull their riders out to investigate, but they're back at the Isle of Man.
- The racer who died yesterday did so on a Supersport 600 cc bike, so limiting horsepower isn't necessarily the obvious solution it seems. Deaths haven't grown as horsepower has risen, so the issue is more rider error than speed, as the speeds are high enough to kill, even on slower bikes.
- It's pedantic, as the points remain, but there's typically 8+ races during Race Week at the Isle of Man, not one, plus all the Irish racing events. On the flip side, there's actually three races at each GP event, with more fatalities actually coming in the smaller classes, so it doesn't detract from the point you're making.
ttplus.iomttraces.com
