Isle of Man Manx G.P.

Being very old and totally knackered etc my days of running up what is now called Hailwood Rise in the cloud with a stretcher over my shoulder and bikes flying past are long gone as is standing somewhere between Bungalow Bridge and The Creg in the cloud wind rain sleet and on occasion sun with only a few sheep and snails for company but as a life member of the TT Marshals Association I get regular updates as to what is going on......and......there is, as I suspect has always been the case, a shortage of people to enjoy the delights of marshalling especially on the mountain section so if you are going over for The Manx practice and race weeks you know what to do rather than spending your hard earned dosh getting rat ****** on pints of Okells best bitter....
I assume that details can be found on the web and the latest bumph I received today states that no new marshalls will be on their own. A slight change from when I pushed my Dommy off the boat all those years ago only to be stopped by PC Plod who 'invited' me to visit the police station later that day and I found myself marshalling The 32nd and other places on my own.....it was the year of te seamans strike so the Manx followed the late TT and all the locals had taken their holidays to marshal the TT leaving very few for The Manx.... Mind you it was not the only time I found myself on my own up in the clouds etc waiting for dawn to break and the phone to ring telling me practice had been cancelled due to bad weather up on the mountain section....as if I did not know......in those days they had early morning practice sessions....To encourage us they would bribe us with free tickets for the prize givings.....wonder if they still do so? Do Maggi and Nescafe still run the hot soup / coffee tent behind the grandstand or have the accountands killed that one off?

I'll check out the refreshments side for you later this week, but I think such freebies have long gone. Everything about the I.O.M races these days is dollar driven

No more freebies JML, but a first class balls up following the Classic Superbike race, when some of the riders were deleted from the results, no official reason given, but rumored to have used oversize engines.
It was understood before the event that the first three finishers in each class would have engines measured, plus two others selected at random. The winners engine was not measured however, so much speculation and rumor exists as to what was going on here.
Very unsatisfactory. Such crass administration of the rules sullies what otherwise has been a remarkably good first week of racing, with the winners time margin of just over 20 seconds in the Senior Classic, and 10 seconds in the Junior Classic.