I could hear the bikes setting off over the radio but it was some time before I could actually hear them on the road for real. Eventually, I picked up the sound of Norman Brown’s Suzuki RG500 engine screaming along the mile-long Cronk-y-Voddy straight towards us, then he blasted into view and shocked the life out of me. Having seen the normal road traffic going past for the last couple of hours, words cannot describe the difference in speed as Brown went past our spectator point. Fuck me, he came through the corner at the end of Cronky down towards the eleventh milestone, lifted the front of the bike over a rise in the road, braked hard and back-shifted two gears before changing direction and blasting off towards Handley’s. He was going so fast that he almost blew me off the bloody banking.
Joey Dunlop was hot on his heels on a Honda RS850 and he had it up on the back wheel too and was pushing every bit as hard as Brown. My reaction was, ‘For fuck’s sake!’ I just couldn’t believe that anything on earth could go that fast. I was completely blown away with the whole spectacle.
In those split seconds that it took Brown and Dunlop to hammer past me, my life had changed forever. I determined there and then that if I never did anything else in my meaningless life, I would try to ride round the TT circuit like those boys. My mind was totally made up.
Having finally realized what I wanted to do with my life, I wasted no time in going about it when I got back home. As an amateur, I decided that my first attempt on the Mountain course should be at the Manx Grand Prix, which was being held in September, just three months away. I didn’t have long to go from being a TT spectator to a Manx GP competitor.
The bike was not a problem, because I had already bought Cookie’s Yamaha TZ250E for £800 and had enough spares to convert it into a 350 as well. But somehow I had to find money to fund the trip as well as getting hold of a van and getting all my entries organized. I was granted a Scottish national licence with no problem because I had a few races under my belt, then I blew £200 on a new set of leathers and then I had to save almost every penny of my meagre £36 a week salary to fund the trip.
I soon realized that wasn’t going to be enough cash so I started selling things as well. First to go was my father’s 350cc Aermacchi racing bike which netted me around £2000 then I sold my beloved Ford Escort Mexico – a mega car which I was really proud of. I had swapped it for the car I was spraying on the day Garry was killed but, true to form, I put the bugger straight through a hedge within a week. At least I was consistent. After the crash I spent a lot of time working on it and buying new parts but I needed cash to go racing so I sold it at a loss because I was so desperate. So for the first time in years I didn’t own a car but being a bike racer is like being a junkie; you’d sell your own granny to get what you need.
I even had to change my lifestyle to save money. I stopped going out to the pubs with my mates and refused to go for a pint even when they called round to the house. When I wasn’t working on my bikes, I just stayed in and watched television. I even knocked back the chance to go to Ibiza on holiday with the rest of the lads but it never got me down because I was so focused and all I thought about was lining up on the grid on the Isle of Man.
When I filled in the entry forms for the 350cc Newcomers race and the 250cc Lightweight event at the Manx the only person I told was Wullie Simson because I knew most people were against me racing after what had happened to my brother. I felt a bit sneaky going behind peoples’ backs and not telling my mum or anyone else about my plans but that’s the way it had to be; I really didn’t want to upset anyone but I knew I had to race. I even prepared my bikes in secret and just told anyone that asked that I was doing overtime at the garage.
But it wasn’t long before my little secret got out thanks to the race organizers. Once I’d posted off my entry forms I’d forgotten all about them until I came home from work one night and the shit really hit the fan. My mum and stepdad looking thoroughly miserable confronted me. I just said, ‘All right? How’s it goin’ folks?’ but Jim’s response was to slap a postcard down on the table in front of me and shout: ‘What the hell is this?’ It was the confirmation of my race entries written on a bloody post card for the whole world to see! Shit.
‘Dear Steve, just to confirm we have received your entry for this year’s Manx Grand Prix.’ I thought ‘Fuckin’ hell, I’ve been rumbled here.’ Jim went absolutely apeshit screaming at me, ‘How can you do such a thing to your mother?’ giving it all that guilt-trip bollocks. I explained it was just something I had to do and defended myself as best as I could but it was obviously falling on deaf ears. My mum and Jim continued arguing and then she said something I’ll never forget. He was rattling on about me bringing more grief into the house after Garry had already brought enough when my mum shouted, ‘Why the hell should Steve live his life in the shadow of someone else?’
It was a brave thing to say. I mean, I know I’m a selfish person for doing what I do (as I think all bike racers must be) but my mum saw beyond that and recognized my real passion for racing. Jim hated the idea of me racing but I never expected him to understand and I didn’t care about his opinion anyway. But I really appreciated what mum said because she obviously realized it was unfair to deprive me of something I wanted so badly just because my brother had been killed doing the same thing. We don’t stop driving cars because someone else has an accident, do we? To me, bike racing was no different.
My mum was the only person who didn’t try to discourage me from riding bikes after Garry’s death. Everyone else, aunties, uncles, colleagues, the whole lot of them said, ‘Well, that’ll be the end of the racing in your family then, Steve’, but my mum was different and I still respect her for that. She even walked out on my stepdad for a while when I went to the Isle of Man because they had been arguing so much about me racing and she refused to side with Jim when he wanted to stop me.
In a bid to get in shape for my Island debut, I cycled the 12 miles every day to work and back on a borrowed pushbike for six weeks. Some nights it was freezing cold and pissing with rain and just thoroughly miserable as I was cycling home and my hands would be red raw with cold but I just kept an image of Joey Dunlop and Norman Brown in my head and that drove me on.
I entered some races at Knockhill in Fife a few weeks before the Manx just to make sure the bikes were going OK. I still had the little 125cc bike that Garry had ridden and I wanted to sell it so I figured a good race result would also be a good advert for the bike. I finished second to Roddy Taylor who was Scottish champion at the time so I was quite pleased with that and managed to sell the bike as well. I was then lying about fifth or sixth in the 350cc race when I fell off and I remember being really pissed off about that because I scuffed my brand new leathers that I’d bought specially for the Manx!
Anyway, with everything packed up in the van, Wullie Simson and I caught the ferry from Heysham and four hours later we were on the Isle of Man and I was itching to get out onto the course to start learning it. One of the questions I still get asked a lot is how I learned the TT course so well. There’s no real secret, it’s just about putting the time in and having an aptitude for it. I’m very good at learning things like that and within a couple of laps of any foreign circuit, I was usually on the pace. But I know of some good riders who went to the TT and just couldn’t get their heads round the course.
The TT is different to learn compared to short circuits because it’s got well over 300 corners and you need to know where every one of them goes, where every bump is, every drain cover and every rise in the road. You need to find the quickest but safest lines to take as well as knowing where all the damp patches tend to linger after it has rained. You must know where the wind is likely to get under the bike and lift it or blow you sideways. You must know your braking points for every corner on different types of machine and you’ve got to know what gear to be in for them all too to get the optimum revs, grip and drive. On top of that there’s cambers to learn, both converse and adverse, and loads of little tricks to gain time like using kerbs or bus stops to run wide, meaning you can take certain corners faster. And when you’ve learned all that, you need to find out how you can go quicker still by shaving off fractions of a second each lap. In short, it’s the most difficult and demanding course in the world to learn and you never, ever stop learning it. There’s never been and never will