I went a few times a decade ago and it is fairly amazing - the 'mountain' section (the very open part where the helicopter can fly alongside the bikes) is made into a one way road for part of race week and the Island has no top speed limit at all outside villages/towns, so it is maybe the only place where you can ride your street bike at over 100mph on a normal public road that will become a race track for a few hours this afternoon. The Nurburgring is a race track all of the time, even if it is open to the public, but on the Island you can actually be overtaking a truck doing 20 that's just left the local quarry.....
The (racing) rider's skills are very high, but also very unusual. The very fastest track riders just wouldn't live long enough to become good so they don't even go there any more. The big record holders are guys who can run at 130mph on a twenty-foot wide road between houses while still keeping enough in reserve that they never, ever crash (because an Island crash is quite likely to be fatal). So John McGuiness, a current rider who holds second place in the all-time list of Island winners, is a mild-mannered guy who turns 40 this year and didn't win the lower-rank racetrack series he competes in the rest of the year, but on the Island this super-natural ability to ride really fast while never crashing appears.
And as a 'small boy' point, the Isle of Man offers the opportunity to do the coolest job in the world, bar none. Since the racing has been going long before radios were available, and a 37 mile track has to be marshalled, there are eight senior marshals called 'travelling marshals' whose job it is to ride the track during the race while keeping out of the racers' way.
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I would have very soiled leathers getting as squiggle as some of them do at speed:crazy: even just going that fast:lol:
We have a few running and bicycle races go by our house, something like that would be way cooler
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