Cycle News Staff | July 3, 2022
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
This Cycle News Archives Column is reprinted from the August 4, 2010 issue. CN has hundreds of past Archives columns in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road -Editor.
The Rope And The Isle
By Paul Carruthers
Quick, can you name the first American to lap the Isle of Man at over 100 mph? Nine out of 10 of you probably failed to mention Dave Roper, the classic racer known best for his races on Team Obsolete Matchless G50s, AJS 7Rs and maybe even the 350cc Aermachi.
But Roper has done “the ton” on the infamous mountain course. And he’s done it more than once—and first, at least among the American riders who have waged battle there.
“Our best year at the TT must have been in ’84, when I won the Historic TT,” Roper recalls. “I did, like, 97 mph or something. I did do a 100-mph lap, but not in winning the Historic race. I also rode Formula Two that year on a TT2 Ducati—a belt-drive, air-cooled, two-valve Ducati. I did a 102-mph lap on that bike, but in the race, I ground the shift lever in Glen Helen and folded it back and upshifted into fifth and then realized I couldn’t downshift it. I did the rest of the lap in fifth gear, including Ramsey Hairpin and Governor’s Bridge.”
That year, 1984, was the first and only time that a Historic race was held at the TT and Roper won. (In previous years, and every year since, the classic bikes are raced only in the Manx Grand Prix in September and not the more meaningful TT races that are held annually in June.)
“A lot of people get signals to tell them where they were and so forth, so you’d have someone out at the Gooseneck, let’s say, giving you signals,” Roper says. “They would be with a radio and following the commentary, and they would signal you where you were. I didn’t want any signals because I didn’t want to know that I was a couple of seconds behind and would push harder than I should have. Or, alternatively, that I was 30 seconds ahead and would goof off. I just wanted to ride my own race at my own pace. But on the second lap, I started getting signals from people. Now, you have to take that with a grain of salt, because there was talk of your competition giving you disinformation, so I tried to ignore the signals I was getting. Then, on the last lap, all around the circuit, people were waving their programs and stuff at me, so I thought, ‘Well, I must be doing pretty good anyway.’ It was really quite a heavy feeling.”
Roper’s love affair with the Isle of Man began a decade earlier, when he ventured there as a spectator in 1974.
“The shipyard I was working for sent me to Scotland, and I bought a Norton Commando and rode down to Liverpool and took the ferry over and spectated,” Roper recalls. “I was club racing back then, and the first thing that went through my mind was, ‘Would I race here?’ My first impression was, ‘No way, it’s way too dangerous.’ But after riding around for a while, I thought, ‘Here I am, riding an unfamiliar bike that shifts on the wrong side, I’m riding on the wrong side of the street, and I’m riding at night in the rain—is that [racing] any less dangerous?’ I didn’t answer the question, but I left it open.”
It took a while, but Roper eventually made his way back to the TT as a racer.
“In 1981, a friend in England, who had bought a bike from Rob Iannucci, proposed that I race there,” Roper says. “I went to the Manx Grand Prix in 1981 to give it serious consideration. Then I raced at the TT in ’82. I rode the Formula Three TT on a 350 Aermachi. The guy who set it up for me also rode in the Formula Three TT and he was a superb teacher. We’d go out together in practice and I would follow him. If he kept his head under the bubble through this blind bend, then I knew I could, too. And then he would drill me off the track: ‘What comes after Union Mills?’ And then we would drive around in the van and walk the roads… An excellent teacher.”
Learning your way around the treacherous 37.73–mile Mountain Course takes years, with racers competing in as many different classes as possible to get in as much practice as possible. But Roper was a quick study, and he left there after that first year with workable knowledge of the track. And a yearning to return.
“There is always more to learn there, and particularly the faster the bike, the more you have to know how much to back off, how much to brake and so forth,” Roper says. “On that bike, I was reasonably comfortable. I could run back in my mind a reasonable replay of the lap after that first TT.”
Just like that, Roper was addicted. He went back in 1982 to race a Kawasaki in Formula Two and a Ducati in Formula One. And the fast laps started coming.
“Later, in one of the Manx GPs, I did a 102.5-mph lap or something on a G50,” Roper says. “I did two laps at a similar speed. The first one I did was on a TT2 Ducati, a 600 twin Ducati, in 1984. The other was on a G50 Matchless at the Manx Grand Prix in maybe 1989.”
But it was the 1984 victory in the Classic TT that means the most to Roper.
“The race was held in mixed weather conditions,” he recalls. “It started dry, but on the first lap I started seeing the clouds roll in over the mountains. On the second lap, it started raining in spots. At some places the road would be dry, and it would be raining and some places the road would be wet, but the sun was out. It was in the evening… They had three races that day, and this was the third race, so it started when the sun was low and dazzling off the raindrops on your windscreen. It was very mixed conditions, and a couple people got caught out by the rain, including John Cronshaw—he fell at Creg-Na-Ba in the rain. Depending on where you started, you hit the rain in different places. So, in that sense, it was sort of a crapshoot. Any success in racing has a lot to do with good fortune and the ill fortune of your competitors. But it was a real race, and we did win it.”
If you crash on the Mountain Course, you normally don’t walk away. Roper survived three crashes there.
“I crashed there at least three times,” Roper says. “In ’84, I spun it out at the Gooseneck and broke my scaphoid, in practice. I had a friend who worked at Nobles Hospital, and she hooked me up with the right people and came up with a brace and the doctor there signed me off. I had to see the chief medical officer for the race, and he had me do a push-up and so forth, and they let me race.
“In ’93, I was racing the 350 Benelli four-cylinder, and I crashed that at Quarter Bridge at walking speed. We had routed the brake cable wrong, and the junction box was hanging up, and I couldn’t steer the thing. So no damage. In the race, I crashed big-time at Caramoor, ran wide and hit the bank on the outside of the corner. I dislocated my right hip while I was still on the bike, ricocheted off the bank, and the last thing I remember was the hay bale in front of the lightpole that I hit. The next thing I remember is being lifted into the helicopter. I broke my ankle and dislocated my hip. It turned out to be quite minor, and I won a race at Steamboat Springs 17 days later.”
Roper crashed one final time at the Isle of Man. In 2005, in the Manx GP, he slid off at Windy Corner, landing safely in a gravel trap. But tragedy struck just a few miles down the road at the 32nd-mile marker. A fellow classic racer was killed.
“It very much affected me,” Roper says. “That year, five very respected, experienced, sober classic racers were killed there, including a good friend. I never kidded myself at all about the risk there. I remember many times going to the start and thinking to myself, ‘This could be the last time. Do you really want to do this?’ And each time, I really wanted to do it. But my attitude changed, and I thought, ‘I’ve had a really good run here and gotten away with it, and maybe we should leave it at that.’ So I think I’m cured from needing to race there anymore. If I could go back every decade or so and do a lap of honor, it would be great. I love the place, and I’m sure I will be back to spectate, but I think I’m cured of needing to race there.”
It was his last competitive race on the Mountain Course.
“I’ve still got the monkey on my back,” he says with a chuckle. “The last time I rode across the pond was at the Centenary for the TT in 2007. We restored the G50 we won the race with, and I did a lap of honor with that, which was fun.” CN