Editorial: Success of Armoy road races is proof that the sport - for all its troubles - can still have a bright future

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News Letter editorial on Friday August 2 2024

Saturday’s Armoy motorcycle races in Co Antrim brought the curtain down on a drastically depleted Irish road racing season.

The thriving meeting, first held in 2009, was established in honour of the legendary ‘Armoy Armada’ racing quartet in the late 1970s that included Joey Dunlop and his brother Jim, Frank Kennedy and Mervyn Robinson.

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The two-day Armoy event last weekend was the third and final Irish road race held this year along with April’s Cookstown 100 and the North West 200 in May.

Yet only five years ago in 2019, the Irish road racing calendar featured 12 races in the year prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Six of these took place in the Republic of Ireland, with the remaining six – including the two biggest events, the NW200 and Ulster Grand Prix – headlining the calendar here.

Since then, there has been a steady decline in national road racing, due in part to the knock-on effect of Covid but also, particularly so in the Republic, because of prohibitive public liability insurance costs.

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No road races have been held in the south since 2022, while in Northern Ireland, the Tandragee 100, Ulster Grand Prix and Enniskillen meetings have not taken place in recent years. The Mid Antrim 150 at Clough, which made a brief return in 2022 only to be cancelled following an overnight sabotage attack in which the roads were contaminated, seems consigned to the history books.

Armoy, however, is a shining light against the backdrop of a sport suffocated by financial limitations and lacking cohesive direction and leadership.

Built on the foundation of an enthusiastic, unified club with a clear vision, strong work ethic and loyal sponsors, Armoy has shown that with the right approach, there need not be an inevitable death knell for Irish road racing.

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