Tourist Trophy Research Articles

‘Come alive in ’85’: the Isle of Man Year of Sport, the first Island Games, and the shifting sands of sport event tourism

ABSTRACT This article examines 1985's Isle of Man Year of Sport, an attempt by political leadership in the British crown dependency to host and create a series of sporting events which would serve as a platform to help reverse the dramatic decline of UK and Irish holidaymakers. To Manx parliamentarians and policymakers, sport provided a logical starting point for attracting tourists due to the island’s association with the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy (TT) motorcycle road races, even though holding a Commonwealth Games in the island – a desired option – was considered unfeasible. The Isle of Man Government was additionally pursuing a strategy of themed ‘years’ to provide events to stimulate tourism. The Year of Sport’s events included the Commonwealth Table Tennis Championships, the Isle of Man Special Olympics, and academic conferences. Its longest lasting contribution to sport, however, has been the first Island Games (known here as the Inter-Island Games), held every two years since (with the exception of 2021) in small-island polities/‘nations’ on the Atlantic Rim. The Year of Sport was reflective of both small-island politics and of an emerging (if debatable) consensus in tourism and sport management circles about the tourism legacies, inclusive of soft power, of sporting events.

Experiences leading elite motorcycle road racers to participate at the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy (TT): an existential perspective

ABSTRACT The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy (TT) is one of the deadliest and most controversial sporting events in the world, with more than 250 fatalities on the course over its 112-year history. Competitors race motorcycles at high speeds on public roads flanked by lampposts, trees, bus shelters, houses, and walls. The purpose of this study was to understand how engagement in TT might contribute to life meaning and give expression to our fundamental questions about existence. Four male athletes participated in life history interviews. Data were analysed using an existential-narrative approach and two representative stories identified: ‘That was the pivotal thing' and ‘You’re living your life, not just existing’. Themes were interpreted from an existential perspective, addressing authenticity, boundary situations, mortality and meaning. Riders constructed boundary situations as instrumental in their active choice to compete at TT. Within-TT experiences encompassed myriad sub-themes including conflicting emotions, perceptions of risk, flow and love for the sport, many reflecting TT as a site for engaging fully with life. Findings provide novel insight into riders’ experiences by interpreting their stories through an existential lens. We also suggest that classic theory and research, based on risk-taking and personality, does not adequately address motivation across all extreme sports.

Experiences Leading Elite Motorcycle Road Racers to Participate at the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy (TT): An Existential Perspective

The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy (TT) is one of the deadliest and most controversial sporting events in the world, with more than 250 fatalities on the course over its 112-year history. Competitors race motorcycles at high speeds on public roads flanked by lampposts, trees, bus shelters, houses, and walls. The purpose of this study was to understand how engagement in TT might contribute to life meaning and give expression to our fundamental questions about existence. Four male athletes participated in life history interviews. Data were analysed using an existential-narrative approach and two representative stories identified: ‘That was the pivotal thing' and ‘You’re living your life, not just existing’. Themes were interpreted from an existential perspective, addressing authenticity, boundary situations, mortality and meaning. Riders constructed boundary situations as instrumental in their active choice to compete at TT. Within-TT experiences encompassed myriad sub-themes including conflicting emotions, perceptions of risk, flow and love for the sport, many reflecting TT as a site for engaging fully with life. Findings provide novel insight into riders’ experiences by interpreting their stories through an existential lens. We also suggest that classic theory and research, based on risk-taking and personality, does not adequately address motivation across all extreme sports.

Spectators’ Negotiations of Risk, Masculinity and Performative Mobilities at the TT Races

This paper explores the particular assemblage of place, event and individual identity performances that occur each year in the Isle of Man in and through the TT (Tourist Trophy) motorcycle races. These road races are associated with a high degree of risk for the racers and the confluence of over 30,000 visitors and 10,000 motorcycles also presents potential risks for spectators and residents alike. Both motorcycling and risk-taking have been associated with particular forms of masculinity, notably hegemonic, working class and youthful masculinities. Using detailed surveys of spectators we argue that the TT races, while undoubtedly dominated by men and predicated on a cultural privileging of speed and skill, are grounded in varying combinations of determinate and reflexive attitudes to risk, reflecting the performance of a variety of gendered, ‘biker’ and wider identity-based positionalities. Findings also highlight a particular inter-relation of mobilities and place identities at the TT races and bring to light the highly significant and under-researched embodied, performative and emotional mobilities of spectators. The conceptual and methodological importance of (a) situated research of both mobilities and gender in specific place-temporalities and (b) wider surveys of motorcyclists to complement ethnographic studies of small cohorts are also stressed.

Identity in the “Road Racing Capital of the World”: heritage, geography and contested spaces

This article explores the complex relationship between sport and landscape and their role in the expression and maintenance of identity. While discussions have typically emphasised the role taken by stadia and sporting venues in the development and expression of sporting and national identities, fewer have considered the role taken by the wider landscape. It is this landscape that provides the context in which many sports are enacted and watched and it is through the embodied actions and experiences that landscape is given added meaning, reinforcing narratives of space that are implicated in the creation and maintenance of national identities. Yet here, unlike stadia or other sporting venues, space is much less regulated; as a result, participants and observers are also implicated in the creation of “counter geographies” that destabilise “official” narratives of space. Here our focus is on the contested landscapes of the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy Races; an event where sporting narratives have become materially and conceptually part of the landscape. Through a discussion of these landscapes and their expression in the Staying the Course exhibition curated by Manx National Heritage, we contend that geographies of sport must also reflect on the contested nature of sporting spaces.

Hunters David Chancellor Schilt Publishing Amsterdam, 2012

Hunters is an arresting exploration of tourist trophy hunting in southern Africa. It is not difficult to appreciate the beauty of the pictures and their settings. But it is difficult to agree with the book’s thematic. Primarily relying on portraiture, both in the field and in the hunters’ homes and trophy rooms, Chancellor delves into a controversial and lucrative subculture. Despite the fact that his camera never shies away from blood, the gore is at a notable minimum. Instead, the tension that fills each frame is drawn from his subjects – the foreign hunters, their families, the local guides and the very land to which they have come seeking their prey. One can see the pride, the glee, the almost orgiastic facial expressions resulting from the kill. This is the hunter feeling her/himself to be on top of the world, at the apex of creation. S/he decides. S/he kills. A show of supremacy over nature. Most pictures speak for themselves. Even though Chancellor does not take a position (it seems he never hunted himself ), it should be clear from the images that there is little pride to be taken from killing these animals. Trophy hunting is a small-scale massacre. Every animal killed is a decrease in its population. Full stop. I know there are people who argue that hunting, and trophy hunting more specifically, helps to control wildlife, that it helps to maintain much-needed and often precarious equilibria. Chancellor seems to think that trophy hunting would appear to be a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way of wildlife control than ‘mere’ hunting for fun. Populations are monitored and local communities survive on the income they earn from tracking, and accompanying the white hunters. But at the end of the day hunting is and remains a brutal, inhumane activity. While the pictures do convey the brutality to some degree, they also express an aesthetic that is scenic and beautiful.

Hunters

Hunters is an arresting exploration of tourist trophy hunting in southern Africa. It is not difficult to appreciate the beauty of the pictures and their settings. But it is difficult to agree with the book’s thematic. Primarily relying on portraiture, both in the field and in the hunters’ homes and trophy rooms, Chancellor delves into a controversial and lucrative subculture. Despite the fact that his camera never shies away from blood, the gore is at a notable minimum. Instead, the tension that fills each frame is drawn from his subjects – the foreign hunters, their families, the local guides and the very land to which they have come seeking their prey. One can see the pride, the glee, the almost orgiastic facial expressions resulting from the kill. This is the hunter feeling her/himself to be on top of the world, at the apex of creation. S/he decides. S/he kills. A show of supremacy over nature. Most pictures speak for themselves. Even though Chancellor does not take a position (it seems he never hunted himself ), it should be clear from the images that there is little pride to be taken from killing these animals. Trophy hunting is a small-scale massacre. Every animal killed is a decrease in its population. Full stop. I know there are people who argue that hunting, and trophy hunting more specifically, helps to control wildlife, that it helps to maintain much-needed and often precarious equilibria. Chancellor seems to think that trophy hunting would appear to be a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way of wildlife control than ‘mere’ hunting for fun. Populations are monitored and local communities survive on the income they earn from tracking, and accompanying the white hunters. But at the end of the day hunting is and remains a brutal, inhumane activity. While the pictures do convey the brutality to some degree, they also express an aesthetic that is scenic and beautiful.

‘The Island of Blood’: death and commemoration at the Isle of Man TT Races

The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, the oldest motorcycle road racing event in the world, also remains one of the most controversial with a total of some 237 of competitors killed during its 104-year history. These fatalities are implicated within complex narratives of both remembrance and forgetting most evidently played out in the roadside memorials, place names and ‘cyber memorials’ created to commemorate the deaths. This paper provides a survey of these memorials along with an appraisal of their involvement in expressions of ‘public’ and ‘private’ grief.

E.L.C. Watson se pionierstog deur Suid-Afrika (1912)

E.L.C. Watson's pioneering trip through South Africa (1912): The pre-First World War era in South Africa can undoubtedly be characterised by a number of aspects. However, two widely divergent aspects with a common denominator have been selected as the topic. On the one hand there was the struggle for women's rights and on the other hand the boom in motorcycling. The expedition by Ms E.L.C. Watson linked these two poles. The advent of the bicycle brought about a radical change. Suddenly the traveller had complete freedom of choice about the distance and route he wanted to travel. In the light of the Victorian era with all its restrictions, this new freedom of movement was very alluring. The motorcycle evolved out of the bicycle. Following the first Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) in 1907, there was no stopping the popularity of the motorcycle. This influence was felt even in South Africa. It was in this zeitgeist that Ms E.L.C. Watson did her pioneering work by becoming the first person to travel through South Africa by motorcycle. Her trip can be regarded as a continuation of the emancipation of women that had caused thousands of women to turn to cycling a decade earlier. Rapid industrialisation led to the emergence of socialism, which protected the rights of workers. People became more liberal in their thinking. An example of this was women who pressed for suffrage. In Edwardian Britain, Watson was a modern and innovative woman. She was actively involved in women's rights and poverty issues in England and also wanted to make a contribution in this regard in South Africa. However, she found that the wounds caused by the Anglo-Boer War had not yet healed. In view of so much political turmoil the women's suffrage movement was not a priority for the South African government. Her expedition unfortunately did not enjoy much media coverage. The poor reporting left a huge void. Her impressions of the country and its people, full reporting on her public appearances, and her views on South African women and labour issues in particular would have been invaluable. Keywords: E.L.C. Watson, motorcycle, women's rights, Women's Christian Temperance Union, MotosacocheSouth Africa Journal of Cultural History Vol. 21 (2) 2007: pp. 28-42

Helicopter transfer of trauma patients: the Isle of Man experience

A 10-year study of the helicopter transfer of motorcyclists injured during the International Motorcycle Tourist Trophy races (TT) and the amateur Manx Grand Prix (MGP) is reported, A total of 266 riders was transferred from the scene of the accident to hospital by air. The overall mortality rate for those riders airlifted was 3.38 per cent. The figures are compared with similar emergency helicopter services.

Trauma on the Isle of Man.

The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy motorcycle races remain one of the most popular venues for motorcycle races. This is despite the reduced status of the event. The reason for the loss of world championship and formula one status is the nature of the road racing circuit itself. The twisting narrow roads are only closed to the public at certain times during the practice and race weeks. Motorcycling visitors to the event attempt to emulate their heroes on machines capable of high speeds. Casualties from both visitors and racers are dealt with efficiently by an expanded medical service. This includes the use of an aeromedical evacuation helicopter. Casualties from the visitors exceeded those from the racers themselves during the period reported.

The Manx TT Races and residents' views: a case assessment of Doxey's “Irridex”

ABSTRACT Tourism can be potentially disruptive for the recipient communities; particularly for residents who do not directly benefit from the spending of tourists. To this end in the 1970s George Doxey derived an ‘irridex’, and this is assessed in this paper in the Manx context. The Isle of man Tourist Trophy Motorcycle Races involve road closures and are potentially disruptive to the lives of many residents. Survey results show that Manx residents do not, however, find the races unacceptably disruptive or intrusive. As such, questions are raised on the nature of environmentally disruptive tourism.

Some Aero Engine and other Reminiscences 1905-1918

I have always been an enthusiast for engines, even before 1913 when after a flight with Geoffrey de Havilland in a BE2a, I took my ticket in a Caudron biplane at Hendon, enjoying a little thrust, and much castor oil from the “Y” Anzani engine. When I completed my figure of eight, nose well down on the turns, the only engine control—the switch—failed, so I foreshadowed my technical future by kicking off the petrol tap! Before that I Was acquainted with engines in the motor trade. I was mechanic in the Maudslay car in the first Tourist Trophy Race of 1905; our engine ran well till it became a bit short of petrol and ate its butterfly throttle. But, in 1907, I drove their first live axle car in the Scottish Reliability Trials, obtaining a gold medal for a non-stop run.