Valentino Rossi will cross a cultural chasm when he arrives at the Isle of Man TT today, but he will also cement a bond with the Englishman who is his hero. The glitz and glamour of the MotoGP paddock will be replaced by grit and grime, but the Italian megastar will not care as he visits the place where Mike Hailwood cemented his legend.
The TT has retained the mind-numbing dangers of Hailwood’s era, when the four-time world 500cc champion reasoned that each year a rider would have three crashes and that six people would be killed. “He sat down one night and wrote out a list of all the people he had known who had been killed racing bikes or cars,” Pauline, his widow, said. “It was very long.”
Rossi’s visit to the TT coincides with the 30th anniversary of Hailwood’s last win on the island. Last year, John McGuinness, favourite to win the big prizes this week, matched his tally of 14. “It was weird and it felt like I was racing against ghosts,” McGuinness said. “I just expected to see Mike Hailwood in the winner’s enclosure and wanted to go and have a yarn about the different eras.” Hailwood was killed in a road accident in 1981.
McGuinness knows all about the horrors of the TT after being the first on the scene of David Jefferies’s fatal crash in 2003. “That was really difficult for me,” he said. “I wanted to pack it in then. I thought, ‘What’s the point?’ But I spoke to David’s wife and she said, ‘Carry on and do your job.’ I was back on the course at 5 the next morning. You go home or plod on. That’s all there is. I don’t think Rossi will be able to imagine what this is like. It’s ridiculous.”
In Hailwood’s era, the grands prix were just as dangerous. Tommy Robb, a peer and friend, said: “I cannot describe the adrenalin of those races. Afterwards you spoke about the excitement of the danger. You went to Spa [in Belgium], went flat out and knew that if you fell then you were either going to hit a tree or a house.” Rossi, a campaigner for improved safety, would be aghast.
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Pauline Hailwood said that her husband spoke about what he termed “the big slide”, the crash that might kill him or leave him crippled. Robb’s came at the TT in 1960. “I came to, heard someone say, ‘His neck’s broken’ and then blacked out again.”
Hailwood’s greatest battles on the island were with Giacomo Agostini, the most successful GP racer of all time, so it is fitting that Agostini will be with Rossi today. His attitude to the place changed irrevocably in 1972 when his friend, Gilberto Parlotti, was killed the morning after Agostini had shown him around the circuit and wished him good luck and good night. Agostini competed at the TT for the last time later that day.
“I said if we crashed we had to have the chance to stand up again,” he said. “People turned on me for that, but you have to think about your life and your life is more important than any race.”