By Charlie Lambert
We knew that the incident involving Trevor Ferguson in yesterday's Supertwin race was serious because we were not allowed to announce anything about it in the course of the radio commentary. We obviously feared the worst but hoped for the best and it wasn't until some time later that it was confirmed that Trevor had lost his life. It had been such a good day, and all of a sudden it wasn't such a good day any more. I didn't know Trevor personally but I've commentated on all his races in the Manx Grand Prix since his debut in 2006. It was only four days earlier that I'd been talking to Ryan Farquhar at the wedding reception for Manx Radio's Tim Glover and Ryan told me that Trevor would be using Ryan's own KMR Kawasaki in the race. "He's the only person I'd trust with it," said Ryan.
Ryan was so pleased to be running his bikes in the Manx with Nigel Moore on the bike that Jamie Hamilton usually rides. One of the most poignant moments of the day came very late on when I looked through the emails which had come into the studio and found one from Jamie, wishing the KMR riders a good safe ride. I feel so sorry for Ryan and Jamie and all Trevor's family and friends. Those two KMR machines looked fantastic as they lined up at the start and then, less than two laps later, disaster.
The motorcycling community of Ireland has lost yet another brave racer. Richard Britton, Martin Finnegan, Robert Dunlop, Andrew Neill, Victor Gilmore, John Donnan, Derek Brien, Wayne Hamilton, the list goes on and that's only in recent years, not forgetting Joey. You wonder how much more the road racing community can take. The thing is though, road racing is in the blood and if it's in the blood you can't extract it any more than you can remove someone's DNA.
It doesn't make it any easier at the moment though.