Seen at the TT: Fairy Bridge

Tom Guttry is the film producer who I spent the fortnight guiding around the Isle of Man. He's the 'hands-on' guy for the four(!!!!) production companies involved in the development of Riding Man as a feature film. Over the two+ weeks, I tried to check as many boxes as possible for him, showing him a selection of different-character spots on the TT course, and introducing him to a selection of the characters I met when I lived here. Some of them are, ah, 'different' too, to say the least.

One must-see spot was the Fairy Bridge. To be honest, it's not one of the nicer or more scenic bridges-over-streams on the Isle of Man. And there are days when the trees over the stream, and crevices in the rockwork, festooned with souvenirs and notes, strike me as that much litter. Still, I try to remember to bid the fairies 'hello' every time I cross.

On the Thursday of race week, quite a few bikers stopped by. One foreign guy asked me, in heavily accented and broken English, who'd died there. That's an honest mistake, as anyone who's lapped the TT course is so used to makeshift memorials that look similar. I don't think he understood me when I explained that no one had died here, it was a place people came to leave notes and little presents for the Manx fairies, and to ask for good luck.

Tom made a wish. I warned him not to tell me what it was, or to ask for too much and anger the fairies with greed or hubris. (Those, I admit, are not official rules for communicating with fairies. I told him that only because to me, that's a common courtesy.) Presumably, he wished for success in his effort to turn Riding Man into a feature film, so rather than bore the fairies with a similar wish, I asked for a different favor.

I placed my own wish, written on a tiny scrap of paper torn from my Moleskine (I know, what a snob, eh?) in a tiny snail shell, the snail long dead and his shell stuck to the wall by a thick impasto of white paint. Some Isle of Man public employee had painted the stones of the bridge as part of the general pre-TT beautification program, I guess.

In hindsight, I suppose that I put my note in the empty home of a slow guy. I hope the fairies have a suitable sense of irony.

Seen at the TT: Dogs

I've been on the Isle of Man for the whole of this year's TT fortnight. So I apologize for not posting a whole bunch of stuff. I've barely had time to get a couple of columns written for MotorcycleUSA (the first of which is found here.) My excuse is... Well, forget it. I'll catch you up later.

The TT paddock is its own little community really. A town of a few hundred people camped out between the Grandstand and 'downtown' Douglas, on the sporting fields of Nobles Park. Since most of those people are on the Island for over two weeks, they bring the whole household, including kids and dogs. Dogs are great stress relievers, and I can easily see how it would be nice to have one around in the hours before setting out onto the Mountain Course.

Over the next few days, I'll try to back-post some more observations from this trip. And watch for more 'Manx Postcard' Backmarker columns on Motorcycle-USA.com, with the next one coming this Thursday...

Roger Willis' tales of TT trophies

This morning, I rode down to the Crab Shack, on the breakwater at Peel on the west coast of the Isle of Man. Roger Willis rocked up -- he's the author of 'The Nazi TT'; the story of the Nazi's determination to win the Senior TT in 1939. Over a kipper bap and tea, Roger told me two equally amazing stories about how the Senior, and Junior TT trophies survived the war. The Senior trophy was won by Georg Meier on the indomitable BMW Kompressor, of course; the Junior trophy spent the war in Italy, after being won by a Benelli rider. I'll try to schedule a formal interview with Roger sometime in the next few weeks. Until then, a teaser: JUnior silverwork spent the war buried in Mr. Benelli's garden. The Senior one -- the most sought after award in motorcycling -- was, luckily, transferred out of bomber range. It ended up in Vienna. After the war, an RAF officer tracked the trophy down, but was dismayed to find that it was in the Russian sector. Through channels, the British prevailed on the Russians to liberate the trophy and repatriate it.

MotoGP's gay question: confronting the elephant in the room, 2008

A little less than five years ago, I had dinner with a friend of mine here in Kansas City. He'd been a VIP at the inaugural Indy MotoGP event, and had run into a paddock insider who, in the course of pointing out various people at one moment pointed to some guy and told my friend, “...and that's Rossi's lover.”

My friend asked for clarification and was told that this was something lots of people knew but didn't openly talk about. The source was a guy who worked in a PR capacity with Fiat, who had worked with Rossi a bit.

I asked my friend, "Was your guide pointing out 'Uccio'? Rossi travels to all the races with some buddy named Alessio Salucci (aka Uccio) from his home town, and I don't think their relationship is sexual, but I can imagine that others might..."

My friend, however, didn't remember the name of the person described as Rossi's lover.

I raise this topic now because at the pre-Jerez press conference a couple of weeks ago, David Emmett -- of MotoMatters.com fame -- asked the assembled stars why there'd never been an openly gay MotoGP rider. The assembled riders, of course, were mostly pretty young; they've grown up in an era of increasing acceptance of public homosexuality, and were nonplussed by the question. But I'll bet you that privately, the organizers and 'old guard' of the sport were displeased by David's question.

While I didn't read any comments from Rossi himself, he was the elephant in the room. Other people with a stake in the story pointed out, at some length, that Rossi's relationship with Uccio wasn't 'gay', that Uccio had a child, and that Rossi's been squiring some hottie lately, but the couple kept her out of the limelight.

When a friend of mine returned from the 2008 MotoGP event and reported that it was an open secret that Rossi was gay, I was doubtful. I had another friend who had better-than-average access to the factory Honda team when Rossi'd ridden there, and I asked that guy about it, off the record. The person I asked, who obviously must remain anonymous even now, was someone I thought would be well informed but very conservative with his opinion. I expected him to quash the 'rumor' out of hand. I was surprised when, after a pause to consider his response, he said, "Well, I wouldn't say 'gay' but I could believe he was bi, and I don't think he's the only one in the paddock."

Meanwhile, back to the summer of 2008...

In telling me that story, my friend wasn't expressing any judgement of his own as to the truth of the rumor. He was telling me the story because he felt the experience of hearing it was interesting. (He was a huge Rossi fan and his admiration was not dimmed by being told Rossi was gay. My friend's girlfriend was certainly bummed by this 'news,' however.)

My first thought was, well that would explain why I've never seen paparazzi photos of him cavorting nude with some Italian supermodel on a private beach (though I'd certainly never seen him cavorting with hot guys, either.) My second thought was, it would probably be harder to come out in Italy than it would be here.

The first thing I said out loud to my friend, just as he said almost the same thing was, "If he was gay, it would sure be interesting if he came out."

A day or so later, I posed this question on my Facebook page: Is Valentino Rossi the most famous gay athlete? Back then, I had about 120 Facebook ‘friends’, who were almost all either motorcycle journalists, or motorcycle racers. That was 2008, remember, before FB privacy had eroded. At the time, there was a general sense that Facebook posts were quasi-private as opposed to quasi-public.

My reason for posing the question was to make my 'friends' question their own values. That required the question to be framed in a provocative way. Had I written, 'I don't know or care if Rossi's gay, but hypothetically speaking, how would that make you feel?' no one would have noticed.

The question attracted over 20 responses in a few hours -- a record for me at that time -- and triggered vitriolic backchat. So much so that for the first (and, I think last) time, I actually deleted a post. People basically told me, “You’ll never work in this town again,” which was relevant since I was earning most of my living writing about motorcycles. Only Simon Hargreaves, at the great UK magazine Bike, seemed to understand the spirit in which it was asked.

Anymore, I don’t give a shit. But I always wanted to clarify my own position – not on the question of Rossi's sexual preferences, but on the reasons I had for questioning it. And, I thought of all this again when MotoMatters opened Pandora's Box at Jerez.

The (mostly) negative reaction to my Facebook question could be divided into two categories: comments from people who felt the question was simply off-limits, and from those who felt that even the implication was an insult to Rossi and basically anti-motorcycling. (One member of the AMA Hall of Fame accused me of trying to destroy the whole sport.)

Before I address those two categories of response, I'll give you full disclosure: I slept with him.

Just kidding. He's not my type.

But seriously... When I posed that question, he was keeping MotoGP afloat, and every MotoGP stakeholder should’ve contributed to a billion-dollar life insurance policy on him, to cover their losses should anything happen to him – because if anything had happened to Rossi, the sport's whole fan base  would have evaporated.

But was the question per se off-limits?

One point of view is that public figures are still entitled to private lives. I'll call this the Sean Penn argument. And I don't buy it.

When you accept the rewards of celebrity – money, preferential treatment, etc., – there's a quid pro quo, and it is that many of the fans who fund your infinitely-better-than-average lifestyle are, in fact, justifiably curious about lifestyle. Of course they are, they paid for it.

This was especially true, IMHO, in Rossi's case. His elaborate, choreographed victory-lap celebrations were part of a conscious plan to blur the boundary between on-track and off-track fame.

It was especially, especially true given his tendency to play unseemly (and in his case unnecessary) head games off the track. Both Max Biaggi and Sete Gibernau were dogged by 'gay' rumors at the time when Rossi delighted in skewering them.

To the best of my knowledge, Rossi never said, to the fawning, sycophantic journos and paddock insiders who fomented those rumors, “Hey you guys, that's over the line.”

The rumor-monger my friend ran into at Indy was not alone. Other MotoGP insiders kept their thoughts to themselves (in public, though not in private) because #46 was MotoGP's Brahmin and it was a career limiting move to say anything that could be perceived as harmful to him.

Some people felt my question was off limits because they'd adopted the don't-ask-don't-tell position taken (until recently) by the U.S. military.

Although I'd probably come down on the it's-a-personal-decision side of that argument where private citizens are concerned, there is a well-developed philosophical position that holds that gays in general, and role models in particular, have a moral imperative to come out. Watch 'Milk,' starring the noted paparazzi-puncher Sean Penn, for more insight into this position.

Finally, some people felt the question was off limits because they interpreted it as an anti-gay slur from me. Since anyone who knows me or has closely read my work over the years knows that's ridiculous, I won't bother debating it.

As for the people who felt that even posing the question was a slur, all I can say is that the tone of the responses suggests that I was correct to assume it would prove provocative.

Like David Emmett, I find it ironic that a sport that's wrapped up in notions of rebellion and individualism remains, in fact, staunchly conservative.

Frankly, I never got over Wayne Rainey's accident, and have had only an outsider-looking-in/comparatively dispassionate interest in 500GP/MotoGP since then. That said, I'm a committed supporter of underdogs everywhere, so while I now feel a bit sorry for Vale, in 2008 I rooted for the field, not Rossi.

Back then, he made winning look too easy, too often. I watched too many elaborately planned victory celebrations that made me realize that in Rossi's mind, winning was a fait accompli.

If I had known he was a closeted gay, I would have liked him a lot more, because it would suggest that he carried a burden off the track. He'd seem more human, less godlike. (I admit that there's a good chance I'd find him quite human in person.)

If he was gay and came out, it would make millions of homophobes, around the world, question their own values and prove that Rossi was as brave off the track as he is on it. That would cost Rossi in particular and MotoGP in general a lot of fans, but it would gain Rossi one fan: me.

For the record, I don't think it's ever gonna' happen.

Tour de Media: Ups and downs

Honda takes on title sponsorship of Pikes Peak hillclimb

I see that American Honda will become the official sponsor of Pikes Peak, entering a bunch of cars, bikes, and a quad. The entries include an electric car but no electric motorcycle. (I guess they couldn't arrange to borrow the Mugen bike that will race again at the TT in June.)

The driving/riding duties seem to be handled by a Honda's American R&D staff. Jeff Tigert, a 'known fast guy' on the West Coast, will be riding a CBR600 in the 750 class.

I didn't see a Honda motorcycle entry in the big bike class, so I guess we won't see a Honda-Ducati showdown for the outright course record. I have to wonder, though, what this means for Ducati. For the last few years, they've done a great guerrilla marketing job at Pikes Peak. They've been the de facto title sponsor, without paying for official status, just on the strength of a well-managed PR program. They may not manage to 'own' the event this summer, if -- as I expect -- Honda backs its title sponsorship with a soup-to-nuts PR program.

I think that my friends at Faulkner-Livingston Racing did too good a job managing the Ducati Pikes Peak program; they proved that racing there could generate great exposure for a relatively small investment.

Barring a high-profile PR disaster (read: fatality on the all-paved, fast, and as a consequence more dangerous course) Honda's involvement signals a quantum jump for the hillclimb, in terms of returning it to past glory as one of America's highest-profile motorsports events.

Fisker proves Christensen's theory again

I've written before about the way disruptive change comes up from the bottom of the market, not down from the top. And now, I read that Fisker -- the high-dollar electric sports car -- is about to fold. I suppose the guys who now run Mission Motors are looking at Fisker and thinking, at least we didn't do that.

Every now then I try to arrange an interview with the people at Vectrix, who have partnered with Daimler's Smart unit, and are developing a cheap & cheerful low performance electric scooter. That's where I expect real success for an EV two-wheeler. (But somehow, Vectrix senior management seems to be avoiding me. I guess I've got a reputation as a bushwhacker.) If I ever get them to return my calls, you'll hear about it here first.

AMA Pro Racing finds its long-lost Superbike TV deal

Last but no means least, AMA Pro Racing just breathlessly announced that the rest of this season, and all of next season's Superbike and DSB-class road races will be broadcast on the CBS Sports cable network.

That's a lot better than no TV deal, and most of the series' stakeholders are probably eager to trumpet it to existing and potential sponsors. But don't kid yourself; the racing's not on CBS, it's on CBS Sports, a cable channel that is, like, Channel 521 out there in far reaches of obscure cabledom.

Actual audience figures for CBS Sports are hard (read: impossible) to come by. The channel is not a Nielsen subscriber, so I could not get an independent estimate of viewership. The network coyly says that it is "available to over 100 million households" [my italics].  That does not, however, mean it's available in 100 million households. It means that it's carried by cable providers that serve that number of homes. A better guess is that about half that number of homes actually subscribe to a package (i.e., a 'sports tier') that includes CBS Sports.

If you want a working figure, you can say that somewhere between a third and half of American homes currently subscribe to a cable package (or something like the Dish Network) that gives them access to CBS Sports network, although most American households could get access to the network if they were willing to spend an extra few bucks a month.

That's a lot of potential viewers, but it hasn't translated into many viewers for most of the content carried on the channel. I've read estimates in the advertising trades (the ad industry, of course, makes audience estimates its business) suggesting that even popular CBS Sports shows measure their audience in the tens of thousands. This is not a return to the days when motorcycle racing occasionally showed up on Wide World of Sports and was exposed to millions of people who weren't even looking for it. No broadcast of this year's AMA Superbike series will even be seen in 0.1% of American households.

I don't want to be a 'Morose Mark' on this topic. Like I said, this deal's a lot better than no TV deal. But my message to AMA Pro Racing is: You can not -- and must not -- assume people will find, and watch, the Superbike series now that it's 'on TV'. It's available to a wide audience. Now you have to convince that wide audience to watch it.

What I mean is, now that people can watch it, we need to tell them where they can find it, and why they should go to the trouble. AMA Pro Racing needs to develop a social media campaign that leverages everything all the many stakeholders, especially riders and sponsors, are already doing on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. They should be advertising online, where a lot of the young action-sports enthusiasts they could capture already spend a lot of time. There should be beer coasters in sports bars, telling patrons to ask bartenders to switch one of the televisions to our network. There should be ads at every AMA race and handbills in every motorcycle dealership, telling people in that particular market what channel number they need to program into their remote. Because the only way we'll build an audience is by telling people how to watch us, and why they should bother.

We've got a TV deal. Big whoop. Now, let the audience outreach begin.

Notes from the Blue Groove: It's twins!

I think that the newly announced Basic Twins class for 'Pro' riders is, basically, a good idea.

Under the current class structure, Grand National Experts race twins on half-miles and miles, and race 450cc stock-framed, motocross-based machines on short tracks and TTs. In the only support class, up-and-coming Pros race on the MX-based bikes on all tracks. When this format was introduced a few years ago, many people decried the loss of the 'framers' on short tracks. There were also complaints that the 450s would be far too slow for the Mile races.

'Too slow' is arguable, but the singles races on Mile tracks turned out to be thrilling drafting battles in which -- even by flat track standards -- the racing was a little too close for comfort. It would be a little different, maybe, if the tracks themselves were old-school, deep cushion deals... but they're not; nowadays, they mostly groove up into one-line affairs.

Jesse Phibbs, 21, died a month after crashing in the 2010 Indy Mile. And while I think he was the single class fatality, there have been a few too many close calls. I think twins will prove safer on the Mile tracks -- spreading riders out a little and allowing for slightly different corner lines, even if they're marginally faster. After all, the idea is to bring up promising young riders, not maim or kill them off.

It remains to be seen how the rules will shake out in detail. I presume the new twins will replace singles at all Mile tracks, but what about half-miles? Will some of those be designated 'Twins' tracks and others 'Singles'?

I know it won't make me popular, but I think some consideration should be given to making the Basic Twins class a 'stock frame' class. Go ahead, roll your eyes, but hear me out: When the 450 MX-based bikes came in, people bitterly complained that they were, basically, pieces of shit compared to real 'framers'. But the fact is that while they are slower, cruder bikes, the racing hasn't suffered. More grassroots sponsors -- dealers who sell 450 motocross bikes -- were brought into the sport. And the cost of fielding a competitive machine fell at least a little. Remember the old 883 Sportster class? Those stock-frame bikes were pigs, but the racing was great.

I think the same thing could happen with a Basic Twins class that specified stock frames. Bikes would cost less to build; they'd look more like street bikes and be more attractive to dealer sponsors; they'd look visibly different than the Experts' bikes, which would reduce the prestige erosion at the very top.

I'm just sayin'...

A note from the Dept. of Modest Proposals: Cancel Daytona

I was going to write a blog post bemoaning the 2 1/2-month gap between Daytona and the next AMA Superbike race weekend. I was going to ask, "Is there really no Speedway availability later in the spring?"

Ago won the 200 in 1974. And damned if I don't have trouble remembering who won it last month.
Daytona is dead. Long live Daytona.

The early start/long gap schedule forces teams to rush preparations Bike Week; that's a bigger problem for the smaller teams. Then, the marketing of the series loses momentum during the hiatus; that takes the wind out of the promotional sails (and sales) for the bigger, commercial/factory squads. Nobody thinks the current schedule is good.

A March event made sense decades ago, when Bike Week in general and the '200' in particular attracted an international field. The race had to be scheduled before the Grands Prix season, and before the big Easter meetings in England (then the de facto head office of the racing industry.) It was an informal trade show and industry conference; everyone who was anyone was there. That's no longer true of the year's first AMA 'National'.

So I was going to say, reschedule it. But as I started composing this post, I realized the answer isn't rescheduling Daytona. It's canceling Daytona.

Let's face it: Daytona's not just an outlier on the AMA schedule, it's an outlier, period. No matter what you do to the course infield (and there have been several changes to the layout and course distance over the years; remembering when qualifying ran on the oval alone?) the banking still makes it so unique that the tire supplier makes special tires for it.

Face this, too: It's all about the '200'. Every other class is just an appendage to the main event, which has lost so much prestige having been downgraded to the second-fastest class that now there's hardly a main event at all. But, whether teams are competing for less prestige or not, machines still have to be built with special refueling and tire change components.

I don't think it should be part of the AMA Superbike series at all. I'm not saying they shouldn't hold it; I'm just saying that it shouldn't be a points-paying race in the American national championship.

I think, instead, that DMG should take a page from the Isle of Man's book.

DMG should study the way that the Isle of Man has steadily gone about restoring the TT as a stand-alone event that is not part of any championship.

Like the TT, Daytona was a world-class (and sometimes actually a World Championship) event, attracting the world's top riders, until some time in the '70s. Then it fell on hard times, and for years -- for decades -- when old hands gather to talk about it, the talk is only that it's a shadow of it's former self.

Since 2004, when the Manx government took over the TT and created a strategic plan to grow the event's prestige back to long-lost levels, they've done a great job. It was achieved, in part, by actively going out and recruiting riders and/or teams that the organizers thought would add to the event. The TT Press Office works year round to build the event's profile.

In fact, top TT teams (who already refuel, albeit not with dry-break equipment, and change tires) could probably be lured over to race the 200. Some World Endurance teams might come, too. (I would have said, make it a part of that championship, but the FIM would never homologate DIS for a world championship event.)

As a first event on the AMA Pro Racing schedule, Daytona sucks. But the Daytona 200 would make a great one-off race. What do you say, DMG?