Michael Dunlop (left) has won 11 TT races since 2009
The Dunlop motorcycling dynasty: Life, death and glory on the roads
By Ben Dirs BBC Sport
"You think it's never going to happen to you - you're always going to be the one who gets away with it." William Dunlop, road racer
Robert
Dunlop didn't get away with it. Not this time. So here he is, dying on
the side of a road. Just like older brother Joey, eight years earlier.
Local heroes - united by blood, glory on two wheels and the violence of
their endings.
Robert's
sons William and Michael were riding behind their dad when his engine
seized and he flew off the front of his bike. "I held his hand and
prayed he'd be all right," says Michael. William spent the following
night in his garage, tinkering with his machine, to make it go quicker.
"I
didn't go back out in memory of my dad, though, I did it because I
wanted to race," William, who was 22 at the time, tells BBC Sport. "It
sounds selfish, but that's just the way it is."
Joey Dunlop's fame in Northern Ireland was on a par with George Best and Alex Higgins
All this suffering, all this ecstasy, it's no wonder they made a film about it. Road, recently released on DVD and narrated by Liam Neeson, another of County Antrim's favourite sons, is heartbreaking, frightening, mysterious and not by Disney.
"It
certainly shows the dark side," says William. "But when I watch it I
don't see the sadness, it just makes me proud of what my father and
uncle achieved."
Joey
is the film's star and one of the least likely leading men in cinematic
history. A shy, taciturn man who hated his fame, Joey made his life
significantly more complicated than it might have been by winning a
record 26 races at the Isle of Man TT and five world championships in a
row in the 1980s. In Northern Ireland, he was as big as George Best.
The Dunlop dynasty - Victories in Isle of Man TT, North West 200 & Ulster Grand Prix
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Joey Dunlop
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Robert Dunlop
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William Dunlop
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Michael Dunlop
|
IOM TT: 26
|
IOM TT: 5
|
IOM TT: 0
|
IOM TT: 11
|
NW 200: 13
|
NW 200: 15
|
NW 200: 3
|
NW 200: 4
|
Ulster GP: 24
|
Ulster GP: 9
|
Ulster GP: 7
|
Ulster GP: 6
|
"He looked like a van driver," says Joey's former team-mate and fellow road racing legend John McGuinness. When Joey wasn't racing he was driving his van to Romania or Bosnia and handing out food to orphans, cameras not invited.
That Joey seemed permanently wreathed in the tragedy of others only made him seem more invincible by association.
At
the 1979 North West, Joey lost his childhood friend Frank Kennedy. The
following year, at the same event, Joey lost Mervyn Robinson, his
brother-in-law and another member of the so-called 'Armoy Armada'.
In 2008, Robert Dunlop was killed during practice for the 250cc race at the North West 200
At
the 1994 Isle of Man TT, a wheel came off Robert's bike and he collided
with a stone wall. It might have been a tree, a telegraph pole or any
other humdrum piece of 'furniture', as riders euphemistically call it,
that you wouldn't want to collide with at 150mph.
Robert
was lucky to survive but was left with a mangled arm and a shortened
leg. "You get hurt, you think about quitting and then you get better,"
he said, having announced his shock comeback only two years later.
"It's
a drug," says William, "which is why my dad just couldn't walk away,
even when he'd had these bad injuries and he wasn't the rider he used to
be. At the time I thought 'why are you doing this?' But now I
understand."
"All
those thousands of times he'd thrown his leg over a bike," says Joey's
long-time mechanic Sam Graham. "But all it takes is one split second."
Graham
tells how Joey, who always rode in a yellow helmet and favoured the
number three, would talk to fairies and wave to magpies while driving
across the Isle of Man in his van. But stone walls and trees don't care
much for superstitions.
Robert
was devastated by his older brother and hero's death but managed to
make sense of it. "Better being killed on a motorbike than lying for six
months unwell and dying at the end of it," he said.
Fifty-thousand
mourners attended the funeral of this intensely private and humble man,
who spent his final night on earth sleeping across the front two seats
of his van, despite being booked into a hotel suite that bore his name.
Watch the Dunlop brothers riding the NW 200 race in Northern Ireland
But
the response to the article was unanimous in its condemnation. One
reader suggested the journalist in question should visit the grave of David Jefferies,
who died at the Isle of Man TT in 2003. On the Yorkshireman's headstone
is written: "Those who risk nothing do nothing, achieve nothing, become
nothing."
But
even the riders themselves recognise the inherent selfishness of their
sport. If road racing is part of the fabric of Northern Irish life, as
Neeson proclaims in the film, then it is a torn and tattered tapestry,
however vibrant its colours.
"It's
a great life being on the edge all the time. I don't care, I guess
that's what it is. Maybe if I had a kid, that might change me. But I
can't see it."
Michael and William Dunlop are brothers off the road and fierce competitors on it
In
the film, Michael cries when describing the look in his granny's eyes
at Robert's funeral. "It will haunt me for the rest of my life," he
says. "I've never felt for somebody as much in my life."
But
Michael, road racing's undisputed current king and a man McGuinness
once told me "likes to kill dead things" on a bike, is every bit as
ferocious when defending his beloved sport from those he perceives to be
ignorant outsiders.
"I
don't expect them to judge my life, because I don't judge their lives,"
says Michael, who has won 11 races at the Isle of Man TT, including
eight at the last two meetings. "So I don't care what people think. The
media want to write stuff but they have no idea of what road racing
means to riders deep down."
Michael,
who has no time for any spiritual mumbo-jumbo, is unable or unwilling -
probably both - to let us in on road racing's deep secrets: "Unless
you've experienced it, it's not possible to describe what it's like."
Instead,
Michael will tell you he just throws his leg over a bike and rips it -
and that he'll be the one who gets away with it. That's all we need to
know.