On a tiny island across the Atlantic, one of the world’s most unusual and dangerous sporting events is about to get underway.
The 30 mile-long Isle of Man sits in the middle of the Irish Sea, with England to the east and Ireland to the west. It once was the seat of a Viking kingdom; today Britain’s King Charles is head of state or lord of Man.
People born there are known as “Manx,” and the isle has its own unique language, and a tailless cat, also called manx. A few hundred years ago it was known as a haven for smugglers. The buccaneers are gone…bankers have now turned the isle into a tax haven. But as we first reported last fall, what drew us to the Isle of Man was not the beauty or the banking, but a hair-raising annual event that at first glance seems totally out of place on this little jewel of an island.
With emerald fields and rugged coastlines dotted with ruins of medieval castles, the pace of life on the Isle of Man is slow, even sleepy… for 50 weeks of the year.
But for two weeks starting at the end of May, it becomes one of the loudest… fastest… most dangerous places in sport.
Peter Hickman: It’s like nothing else. No matter what you’ve done in your life, Until you see a bike do what we’re doing here, nothing compares, at all.
British motorcycle racer Peter Hickman is one of the best in the world, and a 13 time winner of a race known as the Isle of Man TT, short for both tourist trophy and time trial. Not long before we met Hickman, we watched him fly over the first jump on the course at a place known as Ago’s Leap.
