VOLUME 59 ISSUE 26 JUNE 28, 2022 P133
around the circuit, people were
waving their programs and stuff
at me, so I thought, 'Well, I must
be doing pretty good anyway.' It
was really quite a heavy feeling."
Roper's love affair with the Isle
of Man began a decade earlier,
when he ventured there as a
spectator in 1974.
"The shipyard I was working for
sent me to Scotland, and I bought
a Norton Commando and rode
down to Liverpool and took the
ferry over and spectated," Roper
recalls. "I was club racing back
then, and the first thing that went
through my mind was, 'Would I
race here?' My first impression
was, 'No way, it's way too danger-
ous.' But after riding around for a
while, I thought, 'Here I am, riding
an unfamiliar bike that shifts on
the wrong side, I'm riding on the
wrong side of the street, and I'm
riding at night in the rain—is that
[racing] any less dangerous?' I
didn't answer the question, but I
left it open."
It took a while, but Roper even-
tually made his way back to the
TT as a racer.
"In 1981, a friend in England,
who had bought a bike from Rob
Iannucci, proposed that I race
there," Roper says. "I went to the
Manx Grand Prix in 1981 to give
it serious consideration. Then
I raced at the TT in '82. I rode
the Formula Three TT on a 350
Aermachi. The guy who set it up
for me also rode in the Formula
Three TT and he was a superb
teacher. We'd go out together in
practice and I would follow him. If
he kept his head under the bub-
ble through this blind bend, then
I knew I could, too. And then he
would drill me off the track: 'What
comes after Union Mills?' And
then we would drive around in
the van and walk the roads... An
excellent teacher."
Learning your way around the
treacherous 37.73–mile Mountain
Course takes years, with racers
competing in as many different
classes as possible to get in as
much practice as possible. But
Roper was a quick study, and he
left there after that first year with
workable knowledge of the track.
And a yearning to return.
"There is always more to learn
there, and particularly the faster
the bike, the more you have to
know how much to back off, how
much to brake and so forth,"
Roper says. "On that bike, I was
reasonably comfortable. I could
run back in my mind a reason-
able replay of the lap after that
first TT."
Just like that, Roper was ad-
dicted. He went back in 1982 to
race a Kawasaki in Formula Two
and a Ducati in Formula One.
And the fast laps started coming.
"Later, in one of the Manx
GPs, I did a 102.5-mph lap or
something on a G50," Roper
Dave Roper at the
1989 Manx GP.
