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says. "I did two laps at a similar speed. The first one I did was on a TT2 Ducati, a 600 twin Ducati, in 1984. The other was on a G50 Matchless at the Manx Grand Prix in maybe 1989." But it was the 1984 victory in the Classic TT that means the most to Roper. "The race was held in mixed weather conditions," he recalls. "It started dry, but on the first lap I started seeing the clouds roll in over the mountains. On the second lap, it started rain- ing in spots. At some places the road would be dry, and it would be raining and some places the road would be wet, but the sun was out. It was in the evening... They had three races that day, and this was the third race, so it started when the sun was low and dazzling off the raindrops on your windscreen. It was very mixed conditions, and a couple people got caught out by the rain, including John Cronshaw— he fell at Creg-Na-Ba in the rain. Depending on where you start- ed, you hit the rain in different places. So, in that sense, it was sort of a crapshoot. Any success in racing has a lot to do with good fortune and the ill fortune of your competitors. But it was a real race, and we did win it." If you crash on the Mountain Course, you normally don't walk away. Roper survived three crashes there. "I crashed there at least three times," Roper says. "In '84, I spun it out at the Gooseneck and broke my scaphoid, in practice. I had a friend who worked at Nobles Hospital, and she hooked me up with the right people and came up with a brace and the doctor there signed me off. I had to see the chief medical officer for the race, and he had me do a push-up and so forth, and they let me race. "In '93, I was racing the 350 Benelli four-cylinder, and I crashed that at Quarter Bridge at walking speed. We had routed the brake cable wrong, and the junction box was hanging up, and I couldn't steer the thing. So no damage. In the race, I crashed big-time at Caramoor, ran wide and hit the bank on the outside of the corner. I dislocat- ed my right hip while I was still on the bike, ricocheted off the bank, and the last thing I remem- ber was the hay bale in front of the lightpole that I hit. The next thing I remember is being lifted into the helicopter. I broke my ankle and dislocated my hip. It turned out to be quite minor, and I won a race at Steamboat Springs 17 days later." Roper crashed one final time at the Isle of Man. In 2005, in the Manx GP, he slid off at Windy Corner, landing safely in a gravel trap. But tragedy struck just a few miles down the road at the 32nd-mile marker. A fellow classic racer was killed. "It very much affected me," Roper says. "That year, five very respected, experienced, sober classic racers were killed there, including a good friend. I never kidded myself at all about the risk there. I remember many times going to the start and thinking to myself, 'This could be the last time. Do you really want to do this?' And each time, I really wanted to do it. But my attitude changed, and I thought, 'I've had a really good run here and gotten away with it, and maybe we should leave it at that.' So I think I'm cured from needing to race there anymore. If I could go back every decade or so and do a lap of honor, it would be great. I love the place, and I'm sure I will be back to spectate, but I think I'm cured of needing to race there." It was his last competitive race on the Mountain Course. "I've still got the monkey on my back," he says with a chuck- le. "The last time I rode across the pond was at the Centenary for the TT in 2007. We restored the G50 we won the race with, and I did a lap of honor with that, which was fun." CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the August 4, 2010, issue of Cycle News. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to pre- vent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still plan- ning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor CN III ARCHIVES P134 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives