| All sport carries risks, mountain climbing and big ocean yacht racing are very similar in risk to true road racing but no-one tries to ban them.
The IOM is unique now and would never get off the ground if you wrote the format onto a clean sheet of paper and took it to the authorties for approval, - so you want to have a few hundred motorcycles travelling at 170 MPH plus through towns and villages where people live and its going to run for 2 weeks??.
No matter how you try and improve safety, one look at any on board footage would convince you its impossible, you'd need miles of air fence and removal of miles of trees and dry stone walls.
I'd agree riders have a choice and don't have to go BUT most riders are sponsored and its their sponsors who may choose to push a rider to attend purely for commercial reasons. Companies do use IOM results in advertising, maybe this needs to be considered and reduced.
Its a dinosaur of an event and will gradually lose its appeal, remove the commercial side and it'll go a lot quicker. Personally I'll be glad when it does but not if it ends up being banned.  |