Irvinestown Rally Preparation Specialist Gerry McGarrity normally associated with four wheels shows his nephew Kyron how to do it.
It was third time lucky for the Enniskillen 100 recently with the sun shining on the special event at St Angelo.
Eddie McGovern, County Fermanagh Tourist Officer stated, today the heavens blessed us with the sunniest warmest day Enniskillen has seen in many a year. I’ve never seen so many bikes, riders and spectators at St Angelo’s – ever.
At one stage the Enniskillen 100 was on a par with the Ulster Grand Prix and the North West 200. It was really up there and the races ran from 1931 until 1952 apart from the war years.
Then it just dwindled and died out, through rising costs and lack of interest. But 60 years almost to the day we are having the Enniskillen 100 revival event at St Angelo Airport and we have got a fantastic array of bikes lined up,” concluded McGovern.
Well motorcycle fans, riders and just people enjoying a day out in Fermanagh’s sun were treated to a vision of what road racing was like 60 years ago at St Angelo’s.
It was an impressive array of new super bikes, road racers, modern and vintage bikes and the riders turned up in profusion to dazzle the crowd with real road racing. Their skills and efforts counted toward the Irish Short Circuit Championship.
The Enniskillen 100K road race was once a very popular event on the Irish road race calendar. On the track, running demonstration laps on the one mile circuit at St Angelo’s Airport was a 500cc Triumph that was raced at the original Enniskillen 100 and now belongs to former grass track and solo road race champion Gordon Bell.
Michael McGarrity, from the Organising Committee of the Enniskillen 100 Revival, said “it was an opportunity for people to trigger motorcycle memories of the past.
There seems to be a lot of interest in this event. In this part of the world from the 1970s on at St Angelo, they used to run great short circuit meetings.
People are looking forward to seeing and hearing the old bikes in particular and it is also a chance for the local people to see the local riders who will be able to give their bikes a run on the circuit as well”, concluded McGarrity.
