Year: 2023

2023 Road Racing NOT Cancelled :

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IMPORTANT UPDATE 15/03/2023 :

The Motorcycle Union of Ireland (Ulster Centre) have just announced via release on their Facebook Page that motorcycle road racing in Northern Ireland is now set to go ahead in 2023.

A new quote has been obtained re the otherwise unaffordable insurance that had cancelled all motorcycling events in Northern Ireland. This quote, along with the funds raised by the generous donations of motorcycle fans, now means that Northern Irish Road Racing events can now go ahead.

Let’s go racing in 2023!

**(Other than the addition of ‘NOT’ to the title of this post, everything else will remain unedited as an accurate account of the events leading up to the cancellation of all 2023 Motorcycling events as well as what has happened since that initial cancellation).

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Yes, unfortunately that title is correct! As of the 10th February all Northern Irish Motorcycling events have been cancelled (except Motocross). That’s all road, track and trials racing!

And in one simple statement that is ‘devastating news.’

It has been a crazy 24 hours for Northern Irish road racing, and furthermore a crazy 3 or 4 days for Irish Motorcycle events. As as the time went by over the course of today it simply got worse. But where did it all start and what happened when?

By now you will have seen Social Media flooded with the news that all motorcycle events in Northern Ireland, scheduled for 2023, have been cancelled. All the press have picked up on it, the internet has been on fire with rumour and the outcry from both the motorcycling fraternity and the public has been very noticeable and vocal, but how did we get here?

Where did it start?

Since early this year there have been whispers that insurance was proving difficult to obtain for the year ahead. As the early part of this year progressed and the countdown to the year’s opening events got closer, those whispers had become very poorly kept secrets. It was pretty much common knowledge that the price of insurance was being quoted at a level that was simply prohibitively expensive.

To put it in context the figures being spoken about are – insurance for the 2022 Season was about £170,000. The quotes for 2023 were around the £400,000 mark.

Hope however remained that this would be sorted out and another nail in the coffin of road racing could be avoided. As we got into the final weeks of January and into the first week of February this hope had started to turn into worry.

I have already posted on 30th January 2023 about the impending insurance crisis. Unfortunately those worries turned out to be a mere week away from becoming a reality.

On the 8th February 2023 one of the first official statement from Motorcycling Ireland was issued and it made for very grim reading indeed.

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