Alan Turner tells of a very special reunion at Stafford when, thanks to Holland’s Ferry Brouwer, Des Heckle was reunited with his record-breaking 250cc Yamaha TD1C sprint bike of 46 years ago.
While much was taking place at April’s Carole Nash Classic MotorCycle Show at Stafford, away from the crowds a very low-profile meeting finally brought together a motorcycle and two people for whom, and for different reasons, it represented joy and frustration.
In the 1960s, sprinting and the new sport of drag racing regularly made headline news. In a sensational performance somebody would set a time, or speed, that eclipsed a previous effort, and then someone else would come along and go quicker. Standards of engineering, and the quality of the preparation, improved beyond measure, and as well as the usual events, there were regular tilts at the shorter-distance world records. These often took place on the long runway at Elvington, near York.
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