Antrim man's new road racing book highlighs 'speed, skills and scares'

Award-winning Antrim photographer Stephen Davison’s new book The Wee Roads is a visual journey covering the history and drama of local road racing – former and current – throughout Ireland.

With over one hundred nationwide colour images, including photos of the Dunlop family, Guy Martin and other high profile racers, this is an essential record of Ireland’s fastest and most compelling of sports.

Stephen Davison grew up watching the Dunlop family in action after attending his first motorcycle road races during the 1970s. Inspired by their skill, he began photographing the sport and has been covering road racing for over twenty-five years as a photographer and journalist. The joint owner of photographic agency Pacemaker Press, Davison works for a wide range of international publications.

He has also been a contributor to the documentary films Closer to the Edge and Road, and this is his tenth book on road racing.

Ireland has always been the spiritual home of road racing. From Clonakilty to Cookstown, to the marquee events of the North West 200 and Ulster Grand Prix and across a rich calendar of National meetings, Irish roads have produced the sport’s greatest races and riders.

It was on these public roads, transformed each summer into racing circuits, that riders like Michael Dunlop and his uncle, Joey, would hone the racing skills that would see them become the most successful road racers of all time. Unlike the professionally funded circuits of MotoGP and the World Superbike paddock, Irish road racing remains a fiercely grassroots endeavour – run by volunteers and staged in villages and towns where everyday life pauses for speed.

As a photographer who first discovered the sport as a boy in 1974, Stephen Davison has spent a lifetime documenting its beauty and danger. The images in these pages are a stirring tribute to the people, places and spirit of Irish road racing.

He said: “On race weekends, normal life is suspended on the narrow byways of the Irish National scene as motorbikes roar into action beneath a backdrop of big skies, green glens and rolling hills amongst tiny hamlets and villages you might struggle to find any mention of on a map.

“The conditions found at events such as Kells or Tandragee bear no resemblance to the purpose-built tracks and exotica of motorcycle racing’s MotoGP and World Superbike series. Despite the best efforts of the organisers, facilities in Ireland remain basic, with minimal safety features. In an environment littered with natural hazards, the best hope can only be to make things safer, although never safe.

“My first experience of Irish road racing came on a June day in 1974 at the Killinchy 150 meeting. Thrilled and terrified in equal measure, that thirteen-year-old boy, captivated by the spectacle, has been a follower of the sport ever since. The camaraderie and excitement I discovered on those good days out with family and friends drew me into a world I wanted to be part of; one I would find my place in, not as a competitor but as a photographer.

“While I have had the good fortune to witness and record road racing all over the world, it has always been the smaller Irish National events closest to home that have retained the greatest fascination. Punching well above their weight in terms of impact and legacy, these grassroot events epitomise the true nature of the sport in places where rural byways are transformed into race tracks over a summer weekend. Captured over the past two decades, the images are a very personal experience of Irish National road racing. Documenting the changing rhythms of a weekend’s action, they illustrate every aspect of the challenges road riders face whilst competing on the ‘Wee Roads’.