Death comes to sport only occasionally and always suddenly. It doesn’t clear its throat, it never asks permission. It has no manners at all. When it does visit, it leaves its stain – deep and lasting and permanently outside the order of things. People shouldn’t die playing sport. When they do, it feels obvious to ask if the game is worth the candle.
Craig Breen’s death on Thursday stilled the day of anyone who heard about it. You didn’t need to know the front end of a rally car from the back of a Mini Cooper to recognise the name. The Waterford driver went off the road during a testing session ahead of a World Rally Championship event in Croatia and lost his life. He was 33.
Across the broad spectrum of sports that grab Irish people, rallying wouldn’t make claims for much more than its own small corner. But it has its constituency in pockets around the country and if you’ve ever been to a race in the flesh, you’ll know that few sports have a more devoted fan base. They will stand out in all weathers, huddled in makeshift viewing spots, putting in long waits for short glimpses of the cars and drivers as they flash by.
[ Death of Craig Breen in Croatia crash leaves Irish motorsport community in shockOpens in new window ]
The beauty of sport is that the tribes all get to settle and separate themselves where they like. When Des Cahill would break off from a Premier League match on the radio at the weekend and bring news of Breen finishing third somewhere in northern Europe, he probably wasn’t talking to you or me or most people. But the rally crowd would know. They’d have the context, they’d do the sums in their heads and clock whether or not third was any good without having to be told.
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The point is, every sport has its people. They give themselves to it naturally. They don’t overthink it. The rallying crowd are into their sport the same way as you are into rugby or football or whatever. We forget, in our immersion, that every sport is silly and pointless in its own particular way. The ability to convince ourselves that it all makes logical sense is sport’s most beautiful delusion.
Craig Breen knew rallying was a sport that can end a life. He knew it far more intimately and profoundly than any of us on the outside. His friend and co-driver Gareth ‘Jaffa’ Roberts died sitting alongside him in a crash in Sicily in 2012 and in all the years since, he never stopped talking about him, never drew a veil over his loss. His Twitter bio still carries the line, “Living to achieve our dream, miss you Jaff.”
And yet, to those of us on the outside, it seems impossible that anyone of sane mind could will themselves back into the seat of a rally car that had taken the life of their best friend. It feels very difficult to grasp on to the thought process that not only makes it possible to race again but that allows a person to thrive doing so. Breen didn’t just get back in the car, he went on to become one of the world’s elite drivers over the decade that followed.
Somewhere along the way, all lovers of motorsport must make an accommodation with the fact that people die doing it. These sports are safer now than at any point in their history but deaths still happen and will always happen. And yet the fact of it doesn’t repel the people who love them.
Only a couple of weeks ago, Dublin District Coroner’s Court heard the inquest into the death of William Dunlop, killed during practice for a motorbike race in Skerries in 2018. William’s father was the legendary Robert Dunlop, who died during practice for the NorthWest 200 in 2008. Robert’s brother was Joey, the hero of all heroes, who died during a race in Estonia in 2000.
Sitting in the gallery at the coroner’s court was Michael Dunlop, brother of William, son of Robert, nephew of Joey. In six weeks’ time, Michael will head to the Isle of Man for the famous TT races and, if everything goes according to form, he will move into second place (behind Joey) on the all-time list of Isle of Man TT race wins. His brother, father and uncle are all buried in a few square metres of the same graveyard in the Antrim countryside, all sent there by motorbike crashes at the elite end of the sport. And still he carries on.
Who are any of us to say that he’s wrong to do so? Or that Craig Breen was wrong? Or that anyone who lands on motorsport as their chosen vocation needs to have a rethink? People are who they are. They love what they love. If rallying or superbikes or whatever else is what gives them meaning, the rest of us really have no business tutting and shaking our heads.
If anything, we ought to be envious. Or at least admiring. Imagine loving a sport so much you’re willing to push your life to the precipice for it. The people who do that aren’t treating life cheaply. They are, in fact, paying life the ultimate measure of respect. They are living it right up to the very last speck of white space left on the page. All in the name of sport.
For most of us, that’s incomprehensible. Sport is fun. Sport is ephemeral. Sport is an escape from the heavy lifting of real life. And that’s fine too. Sport gives you that option. Find your own tribe and do it your way. Take or leave. Swim or paddle. Sprint or jog.
Craig Breen went his way and he gave it everything he had and everything he was. Hopefully that’s enough this weekend to soothe the sadness of the people who have lost him.
