With a projected crowd of around 100,000 people, the best-attended sporting event in Ireland this year is taking place this weekend. But not so that you would notice. Huge hordes will watch the North West 200 motorcycle races this Saturday afternoon but beyond the Northern media coverage and interest it will be all but non-existent. Welcome to the strange, cocooned world of this country's best kept sporting secret.
They have been racing machines on the triangle of coastal roads that link Portstewart, Coleraine and Portrush since 1929. Seventy years ago, the inaugural races were won on bikes whose names - Zenith, JAP, Rudge and Velocette - are redolent of another age when technological progress was taking its first teetering steps. Now the speeds they can reach have all but doubled and to the casual, dispassionate observer the concept remains faintly ludicrous and almost certainly insane.
These narrow, twisting roads which for 364 days of the year carry commuter and holiday traffic between two picturesque seaside towns are closed and are taken over by men who will throw their finely-tuned bikes into the corners and then push them out at jaw-dropping speeds on the straights. And did we mention the small matter of negotiating the roundabouts as well. Just another minor detail.
The lap records give some indication of the madcap nature of it all - the course record for the biggest Superbike machines is credited to one Jim Moodie at 122.32 m.p.h. Just slightly faster than your normal suburban saloon car. All this is undertaken with only the negligible protection of a set of leathers and a helmet between a faller and the tarmac. There is no comfort zone and no margin for error. The North West organisers do not yet require you to be certifiable to race. But it almost certainly helps.
Given all the obvious safety issues, the North West 200 is something of an anomaly in world bike racing. At a time when all the major world championships are now contested over specially-designed closed circuits, at the North West they are still racing over standard issue roads in the same way they have been doing for most of this century. Only the TT over the mountainous roads of the Isle of Man can come close to rivalling its appeal.
The build-up begins in earnest just after Easter every year with various smaller-scale road races throughout the North, mostly on more narrow and more treacherous roads than at the North West. To arrive at one of these meetings is to stumble into another world. All winter these people have spent cold nights beavering away in garages and lock-ups tinkering with bikes, stripping them down and then rebuilding them in optimistic pursuit of that extra edge that is the difference between an also-ran and a contender.
You look at them and you wonder just exactly where they have come from. This is a sporting constituency quite unlike any other because they remain blissfully uninterested in any other sport beyond bike racing. These are not football fans or rugby buffs who dabble now and again in bikes. This is an obsession and there is no room for anything else.
One of the great mysteries is why this fascination with motorcycle racing is confined almost exclusively to the north eastern corner of the island. When, for example, was the last time you read about a road race in Waterford, Kerry or Galway? One theory runs something like this. With first the shipyards and then the aircraft factories, Belfast and its hinterland has always been a centre for engineering and mechanical innovation. It was inevitable that the fascination with machinery in the workplace would then spill over into leisure time. The ready availability of parts and expertise made the entire enterprise even easier. As a result, the tradition of racing bikes and cars runs very deep here - the plethora of circuits like Kirkistown, Nutts Corner and Bishopscourt within a 30 mile radius of Belfast is testimony to that. The North West 200 is simply carrying on the torch.
But its enduring appeal goes beyond the mere tug of tradition. The rich tapestry of the sport is peopled with characters whose dedication and occasional bloody-mindedness inspire open-mouthed awe. Imagine the courage and strength of will required to be a National Hunt jockey, multiply those qualities by 10 and you might start to come close.
Take Joey Dunlop, one of the most fascinating and intriguing sporting personalities plying his trade anywhere today. He was 47 in February but on Saturday he will get up on Hondas in the 125cc, 250cc, 600cc and Superbike races searching for a record-equalling 14th win at the North West. At an age when most men complain and grumble about their aches and pains after 18 holes of golf on a Saturday morning, Dunlop is still racing state of the art motorcycles against men less than half his age.
His wonderfully sceptical response to the whole notion of probing questions by eager young television and newspaper interviewees is reminiscent of Lester Pigott at his monosyllabic best. And like the legendary flat jockey, Joey has now reached that level of sporting greatness where he can be identified by his Christian name alone. There is no reason why he won't continue to race right into his 50s. Dunlop's fame is truly international, a legacy of that golden age between 1982 and 1986 when he was Formula One world champion five years in succession. Add to that 23 wins at the Isle of Man TT and you have a man popularly reckoned to be the best rider of the modern era.
Philip McCallen looks like the man most likely to assume Dunlop's mantle. He holds the unique distinction of being the only rider to win five races on North West day in 1992 and has 11 wins overall at the meeting. McCallen returns to the North West this year having faced down the prospect of permanent back injury after an horrific accident last May. For a slight man he displays incredible strength and power on top of a bike and has that rare innate talent to coax more out of his machines than those around him. If any of Saturday's races settle down to a straight fight between McCallen and Dunlop, it will have all the echoing resonance of the old order meeting the new head on.
Fear is not a word that looms large in the lexicon of any of the riders who will line up on the grid at the North West 200 on Saturday afternoon. Heroism is a word whose currency has been devalued by all the excitable and overblown, end of the millennium sports coverage. But make no mistake. These men are heroes.
