Race chief Mervyn Whyte stunned by fatal crash

North West 200 Event Director Mervyn Whyte said the tragic death of young English rider Malachi Mitchell-Thomas hit him harder than any setback he has faced in his 16-year involvement with the race.

Whyte was present at the scene of the 20-year-old’s crash on Saturday as the MCUI medical team fought in vain to save his life.

Sadly, he passed away at the scene and Whyte told the News Letter that the incident has left him pondering his own future at the helm of the famous road race.

“It’s hard to accept when this happens and I was at the scene the whole time they were treating Malachi,” he said.

“He was alive initially and the medical team worked at him for a period of 45 minutes, but unfortunately he didn’t make it and it’s a sad loss.

“It definitely hit me for six and really affected me. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a fatality at the actual circuit in my 16 years and it really hit home.

“We’ve lost a young lad in the prime of his life, who had a great future ahead of him,” said Whyte.

“I wandered up the road on my own to try and clear my mind and decide what I was going to do but it was clear that the only thing to do was to call it off.”

Whyte was faced with several serious accidents involving Ben Wilson, Ryan Farquhar and Nico Mawhinney, plus a fire on Thursday evening and a bomb scare on Saturday, which turned out to be a false alarm.

The North West has been plagued by fatal accidents, delays and stoppages in recent years and Whyte admits the event has become ‘very difficult’ to manage.

“The event has progressed massively over the past five or six years especially and it feels like a runaway train,” he said.

“There are more challenges to deal with and at some stage I’ll have to pull the plug and I don’t know what will happen then.

“The North West is different to other road races, it’s run in a highly residential area and brings in a massive amount of spectators,” added Whyte.

“That leads to other problems as we saw. It’s become very difficult.”

Whyte feels he needs additional government support to help ease the workload of running Ireland’s biggest race.

“I feel the government should be getting more involved and coming in to give us full-time support with the running of the event,” he said.

“We need a more commercial approach in the future where the event is promoted and run in similar to how other major events in the country are run.”