Glenn Irwin had hoped to make his Isle of Man TT debut this year after signing for the Honda Racing team.

Glenn Irwin was putting on a brave face following Monday’s announcement that the 2021 Isle of Man TT had been cancelled, leaving the Ulster rider with a further wait to make his eagerly awaited debut at the event.

Irwin planned to compete at the TT for the first time this year after signing for the Honda Racing team until the Covid-19 outbreak put the brakes on his maiden appearance at the festival.

And now the global pandemic has thwarted the race organisers for the second successive year, with the Manx Government unable to ‘commit to welcoming tens of thousands of people to the Island in June despite the progress towards a vaccination programme’.

The news comes as a huge blow to road racing on the back of a challenging year for the sport, when only one Irish road race took place with the Cookstown 100 in September.

Uncertainty remains over the 2021 calendar and the News Letter understands the North West 200 is set to be postponed until later in the summer, while the future of the Ulster Grand Prix remains in doubt as a result of crippling debts.

Four-time North West 200 winner Irwin said:

“I’m sad because I’m not going to get to the TT next year and when it’s something you really want, then it leaves you hurt that you can’t have it.

“From a rider’s perspective, I look at what it changes for me. If we had started off at the TT this year then maybe I could have been successful there from the age of 32 or 33, but when the TT comes around again in 2022 I’ll be 32 – all being well – and that means I could be 34 or 35 before I’m successful at the TT.

“I do have dreams and now they’re just further along in terms of a timeline,” added the Carrickfergus man.

“But the Manx residents must come first and they have things under control over there, so I wouldn’t want to be part of a group that could put that at risk just because of a desire to race around the Mountain Course.

“There’s no reason why the TT won’t come back bigger and better in 2022 and I think it will.”

Irwin has yet to finalise his plans for next season but he still hopes to make his belated TT debut with Honda.

“I haven’t signed for anyone yet although it looks likely I’ll continue with Honda, so therefore my TT debut next year would have been on the Fireblade,” he said.

“I do hope that for 2022 my situation is very much the same and that I get the chance to take the Fireblade to the TT, which won’t be a new bike as such by then, although it will still be new to road racing – if that is something that all parties still want.

“In this game I don’t think you hit your peak now until your late thirties because we’re all getting fitter and fitter. If you can maintain the hunger and desire, then I think you’ll be an even stronger rider a few years down the line.”

The Northern Ireland man says he fully understands the decision to call the event off, citing the health and wellbeing of the Isle of Man residents as the most important factor.

“It’s not a disaster when you sit back and look at it – a disaster would be if we all went to the TT and ended up creating a situation where people were put at risk from Covid, particularly older people because we all have parents or elderly people we know, and I just wouldn’t want to see that,” added Irwin.

“In the past I might have been thinking about only myself in this situation, but that’s not the case anymore and we’ve got to protect the island and the people.

“That is the truth and if the North West 200 and our social lives depended on whether or not people could travel over to see the North West, we wouldn’t want that locally either.

“It’s the right decision and these things aren’t organised in a month or two, it takes a lot longer than that, so we’ll just have to wait a little longer.”