This is really Chip Hennen and everything I said in my earlier posting was true (my personal email address is <A HREF="mailto:chennen@msn.com">chennen@msn.com</A>). We were told following Pat's accident that eyewitnesses saw him trying to wipe something from his visor just prior to the accident. Speculation was that a large bug had struck his visor and obscurred his vision. When we got his helmet back, there was no evidence of anything severely obscurring his vision. The woman who actually saw what really happened provided Pat and several other people with a pretty detailed account of what actually happened several years ago, and what she recounted did make perfect sense. Of course, the IOM organizers didn't want that story to be told, especially given the stature of my brother at the time. I also want to mention that there was no indication that Heron deliberately leaned on Pat as they went thru the corner. He simply didn't give Pat the room he needed to safely make it thru the corner, forcing him to the inside and against the curb. The race was a non-GP event and meant very little to my brother, but I think it meant an awful lot to Heron. Heron's racing career was in delcine in '78. According to his mechanic at that time (I think he had only one full-time mechanic), Tom had started to treat him very badly, blaming him in part for his poor performance on the track. His mechanic said he thought Tom was starting to ride way over his head and to be careful around him on the track. We took his words of caution very seriously, even though Pat rarely ever actually saw Heron on the track. Unfortunately, their paths crossed on the IOM a couple of months later, which is a very unforgiving track. Very sad to hear about the 4 riders who lost their lives on the IOM this week. Everytime a rider loses his life on the track, it dimmishes the sport and everyone who follows it immeasurably. There's no place in racing for anything that put's a riders life in imminent peril.