Hi Russ,

It was good to see you briefly at the North West last week. I was hoping you would reply to this thread, as I feel you may be a little more reasonable than perhaps Garry has been.
You are right when you say that a lot of the animosity contained in this thread goes back to a series of postings made on the RRR.com website recently. Garry made what I and several others considered to be derogatory and condescending remarks about a fellow competitor that were unfair and totally uncalled for. This competitor then went on to perform superbly at the North West 200, making his words look very silly indeed - but still he flatly refused to acknowledge this performance or even make any concession that he might have been proved wrong in any way.
Nobody minds criticism when it is constructive, but in my opinion failure to give any credit when it is so obviously due gives the original criticisms little credibility. I am well aware of the successes Garry has had in his career, and I think that it a terrible shame that someone of his experience who has so much to offer should choose to publicly belittle fellow competitors when he could instead be offering practical help and advice on how they could perhaps improve their performances.
I accept that my remarks about his one TT appearance might be viewed as a bit of a 'cheap shot' especially coming from someone who has never raced. I'm pretty sure it's the only time I've ever done something like that on this or any other site, but at the same time I would say that if you choose to publicly belittle people then you have to be prepared to take a little bit back yourself. People in glass houses, etc !
As it happens, I do agree up to a point with some of his views about 'slow' riders, especially in relation to the TT and MGP. I don't know how many hours I have spent over the past few months thinking about and writing about how the TT could be improved. One thing I am strongly in favour of would be more flexibility in the rules to allow riders who do the TT and are well off the pace to be able to drop down to the MGP. As it stands, once you have done a non-Production TT race that's it, you can't go back to the MGP. I think this should change, and now that we have the same organisation running both meetings I see no reason why this can't happen fairly soon. Then of course, there's the issue of competitors being able to race in the Production TT and MGP, but that's another matter that I think has already been covered enough!
I hope this goes some way to explaining some of the background to this thread, which will hopefully now be laid to rest. It would still be nice to hear some praise from Garry for the North West performance I was referring to, though....