Mid Antrim 150: Clough road race set to return in 2022 after six-year absence from calendar
- Published
Poor weather and a resulting poor turnout of spectators blighted the 2016 Mid Antrim meeting
The Mid Antrim 150 is set to return to the Irish road racing calendar in 2022 after a six-year absence.
The organising club has been working hard to put the event on a solid financial footing again after poor weather blighted the 2016 meeting.
The race has been pencilled in for 12-13 August, although those dates may change if a potentially revived Ulster Grand Prix takes place at Dundrod around the same period next year.
The club hope to confirm dates soon.
Race 'now financially viable'
"Our application has been submitted but if those preferred dates do not work out, we have the option of two other dates," explained Mid Antrim Club chairman Davy McCartney.
"One of those is a week earlier on 5-6 August, just after the Armoy races, and the other is a date in September.
"We will be working with the same team that ran the meeting in 2016 but we believe the event is now financially very viable and we have been given the go-ahead by the Motor Cycle Union of Ireland (MCUI).
"We have four or five sponsors who have already agreed to come on board and hopefully one of those will be our title sponsor so we expect to have a respectable prize fund.
"We have recovered from the financial difficulties we had in 2016 and are hopeful many of our previous sponsors will also continue to back us."
Heavy rain caused the Mid Antrim 150 paddock to become a quagmire in early April 2016
'Feedback from riders positive'
In the absence of their road race, last held in April 2016, the Mid Antrim Club has successfully staged the Neil and Donny Robinson Memorial meeting at both the Bishopscourt and Kirkistown circuits in recent years and hope to organise that event in tandem with the road event held over the Clough course next year.
"We plan to go back to the original paddock and start-line near Clough village in 2022 - we just ideally need some tarmacking and improvements carried out to improve the road surface," added the Mid Antrim chairman and recently elected Chair of the MCUI Ulster Centre.
"If the Covid pandemic hadn't happened we may have been able to run in 2021 but we have received great support from the Armoy, Cookstown and Tandragee organisers, who are all fully behind us to get the race up and running.
Dublin native Derek Sheils won the feature Grand Final race when the meeting was last staged in 2016
"The feedback we have had from the racers has been very positive too. They like the course and are looking forward to coming back so we are confident of attracting a good quality field from Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
"Because of the continued uncertainty surrounding the Covid pandemic and to help us be aware of how many spectators are coming we are considering running a closed event in the same manner as the Cookstown 100 has for the last few years and the Armoy this year.
"Personally I think that is the way forward for the sport here."
In addition to the Mid Antrim having been absent in recent years, the Bush and Enniskillen national road races have fallen off the calendar.
The Tandragee 100 has not taken place in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic but is set to return for its 60th anniversary year in 2022.