ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses spectator accounts of attendance at the Tourist Trophy (TT) races, to ascertain the extent to which the TT is discursively constructed and performatively experienced as a sacred journey, place-as-shrine, community and/or form of ritual practice. It addresses how this relates to motorcycling and, more specifically, spectator experience of the TT races in the Isle of Man. The chapter examines a wider notion of the TT as 'sacred journey', rather than spiritual practices at the TT races per se. Part of this sense of enchantment emanates from co-presence and part of it from the liminal qualities of the 'time-space' or place-temporality of the TT festival, situated as it is on an Island in the middle of the Irish Sea. However, the demographics of TT spectators showed them largely to be made up of middle age, middle class men with disposable income. Self-identification with the TT event is materialised and communicated through the purchase of TT-branded merchandise.
