Safety fears 'before fan was killed at bike race'

Hill McCook, 75, was not in an officially prohibited area when a rider's bike hit him at the Armoy Race of Legends event in August last year.

But coroner John Leckey said he was killed in a fluke accident when the motorcyclist came off at 150mph and his machine hit a bank and somersaulted off the road.

The rider, Victor Gilmore, survived with broken bones but died in north Dublin on Sunday following another race crash.

Marshal Keith McMullan told the Belfast inquest: "I said this is a prohibited area, please move back behind the post.

"The two men seemed to be moving away from the area and I trusted them to move."

He said he later saw Mr McCook and best friend and nephew Raymond McMullan back in their original position before the accident happened.

"Standing at the fence means an awful lot. If you are on the road side of the fence it is seen as trackside which is not permitted for the public to stand. That is why marshals would use their own initiative," he added.

Investigator Tony Harvey told the inquest it can be almost impossible to predict the trajectory of a bike once its rider has lost control of it.

In this case it slid across the track and hit a bank, flipping 15ft into the air and its path was dictated by hedging and shrubbery.

Mr Leckey said: "This was a fluke accident and I accept entirely that the line of travel of the motorcycle once control is lost, particularly at high speed, is incapable of accurate prediction."

Spectators are prohibited from standing "trackside", however the definition of trackside can be more blurred if there is uneven ground beside the course.

Mr McCook, a former steel erector and widower from Station Road, Armoy, died at Hillside Road in the town at a part of the course known as Dean's Rise. The accident happened during the second lap of the grand final race.

Course clerk William Kennedy said the victim and his friend were not in a prohibited area.

"It is the desire for spectators over many years to be as close to the action as they possibly can," he said.

He added that race officials, governing bodies and everybody else involved in the sport were trying to educate people that motorcycling is dangerous and they do need to be further back from the action.

Standing in the area of the accident has since been prohibited and a race was stopped at this year's event when spectators refused to move from a dangerous position.

Mr Harvey, an incident official for the Motorcycle Union of Ireland, investigated the accident.

There were no mechanical failures in the bike but the front wheel lost traction as the rider was going round a fast corner and he lost control, he said.

He added: "Hill McCook had, like thousands of other spectators, been eagerly looking forward to motorcycling virtually on his own doorstep."

Mr McMullan, who shared a drink with the victim on the day of his death and was himself injured, said they had joked about building a tree hut at the same spot the next year.

Mr Leckey ruled that the victim died from unsurvivable multiple injuries, including the severing of a main blood vessel in his heart.