as hard as concrete or tarmac. The Osprey lads

in the water were with me in an instant and I

was helped up into the rescue boat. Then they

had to find the bike. The buoy had popped out,

but its cord had snapped in the crash. I had

covered about 34 metres across the surface,

and with the bottom of the lake dropping away

from a depth of 1.5 metres, just off the end of

the ramp, to about 35 metres further out, I had

lost the Suzuki in about 10 metres of water. The

water in Bala Lake is famously clear, but if you

have a small fleet of motor boats racing around

on the surface and a motorbike slamming into

the lake bed, you’re going to disturb a lot of silt

from the bottom.

When the divers eventually located the bike

they had to attach floatation bags to it and a line

from the winch on the Osprey boat to haul the

bike up. It all took quite a while, so I sat on the

Above: Losing speed caused the front wheel to

start dropping.

beach with the others, chatting about what we

thought had gone wrong.

As I waited at the start point,

my head was buzzing,

everything suddenly seemed

to be perfectly clear.

Porpoising had been the problem. I needed

to pile on the power while accelerating in

the run-up but avoid letting the front wheel

leave the ground, because when it came back

down it had started that bouncing, porpoising

going for the record   197