It is with great sadness that I find myself updating our website; We were all shocked and stunned to hear about the death of one of our sports greatest achievers and one of our teams riding heroes, Mika Ahola. Mika died from injuries sustained from a practice crash on the 15th a January 2012 and passed away in hospital.

Over the years we had watched Mika flourish from a young racer with bleached blonde hair who came and asked for his photograph to be taken with us to the consummate
professional and true champion he became with five consecutive World Enduro titles in all 3 classes.

Unlike many greats in sport Mika always had time, he would work as hard as everyone, probably harder, in the race and always with a smile on his face. After the toughest days riding he would still have time for fans. Even us losers! You would never hear Mika utter any angry words even if he had the worst results imaginable to him (2nd place!) and had the upmost respect for even the slowest Honda C90 rider. Below are our first and last images of Mika with us. We will miss you and your style happy Champion.

 Mika Ahola and The Sheep Skull Enduro riders 1999 ISDE Portugal

 

Mika and the Sheep Skull enduro riders, with his 5th World title, France 2011 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a slightly different note our long time commentator and friend has written a book of his life and its very long so if you find yourself bored and in need of a good read don't buy it. On the other hand if you been struggling with insomnia lately then here you go click the picture below follow this link and get your money spent, If you just lay there at night in bed counting sheep or joining the dead hand gang get your money out, its better than Nytol to get you off to sleep. Zzzzzz sorry I just dropped off there and I am only writing about it.

     

Following on from our Record Breaking shows at the 2010 Isle of Man TT races and at the Rocket Centre of Blackburn Lancashire.

Have a look at the Rocket Centre gallery.

   

 The Purple Helmets live on the Isle of Man in 'Castle Wintop' near to Injebreck, in West Baldwin.They sleep together in a large round bed and mostly eat twigs and leaves that they collect from local plantations. During still autumn nights they can often be heard singing each other to sleep and the orange glow from their peat fire can be seen from many miles away. None of the Purple Helmets go by their real names; they all have stage names to protect their identities from both women and dentists. Because they live on the edge of a reservoir the Purple Helmets are great swimmers, two of whom swam for the North West of England under 12's and the whole team have their brown life saving medallions.

 

 

 

 

 

There is no leader of the Purple Helmets, they have instead a form of democracy called "Clinglip", whereby hot stones are placed on their heads and whoever lasts the longest is allowed to make the decision. If one is lucky enough to examine the top of one of their heads when their helmets are off you will see the rotten scorch marks. These marks have never been photographed. The Purple Helmets love Italian food, seafood paella with skunk is their favourite. They will drink almost anything alcoholic and once got drunk on stale sherbet lemons and cheese cake brandy. Only eight of the Purple Helmets have been in prison, mostly for cruelty offences or poaching geese. There is a wi-fi connection at 'Castle Wintop'.