That glorious day Sir Stirling Moss raced through the streets of Dundalk

I was around six-years-old when I saw the legendary Sir Stirling Moss up close. It was 1989 and I was on the school grounds of St Mary's College, just off St Mary's Road in Dundalk.

From recollection it was around Summertime - the surviving, sun-bleached video footage of the race around Dundalk that day seems to back this belief up (it was in fact late summer - September).

There was an incredible sense of excitement in the air around the town that day. Even as a usually oblivious whipper-snapper, I could feel it. Dundalk was alive. The streets were thronged and the local people were in such incredible form. Everyone, it seemed, was happy.

This was Dundalk in Monte Carlo-mode. Temporary seating was erected along the route of the race, with some crash barriers in strategic locations. The main straight - from what I can remember - was along the Inner Relief Road from the junction at St Helena's Park to the right-hand turn at the Greenore Bar heading towards the town centre.

Looking at it now, on the YouTube video, it looks incredibly unsafe and a health and safety officer's very worst nightmare come true - excitable kids, limited barriers and high-speed motor vehicles careening along narrow, heavily-populated streets!

But this was a different era, and no-one, as it turned out died in the end.

Stirling Moss was signing autographs in the St Mary's grounds before the race. I had just watched him drive in through the entrance to rapturous applause. My father, who would have been around the same age as I am now, was as animated as I had ever seen him. He had grown up on the legend of Stirling Moss. And now, here he was, about to race in Dundalk on a sunny September day.

He was wearing the type of helmet that he would have worn during his pomp as a Formula 1 driver in the 1950s - it looked like something Biggles would have worn in the cockpit of a World War 1 biplane - a world away from the modern incarnations, even back then.

It had no enclosed front and only a limited visor peaking over the top - you could easily make out who any driver was back then.

He had the refined elegance of a true English gent - and he was afforded the same reverence by those who queued up to get his signature that day.

This was 1989 remember - the height of the Troubles and a time when Dundalk had a reputation that it still struggles to shake-off today - but here was probably the most famous English racing driver never to have won a Formula 1 world championship title in Dundalk.

The Dundalk street races, as they became known, were all thanks to well-known local businessman Phil Monahan (pictured above with Stirling Moss). Through connections that extended far beyond the confines of this town, Monahan was able to get Stirling Moss to take part in an event the likes of which Dundalk has never seen since.

As we continue to deal with these strange times today -with empty streets and difficult physical and emotional isolation for so many - perhaps there will be a day in the near future when Dundalk will once again breathe with the sound of plentiful life and joyous release, as it did that day back in September 1989.

PS. Even though the legendary Sir Stirling Moss took to the streets, it was one of our own - Noel Roddy - who set the lap record that day 31 years ago.

Sir Stirling Moss (1929-2020)