MCN man survives suicidal pussy

MCN senior road tester Adam ‘Chad’ Child has only just calmed down after a cat ran out in front of him during his supersport qualifying lap at the NW200 races in Northern Ireland yesterday.

Aboard his distressingly shonky GSX-R600K8 race bike, Chad went on to do a 101.8mph lap, which qualified him in 45th place. Considering he’s never raced the circuit before, his GSX-R is 25bhp down on the leaders’ bikes and he was – not for the first time – distracted by wayward pussy, we have to admit it was a remarkable performance.

During a hilariously incoherent telephone conversation, the excitable Chad said afterwards: “I nearly hit that f**king cat. I mean, it was REALLY close. I was doing about 100mph and I thought ‘this is going to really hurt’. I could see the marshal holding the cat [it turned out the marshal was standing on the cat’s tail to stop it running on the track] then it escaped and shot across the road, tried to climb a bank, couldn’t, and ran back right in front of me. That place is proper scary even without cats – I did a full tank at an average of 100mph. It’s mad.”

Alastair Seeley qualified first in the Supersport class with an average speed of 116mph.