Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends, come inside come inside.
The ‘Great Escape’ as it was known amongst UK ISDT fans, possibly the ‘Great Escape 2’ to those who are most familiar also with the events around the ISDT 1914, is one of the iconic events in the international off-road motorcycle reliability series dedicated to testing motorcyclist and motorcycle endurance where they did not expect machines to excel for a mere continuous 24 hours but a full 6 days to test their mechanical stamina and that of the riders mounted on them. You will find an embedded copy of the video down underneath the below photo of a British Norton.
image- frame clipped from the NSU promotional movie of a British team Norton ISDT 1939
For a number of years http://www.audi.de through their online shop have been selling videos based on a promotional movie made for their NSU motorcycle marque that lies as part of the original Volkswagen Audi AG company heritage. In recent years they have continued to promote this heritage of the NSU brand by distribution of media material on their online store, which we linked to in our blog post here. However, we sadly noted recently that they are no longer listing availability of the DVD for the 1939 event for ISDT fans to purchase meaning it is no longer available. After some thought I have decided that in the interest of research and education into historic off road motorcycling and ISDT events that our own copy of the video should become a public resource up until any time in the future Audi.de decide to market this video again.
Therefore STT can announce the availability, for the moment, of this important memory of an ISDT event nearly 80 years ago… yes that’s nearly as old as my dear old mum….. sit back and be amazed at what these bikes could do in the hands of the expert riders of those days
I would welcome if anyone is able to identify and name every rider they spot by entrant number and name and post it here as a bit of crowd source content I would be happy to produce a cast list on this page helping family of those here to discover their family heritage in the ISDT
The entry list can be found here
Photo – unknown rider changing tyre ISDT 1939
Speed Track Tales 
Greetings Unable to download the 1939 ISDT video, Is it available elsewhere, does anyone have a copy. J Graham Oates was riding in this event, he retired early on but continued to collect his fuel allocation, which he stored in a churn. When the Brits were pulled from the event, (by then his passenger had already left), he came back to England. On the way, he helped refuel a car, driven by Alexander Korda and Merle Oberon, Being Jewish they were quite desperate to get out of France at that time. J Graham Oates motorcycling story I wrote about in Aurora to Ariel, which was published in 1993 and 2004. Both copies have been sold out, but it is available as a Kindle book.
Best wishes Bill
In order to not agitate the rights holders I am not making it available to download. I’ve only loaded it because the commercial company who were selling it appear to have withdrawn it from the market. Thanks for the words and the link to the book which I will look up.
Yes I too unable to download the 1939 ISDT video ??
I was interested in any story about how Allan Jefferies (Triumph) and A.N.Other commandeered a sidecar outfit and rode it back home through France !!
I have only made the video available to view not download as there are potential rights management issues I want to avoid if the owners decide to make it available commercially again.
OK thank you.
Do you have anything relating to Allan Jefferies (No.52 Triumph) in that 1939 event please.
everything we have is on the site in content, we are mostly reliant on donations of material and facts from followers of the ISDT which we then share with the community. If anyone reading this can help out with this request please do so.
Hi,
I’ve just tried to watch the movie but when I clicked on the arrow to play the movie I only get a black screen with the text ‘This video is private’ in the centre of the screen.
Help please,
As ever, all the best,
John
Apologies and thanks for tipping me off, I certainly listed it as public when I uploaded it bit it seems to have jumped to private. Let me know if there are still problems.
Thank you, no problems its fixed now.
And thank you especially for making this amazing footage available to view.
All the best,
John