Love Quote by Barry Sheene

Sheene’s line lands because it’s a deadpan self-portrait of celebrity morality: a man bragging about getting something taken away, then basking in the applause for it. The joke is in the inverted logic. “I vowed” frames him like a crusader, but the “cause” is bureaucratic - stopping the Isle of Man TT’s results from counting toward the world championship - and his punchline is that the very people who lost status “love” him for it. It’s a wink at how public affection often attaches less to outcomes than to the story of protection.

Context matters. By the 1970s and ’80s, the TT was already mythic and increasingly controversial: spectacular, romantic, and famously lethal. Top riders were boycotting it because the course’s stone walls, poles, and narrow lanes made “safety improvements” feel cosmetic. Sheene, a global star with a public platform and his own brutal crash history, is speaking from inside that shift. Removing the TT from championship points didn’t kill the race, but it removed an institutional incentive that pressured riders to participate for standings and sponsors. That’s the real intent: de-link the sport’s highest honors from an event whose risk seemed out of step with modern professional racing.

The subtext is Sheene performing a very specific kind of British candor: principled, yes, but also pleased with his own audacity. He’s deflating the grandeur of activism while still claiming its payoff. In one sentence, he captures the messy bargain between tradition, safety, and the ego-driven theater of being the guy who “saved” you from yourself.