Action from the 1969 sand racing season. Maurice Ogier won both the Guernsey and Jersey car championships that summer. (0601436)

THE summer of 69. Good title for a song, I reckon, and a cracking year for Guernsey sand racing.

In fact, it just might be the best there ever was. The sport was still in rude health, with big Thursday afternoon crowds lining the Vazon sea wall to follow their bike heroes throughout a busy summer’s racing and the annual ‘Muratti’ was still in existence.

The trouble was, Jersey’s bikers were pretty handy on the sand and when Guernsey’s bike team travelled to the sister isle for the inter-insular in late August that year, they did so more in hope than expectation.

‘It was a bit like the rugby [the Siam],’ said Guernsey stalwart Bill Cohu this week, meaning we didn’t often win. ‘On bikes, we hadn’t won it for years.’

But the Guerns did that memorable afternoon.