All revved up and nowhere to go?

With the exception of top-flight baseball games few sporting events in Taiwan attract large crowds. Whether it's a qualifying match for the FIFA World Cup in which Taiwan is pitched against Uzbekistan or a basketball game in the annual Jones Cup, crowds rarely exceed a thousand.

Despite the number of scooters racing around the streets of Taiwan, even motorcycle racing is not a popular sport. On any given weekend at Taiwan's sole motor sport circuit at Longtan (龍潭) in Taoyuan County, participants outnumber spectators by about 10 to one.

Compared to national motor sport circuits in other countries the 1.85km Longtan track makes for rather a sad picture and not simply because of the lack of spectators. Most amenities commonly associated with racing circuits the world over are non-existent.

"Yeah, it's pretty bad, but it's all we've got," said Lin Yung-yi (林永逸) who has raced his Honda NSR 150cc for the Tainan-based HRMS Team at Longtan for the past two years. "We've tried to race on go-kart circuits, but they're too small, there's too many corners and they're often more run down than [Longtan]."

The few spectators who do turn out have to sit on concrete terracing and are protected from the fast moving vehicles by a rusting fence made of chicken wire. There are no pits for teams to repair their machines and talk tactics -- this all takes place in a parking lot.

There's no digitized lap counter -- these laps are counted off manually on a stainless steel board. There's no glitzy souvenir shop -- instant noodles and canned drinks are available at a small kiosk. And, with the exception of a single ambulance, the circuit is deficient in even the most basic of emergency fire and rescue equipment.

It might sound like a disaster waiting to happen, but since the track's inception in 1993 there hasn't been a fatality. Sure, there's been plenty of broken bones, bruised ribs and damaged egos, but the fact that the circuit is so run down has united Taiwan's motorcycle racers. Camaraderie is as an important part of any race day as winning.

"It's a very friendly atmosphere and everyone talks to everyone else regardless of what team they ride for. You wouldn't see this anywhere else at a competitive level," said Huang Chun-shih (黃俊鉐) who has been riding his specially modified Suzuki 125cc at Longtan regularly for three years. "It might not be very comfortable, but racing [in Taiwan] is a social event."

Managed by the Chinese Taipei Motor Sport Association (CTMSA, 中華賽車會), the nation's official autosport association, Longtan may lack the fancy technology of Japan's Suzuki Circuit, but it has managed to weather dismal spectator turnouts. The track has successfully served as the base for Taiwan's small, but enthusiastic motorcycle racing community for the past 12 years.

"It was slow to begin with and the first year we held [motorcycle] races we only had about 200 entrants," said Yeung Kwong-wing (楊光榮), CEO of CTMSA. "It started to increase in popularity after we began incorporating scooter races. When the races peaked in 1996/7 the number of participants stood at roughly a thousand."

The CTMSA was forced to scrap non-team scooter racing at the beginning of the 1999/2000 season due to safety concerns.

According to Yeung, the riders were getting younger and the two-stroke 50cc engines and scooter frames, which were not designed for racing, meant that scooter racing was becoming increasingly dangerous.