The opportunity to interview Toprak presented itself as a result of a random chain of events. As a Turkish Cypriot, I am a member of various Turkish Cypriot Facebook groups. Dismayed at the lack of exposure Toprak was receiving on said groups, I sent a DM to the admin of one of the pages (Ipek Özerim, pictured below) and she admitted she'd never even heard of Toprak and would be happy to publish an article about him.
So I contacted Ian Wheeler who was my Editor at Motorcycle Racer magazine in 2002/03 and who is currently the Racing Communications Manager of Yamaha Racing Europe. Ian subsequently put me in touch with Pata Yamaha with Brixx's PR Manager George Birch.
At this stage my intention was purely to get Toprak some exposure, and thus I just wanted Ipek to communicate with George to get something sorted between themselves. However, Ipek explained that I too should be part of the process as she thought my knowledge and passion for the sport would be required.
Let's just say she didn't have to ask twice...
After a few days of co-ordinating between the three of us (George, Ipek and myself), we settled on a day to interview Toprak on 22 July 2021 - the Thursday before the race weekend at the Dutch round of the World Superbike Championship at Assen.
So the big day finally came round and I scuttled off upstairs to the store room at work to be away from any pesky telephone calls or customers who might walk into the shop and ruin this momentus occasion for me!
And it's fair to say the interview couldn't have gone any better...
Although Toprak explained at the start of the interview that he was running late and had other interviews he needed to attend so we wouldn't get our half hour slot as originally agreed with George, we still got a good 25 minutes out of him! He was very amiable and friendly, answering all our questions candidly and with plenty of detail (no one word answers here!).
Although I can speak Turkish, I wouldn't consider myself fluent in the same way a native would speak (and that's before you factor in my Cypriot dialect) and combined with my nervous excitement during the interview there are a few instances of me tripping over my words, but on the whole I was pleased with my role in the interview.
It was truly an epic day for me and the fact that we were allowed to record the interview was the icing on a very big cake!
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