Motorcycle Endurance Racing
In the early days of endurance racing cars and motorcycles raced side by side, but the two were soon separated.
The most famous motorcycle endurance race, the Bol d'Or, was first run on the circuit of Vaujours, near Paris in 1922. Only one rider was permitted per bike and there was no stopping other than for refuelling.
Motorcycle endurance racing began to expand after the second World War as new races began to emerge, among them the 24 Hour Race in Warsage, Belgium in 1951, the 24 Hours of Montjuïc in Barcelona in 1957, 24 hours in Monza, Italy in 1959, and the Thruxton 500 mile endurance race at Thruxton in 1960.
1960 also saw the inaugural FIM Endurance Cup. Initially made up of four races, the Thruxton 500, Montjuich, Warsage and the Bol d'Or.
The popularity of motorcycle endurance racing increased in the 1970s with the arrival of four-cylinder machines from Japan. In 1976 the FIM Endurance Cup became the European Championship and in 1980 a World Championship.
Read more about this topic: Endurance Racing (motorsport)
Famous quotes containing the words motorcycle, endurance and/or racing:
“Kicking the heart
with pain’s big boots running up and down
the intestines like a motorcycle racer.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The men who think of superannuation at sixty-one are those whose lives have been idle, not they who have really buckled themselves to work. It is my opinion that nothing seasons the mind for endurance like hard work. Port wine should perhaps be added.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)