Attempting a world speed record is one thing; attempting a world speed record on open water is quite another. What do you do if it all blows up in your face? It’s tough to walk that back when you made such big announcements about it beforehand.
Ride Hydrated:
Lucky for Luca Colombo, that isn’t what happened. He successfully set a new world open water speed record, riding his specially outfitted Honda CRF450R across Lake Como. Colombo reached a record-breaking 64mph, beating Robbie Maddison’s previous open water speed record of 58mph.
Although he successfully managed to break that speed record, Colombo wasn’t so lucky in one way. After he hit that 64mph speed, his emergency inflatable life raft activated...right in his face. As you can see in the video, that meant he had to fly mostly blind across beautiful Lake Como, and simply operate the bike around the gigantic inflatable device that hindered both his movements and his vision. How well would you do in that situation?
Colombo worked with a team to properly set up the bike for this attempt, which included outfitting a rear paddle tire and hydrofoil skis. According to MotoFire, upon successful completion of the attempt, Colombo said, “I am really satisfied, I wanted this record and it was very hard to reach even one more single km/h. You never know what’s going to happen every time I place my bike on the water.”
“This year everyone really made a great effort, from Giorgio Lumini and Angelo Pezzano, that have been following me with their great professionalism, to the Red Moto team that supported me in every request and all the partners that gave their contributions to this challenge, because this record doesn’t belong just to me,” he continued. “Without their support this would be impossible. I thank everyone from the bottom of my heart!”