The review of reviews. Symphony of two-stroke pistons, squealing tires, growling cylinders, exhaust in mode « full barouf »scents of gasoline and leather mixed with a slight touch of testosterone… After the hushed universe of the writers, the magazine Spheres suggests what makes motorcyclists roar with pleasure. Race driver, road runner, writer-traveler, stuntwoman, Lebanese bikers, “motofoot” players, gendarme of the Republican Guard… As diverse as the profiles gathered, two words come up like an antiphon over testimonials, stories or reports: freedom and adrenaline.
And adrenaline, it is of course a question in the great interview granted by Johann Zarco. Double Moto2 world champion, currently racing in MotoGP – the premier category – the Ducati rider, who has just distinguished himself in Argentina by winning a brilliant second place, was the first to exceed 360 kilometers in the race at the hour in 2021. Besides this record and the risks involved – “the less I think, the better I advance”he likes to repeat -, Johann Zarco evokes the way in which the body of the pilots is “carved” by their machine. “It all depends on the bikes we use, on the Yamaha, I worked a lot on the back, on the KTM, the trapezes and on the Ducati, the triceps. The body adapts according to the motorcycles. »
Passionately eclectic
Far from the asphalt loops, the adventurer Anne-France Dautheville, the first woman to have completed a world tour on a motorcycle in the 1970s, confides, in a “Carte blanche” celebrating encounters, another relationship to the body: “My machines gave me the body’s dialogue with nature (…). Smells that throw themselves on you, invade you, speak to the intimacy of the flesh. » While Sylvain Tesson, who left for the Jordanian desert in the footsteps of T. E. Lawrence – another unrepentant biker – notes: « The road calms the being. To put on the gas is to sow madness. » Phrase that the members of the Lebanese Harley Owners Group could make their own who, every week, for a ride – a “trip” – escape from the deadly crisis in which their country is sinking a little every day. A crisis that undermines this multi-confessional community created after the civil war (1975-1990).
Stories of men, women, family – like that of the Monnerets, champions from father to son… Stories of brands too, including the legendary Bonneville, from Triumph, ridden in particular by Steve McQueen in The great Escape, for which the workers of the Meriden factory, in the United Kingdom, formed a cooperative in order to maintain production, everything intertwines here to paint the portrait of a fiery eclectic community. The only regret: that the issue of climate transition has remained on the side of the road.
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