Race for Luca

Now I can really start to relax. MotoGp has finished and I’ve experienced some incredible emotions with Honda. I feel like I’ve regained a lot of self-confidence. I can now relax a bit after the end of the Franciacorta event on 22nd November that I planned and helped organize.
The event was called UNAGARAXLUCA (A Race for Luca) and was a motocross race on the all nations track (awesome!!!) between sprint and motocross riders. I must say that things went better than I could ever have hoped for. We had planned on a crowd of 6-7,000, but managed to pull in 12,000! We sold 13,426 lottery tickets all for Luca Pellegrini. Luca is 17 and on 17th August, my birthday, he had a terrible accident caused by gear failure whilst training on a supercross track. Now his legs, wrists and hands are paralysed! His wrists are slightly responsive, and this leads the doctors and all of us to hope that we are close, given that the nerves of the wrist are below the damaged spinal region. We hope that with a bit of help we’ll get there. Treatment in specialist clinics costs loads; we’re talking about more than 1,000 Euros a day! Unfortunately, the family can’t afford this; the insurance is ridiculous when you think about what’s required. After the 22nd we are even more committed because we’re helping him to make the most of this small chance and this is only THANKS to all of you who were there and bought lottery tickets. My dream is to see Luca back on his own legs and to organize an event to collect money for research into spinal injuries, a real bane and fear for us bike riders. It was a unique sporting event between bikers; bringing cross riders, endurance riders, motard riders and sprinters together was a fantastic experience!!!
We all ate dinner together on Saturday, then off for some electric kart racing, and bring on the scrapes! The cross races were really thrilling. Tony, set out badly but made a great comeback on a now rarely seen 250 2 stroke and did some great times. Dovi and I battled it out.
It was a real break for me, everyone asked how I had come to organise the event and my head was really in the clouds. I was a bit faster than Dovi in race 2, but I fell on the second lap and didn’t have any energy left, so at the second last bend he got the better of me, but it was great all the same!
I want to thank each and every one of the riders that took part, from the most famous to those less known; everyone put their all into it and paid for hotel and travelling expenses out of their own pockets!
The all out number 1 for the weekend was Vico Garcia, coming especially from Spain, and spending 28 euro on a ticket and 480 Euros to transport mufflers and suspension… hahaha!!!
With the race over we gave my sound system a blast, Pasto was playing and a friend of mine and Vico were on the microphone.
It egged Tony and me on in our mud wrestling hahaha…
I hope that the crowd enjoyed themselves along with us; it was fantastic to see so many people along the track and in the boxes that were consciously left open so that the public could make real contact with us riders.
The next event will be “Tony Day” on 6th December in Patti, Sicily. We had a mad time there last year! After this I’m going to switch off for 2 weeks and won’t even touch a scooter… ))
If we don’t talk before then I wish you happy Christmas and
send a healing hug!!!
Ciaoooooo