The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is rapidly approaching, and the iconic “Race to the Clouds” continues to mature, despite this year being its 95th running.
Helping mitigate the safety issues that come with racing on the mountain’s 156 turns is Ducati North America, which already supports racer mentoring with the Squadra Alpina program. Now, Pikes Peak is taking another step forward.
Again with the help of Ducati North America, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb will have emergency first-responders on motorcycles.
This is a page taken straight out of the Isle of Man TT, where traveling marshals move by sport bike between checkpoints, and are often the first medical personnel on the scene of a crash.
Accordingly, the two Ducati Multistrada 950 EMT motorcycles will be ridden by Dr. Gary Klein, a long-time race physician and safety team lead for the PPIHC, and Duxton Milam, a 20-year EMT and veteran flight medic with the National Guard.
“In the program’s first year, we saw all of the racers who were mentored through the Race Smart program improve their results and race with confidence up Pikes Peak to the finish,” said Jason Chinnock, CEO of Ducati North America.
“For 2017, we saw an opportunity to further enhance the safety of all participants by incorporating moto EMTs for rapid response in the case of a course incident. This is extremely important when the emergency support teams are covering a course of more than 12 miles up a mountain peak.”
In addition to this EMT program with Ducati, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is expanding its Race Smart Program to include racer-coaches for four-wheeled competitors as well.
Source: Ducati North America
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