The bikes didn’t look like they had been

modified with floats or anything like that –

I would have spotted that straight away – and

they looked like they were running on normal

knobbly tyres for charging around on loose

surfaces. So how were they managing to ride

across water?

Admittedly, in most of the clips that I saw,

the riders were only on the water for around

five seconds or so, but that is more than

enough time to sink a motorbike. Some of

the riders were more successful than others,

with a fair few losing their bikes and doing

involuntary acrobatics over the handlebars.

Luckily most looked like they walked away

pretty much unhurt …

Anything that goes wrong on a

motorbike when you’ve built up a bit

of speed is bad news for the rider.

The fact that it was clearly a bit risky was the

clincher for me. If all of the clips had made it

look like anybody could ride a motorbike on

water, then I wouldn’t have been so interested,

but the ones who didn’t get it quite right

and paid the price showed that there was an

element of danger involved. There had to be,

really, because they were all cracking on at a

fair pace when they reached the water’s edge,

and anything that goes wrong on a motorbike

when you’ve built up a bit of speed is bad news

for the rider.

So, here was something that involved speed,

an element of danger, and motorbikes – three

of my favourite things! What I had to do was

to find out how they were managing the water

biking stunt and whether there was any kind of

Below: Normally our

bike would have been

quite happy on ordinary

off-road tyres, but off-

road and on-water are

two different things!

140  HYDROPLANING MOTORBiKe