Sydney Ducatisti attempt world record

Guinness World Records are sometimes easily set, but far less easily broken. The Guinness people are rather pernickety when it comes to people lining up to break the records they have so meticulously catalogued. There are a lot of hoops to jump through and many fussy boxes to tick before an existing record is deemed to be broken.

In 2008 a record was set for the Largest Parade of Ducati Motorcycles. The Monster Owners club of Belgium assembled 405 Ducati Monsters in the town of Hamme, paraded them for a distance of 3.2km and earned themselves a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

In 2014, Nick Weinmann along with the people who run the Facebook social page called Sydney Ducatisti, decided they would break this record. They had just done a charity ride with 120 bikes, and felt that riding Ducatis en masse was a record Australia could have a go at.

In 2015, they registered for the attempt and the planning began. And on a searing Sydney summer day, 478 Ducatis arrived at Homebush Bay, polished, prepped and ready to roll.

The bikes, according to the rules, had to be sequentially numbered, and had to ride continuously (unbroken-up by cars), no more than two bike-lengths apart for the set distance. All of this had to be witnessed by people prepared to make statutory declarations of what they had seen, and once the record was broken, everyone could go to Bondi Beach and have a party.

As one of the witnesses, I certainly counted 478 Ducatis. All sequentially numbered and parked side by side, lining both sides of the main avenue of Olympic Park– it was a stunning sight of outrageous Italian motorcycle porn.

But despite the best efforts of the police (who closed off several intersections) and the organisers (who went to great lengths to explain the rules), there was just no way of stopping impatient car drivers cutting into the double-line of bikes snaking its way around Olympic Park. Well, there was, but Ducati riders are not usually given to acts of savage violence towards their fellow road-users.

“We had 305 bikes comply with the effort,” Nick Weinmann explained. “The last 170-odd got cut off and couldn’t keep up. We aren’t blaming anyone or anything and have learned a lot about this. The scale of the ride was enormous and we need a bigger, quieter venue.”

Nick was obviously disappointed when I caught up with him behind the Bondi Beach Pavilion, where his social group had organised a celebration to toast the broken (well, un-broken) record, but was upbeat and determined to give it another go in September 2017.

Still, almost $10,000 was raised for the NSW RSPCA, and Nick hopes to hand a cheque over to the organisation’s CEO, Steve Coleman, sometime later this week.

By that criterion alone, the event was a great success.