TEMPTING FATE
Fourteen years ago, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman gave adventure riding its biggest boost when they rode from London across Northern Europe to New York on BMW R1150GS motorcycles.
BMW supplied the bikes, which became a best-seller after McGregor and Boorman’s ratings-winning, seven-episode TV series Long Way Round was released in 2005. But Ewan and Charley weren’t the first corporate adventure riders whose efforts boosted sales of a particular model motorcycle.
That honor falls on Leopoldo Tartarini and Giorgio Monetti, who 60 years ago rode across 42 countries and five continents to promote Ducati’s new 175 Tourismo. Like Ewan and Charley, they filmed their epic adventure, but on 16mm cameras with no sound. Sixty years later, a film and book are finally being released.
Like Ewan and Charley, Leopoldo and Giorgio had factory support (from Ducati), professional assistance in planning their route, and a list of dealers in some of the countries they travelled through if they needed help. Unlike Ewan and Charley, they rode without backup vehicles, did their own filming, took a year and covered over 37,000 miles, not four months and 19,000 miles. This is their story.
Who are they?
Two young lions of Italian youth culture of the 1950s, at first glance Leopoldo Tartarini and Giorgio Monetti appear to be polar opposites. Tartarini was a popular Ducati works racer, forced into premature retirement when a serious leg injury left him with a limp. Born into a Bologna motorcycling family, he had first ridden a minibike-sidecar outfit built by his father when he was just
