Fraire breed
It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that motocross really started to gain traction in Italy. The area often credited with being the centre of it all was Piedmont: a largely rural, hilly region bordering France and Switzerland at the foot of the Alps, it provided the ideal terrain for off-roading.
It wasn’t purely the landscape that made Piedmont such a motocross hub, rather it was the area in which the most competitive machines were produced. Piedmont also wasn’t – as you might assume – a buzzing motorcycle manufacturing hub though.
At the time, there was a distinct lack of purpose-made off-road machines coming out of the Italian factories, which left aspiring riders needing to modify road bikes to fit their purpose. As competition on the dirt increased, so did the need for better conversions. Realising their own limitations, riders began turning to engineers and mechanics to adapt machines for them; it just so happened that the most skilled and sought after were Piedmontese.
One of these men was Michele Fraire, who
