Latest news with #motorcycleracing
BBC News
23-05-2025
- Automotive
- BBC News
Sat-nav warning for British MotoGP fans at Silverstone
Motorcycle racing fans heading to this year's British MotoGP have been urged to ignore their sat-navs as they approach Silverstone Highways said they should follow event signage instead on the routes leading to the south Northamptonshire planning on using roads in the area have been warned to allow extra time for their journeys, from Friday to have also been reminded to take regular breaks if they are making long journeys to the race meeting. About 78,000 people are expected at the circuit across the weekend, and National Highways said it would have traffic officers in the area over the three days to "make sure journeys are as safe and smooth as possible". Its operations manager, Mark Munnoch, said: "Visitors should check their ticketing information and follow the event signage rather than their sat-navs when approaching the circuit, to make sure they get to the parking areas smoothly." Silverstone has staged every MotoGP since 2010 after plans to move it to the Circuit of Wales never materialised, with the track never being takes place on Friday, with practice and qualifying on 20-lap race gets under way at 13:00 BST on Sunday, with other races also scheduled across the weekend. Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
MotoGP Action Movie ‘Idols' Taps Óscar Casas to Star
Óscar Casas ('Mi soledad tiene alas') is the man on the lightning-fast bike in the MotoGP action film 'Idols.' The up-and-coming Spanish actor will star in the film for Film Mode Entertainment, 4 Cats Pictures and Warner Bros. alongside multi-platinum pop star Ana Mena. Mat Whitecross — whose credits include 'The Road to Guantanamo,' for which he was awarded best director at the Berlinale in 2006, and 'Oasis: Supersonic' — is on board as the film's helmer. More from Variety Japanese Horror 'Never After Dark' Acquired by XYZ Films From 'House of Ninjas' Team (EXCLUSIVE) Kristen Stewart Says It's a 'Bulls-- Fallacy' That You Need 'Experience' to Direct: 'It's a Real Male Perspective' and 'Anyone Can Make a Movie if They Have Something to Say' Tom Hollander Joins Jean Reno in Tom Edmunds' Action-Thriller 'The Butler' (EXCLUSIVE) Rounding out the cast of 'Idols' is Claudio Santamaria ('Casino Royale'), Enrique Arce ('Knightfall'), Saul Nanni ('The Leopard') and Mario Ermito ('Ask Me What You Want'). Written by Inma Cánovas, Jordi Gasull and Ricky Roxburgh from an original idea by Gasull, 'Idols' follows a fiery young motorcycle racer (Casas) who loses his chance at the junior championship after a reckless crash. But he finds a shot at redemption when he receives a surprise offer from a top Moto2 team. Film Mode is handling sales for the world excluding Spain and Italy and non-exclusively in North America, the U.K. and Latin America. The company also is presenting first-look footage to buyers in Cannes. Producers are Gasull and Toni Novella of 4 Cats and Greenboo's Marco Belardi. Warner Bros. plans to distribute the film in in Italy and Spain this year. The project marks a collaboration between the filmmakers and MotoGP rights holder Dorna Sports. 'Idols' will feature world-renowned racetracks like the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Misano World Circuit in Italy and Motorland Aragon in Spain. The result, Gasull says, will be 'Days of Thunder' on motorcycles. 'Thanks to Dorna, I was able to learn what the life of a rider is like,' he adds. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
CNN
09-05-2025
- Sport
- CNN
Battling back from brain surgery, the indestructible Austin Forkner seeks dirt bike glory
Motorcycle racing is dangerous, of that there is no doubt. But within the sport there is one category that sits (bruised) head and (fractured) shoulders above the others. Supercross is a spectacular form of dirt-bike racing played out in stadiums, with wild jumps, eye-widening speeds and battling competition. Few riders embody the sport and its elements more than Austin Forkner, the most successful rider in the 250SX class never to win a title. The Missouri native has come close, but painful on-track mishaps have always gotten in the way. With its speed, acrobatics and general entertainment factor, Forkner tells CNN Sports that no sport has the blend of ingredients that Supercross offers: 'It's got the technicality of golf, we're playing with inches out there. 'It's got the brutalness or gnarliness of fighting, like UFC fighting … then it's got the physicality of, like, a triathlete. You have to be in such good shape, you have to be ready to be injured and ready to go to war, basically.' Talking to CNN at Triumph Racing America's headquarters in picturesque countryside south of Atlanta, Georgia, the 26-year-old begins to list the injuries he has sustained in the saddle, gesturing to different parts of his body. 'I'll just go through them. I've done this collarbone three times, this collarbone twice; I broke this wrist, I broke my hip, my hip socket, I guess. Let's see – when I was young, I broke my ankle and the growth plate …' It's completely understandable that Forkner would have to think about it because this list goes on and on … and on. Far more broken bones and smashed body parts, in fact, than there is space here to list: 'I've torn my ACL, or torn everything in my knee, basically, my right knee twice, my left knee once. 'I've torn my labrum in my shoulder twice, tore it, then retore it again. I actually had four surgeries on this shoulder within, like, 18 months, from two collarbones and two labrums. I compression-fractured my back a few years ago … and I rode with it because I didn't know that it was compression-fractured.' These are still just some of the injuries this extraordinary competitor has overcome in his career. It takes Forkner almost three minutes to relay all of them; he has even had part of his pancreas removed, along with his spleen. But the most serious setback was not directly related to racing at all. In fact, were it not for the fact that the rider was being examined after a bad crash, it might never have been discovered. 'Last year, after the crash where I broke my back and my shoulder and I was knocked out for like five minutes, they were doing scans on my head and they found out that I had something called an AVM (arteriovenous malformation),' Forkner explains. 'And I actually had to have brain surgery to have that taken out.' A post shared by Austin Forkner (@austinforkner) AVM is a tangle of blood vessels that typically forms during fetal development and leads to irregular connections between arteries and veins in the brain. While many people born with AVMs live normal lives without even noticing, such malformations can be dangerous, even fatal if left untreated. Forkner admits that it was a shock to find out brain surgery was needed. 'Even though I've done everything – I've done knees, shoulders, collarbones, wrists, ankles, everything like that, back,' he tells CNN, 'it's kind of two things you don't really think about having surgery on: that's your heart and your brain.' The surgery itself, while relatively routine, was an intimidating prospect. 'They cut me from here to here, basically,' Forkner explains, gesturing across his hairline. '(They) had to essentially kind of pull the front part of my brain out of my skull a little bit so they could get down to what they were trying to do.' The other troubling aspect of the surgery was the recovery, he says. 'I honestly didn't really know what that meant for my career, just because, like all the other injuries, you'll be back in, whatever, ACL, six months, any broken bone, six to eight weeks, you know, they kind of can give you a time frame,' Forkner continues. 'This was kind of, 'We don't know.' So, it was pretty scary in that way, but not speaking anything about (my career), it was just scary. It was just scary to have my brain opened up, basically.' After the event, though, perhaps unsurprisingly given the rider's track record of recovering from injuries, Forkner's path back into the saddle was relatively smooth and swift. 'If I could have (gone) to the gym two weeks after, I probably would have (gone) to the gym two weeks after,' he smiles. 'I was basically limited because the doctor didn't want me to get my heart rate up, get the blood really flowing through there. He was like, 'We need to be chill, because part of it is that the AVM can cause seizures, strokes, and aneurysms.' Not long after his return to fitness, however, Forkner made a big decision, uprooting from California, where he'd spent most of his career, and leaving his Kawasaki team to move to Georgia and join the relative newcomers to dirt bike racing, Triumph. But the Richards, Missouri-born rider was actually quite happy to leave California behind. 'It was a big change coming from California all the way out here. I like Georgia way better than California. 'It has the Midwest kind of small towns, you know, we're out here, this reminds me exactly of the Midwest where I grew up, ponds and green grass. I'm way more at home here than I was in California.' The move also meant adapting to a completely new bike: 'I don't think you can understand exactly how much work goes into setting the bike up. The best way that I can explain it to somebody is that the forks or the front suspension on my bike, if they move that 0.5 millimeter, I feel it. 'Let's say there's 10 to 12 turns on the track; if the bike turns better or doesn't in certain sections, that could be a 10th of a second per turn. Ten turns, that's a second a lap. A second a lap is a lot.' Jeremy Coker, general manager of Triumph Racing America, gushes about Forkner's talent, but acknowledges that his team was taking a risk of its own bringing him on board. 'Austin Forkner has a one-of-a-kind talent. I think if you were to ask any rider, any competitor that he races with, they're going to say that he's probably the most talented and fastest rider there is,' he tells CNN. 'I think all of the injuries that he sustained, especially his brain injury, was a big setback for him,' Coker continues. 'I think at that point that not only were people scared to hire him in the fact that maybe he's not going to be as fast as he once was. 'But also, the scare factor of – is this dangerous? Is this a risk that we're willing to take? If he crashes, can he sustain a worse injury? Could it … as far as you know, kill him? I don't mean to say it like that, but it's a big risk. It's something that's scary.' Undoubtedly the biggest change of all for Forkner, however, came when he and his wife – model and influencer Rylee Forkner – celebrated the arrival of their son, Atlas Hope, in March of this year. The rider admits that fatherhood has already changed him. 'I love my little boy more than anything else. It's funny because everybody says it, it changes … your riding and stuff like that, and it changed it as far as I realized that yes, dirt bikes are my job, they're my living,' Forkner says, 'but for so long dirt bikes have been the only thing. They've been the most important thing. They've been all I think about when I wake up and all I think about when I go to bed, and now they're not. A post shared by RYLEE FORKNER (@ryleeforkner) 'Now (racing is) important because it's my job, but whether I have a good day at the track or a bad day at the track and I go home and I can hold my little boy, it doesn't matter – it makes it not matter. 'It takes the added pressure that I put on myself off because I'm just like, 'Hey, whether I win, whether I get last, I get to go home and hold my boy and everything's gonna be OK.'' He also concedes that his new responsibilities are on his mind at the track: 'That is something that has been a little bit of a battle this year, fighting the, 'I need to go home. I need to be safe for my wife and my kid.' 'But then at the same time, you can't ride with that lingering over you. Because you won't ride loose and ride natural when you have something like that, telling yourself, 'Be careful, you can't ride like that' – so it's a process.' Perhaps though, the most revealing thing about being a father was the new insight into his relationship with his own parents. 'Honestly, one of the biggest things about having a kid now is that it puts into perspective a lot my parents and what they've had to deal with, with me, just as far as how upset it makes you,' Forkner says. 'If you've ever seen my mom at a race, she's a disaster to watch a race with, she's freaking out, grabbing somebody, but I understand that now, I understand that side of things, like how upset it must make her to see me go through – to see me just get beat down over and over again. I understand what that could do to you as a mother.' Would he encourage his son Atlas Hope to follow in his footsteps? 'I'm gonna be hard pressed to tell him no,' Forkner smiles, 'as far as if I'm gonna advise him to become a professional dirt bike rider. I don't know if I would, I'm probably gonna advise against it. 'In certain ways I can get a little bit bitter about the sport. Well yes, it's given me a great life and I met all my friends, my wife, everybody that I know I've met through dirt bikes basically, but I've also seen a lot of the dark side of the sport. 'But a lot of that has come from professional dirt bike racing where we are pushing the limits every single day, and that's hard and that's stressful, so am I gonna tell him he can't ever touch a dirt bike? No. But I would prefer if we just do it for fun.'
BBC News
08-05-2025
- Automotive
- BBC News
'It's been a nightmare really' - Hutchinson after NW200 podium
Ian Hutchinson says he "kept believing" that he could return to being competitive in motorcycle road racing after suffering adversity in the form of a number of serious injury and illness setbacks which threatened to derail his career Yorkshireman was speaking after finishing third in Thursday's Superstock race at the North West 200 in Northern 45-year-old had multiple operations after suffering compound fractures to his leg in a crash at Silverstone in 2010, the same year that he won a record five races in one week at the Isle of Man displayed his resilence by heroically bouncing back to take his overall tally of TT wins to 16 in subsequent years but a major crash in the 2017 Senior TT saw him suffer another crushing blow in the form of a fractured two lost years because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the three-time North West winner then suffered a stroke in 2023 which resulted in him have his racing licence returned to road racing action again in 2024 but had to settle for a series of top-15 TT finishes. "It's been a nightmare really. Eight years of being nowhere near the pace but I kept believing in myself," Hutchinson told BBC Sport NI."I carried on going, training hard, everything, its been hard."I hope my daughter is watching and has seen that Daddy can still ride."Hutchinson was riding for the MLav Racing team, who were making their bow at the North West under team manager Michael Laverty."MLav gave me a ring in November about doing this project and it sort of came together in the last four weeks or so," he explained."It's been very rushed but we've got there and I've been believing ever since my 2017 crash that I could come back."Two years after that I was bad with a frame on my leg, then there was Covid, then I had the stroke."This [the podium] is massive."
