With the MotoGP season on winter break, Marc Marquez has taken the time off to have some fun in the snow by speeding around the Hahnenkamm on his Repsol Honda RC213V race bike. The three-time World Champion is used to tackling high-speed courses with soft race rubber gripping the tarmac but he has now become the first rider ever to take a MotoGP bike over the snowy summit of an Alpine mountain.
With modified tires featuring snow spikes, and the help of Austrian ice speedway legend Franky Zorn and TV ski expert Armin Assinger, Marquez took his usual position on his Honda, put his foot down and shot down the ski run. In doing so he emulated Red Bull Racing star Max Verstappen who took his Formula 1 car for a spin in the same spot in January 2016. It was here that Marquez first visited Kitzbühel and carefully examined the challenges of the Hahnenkamm.
The legendary Streif ski run on the Hahnenkamm is taking place between January 20-22 and is seen as the toughest contest in skiing’s world cup. Straight after the start comes the steepest section of the course, the infamous ‘Mousetrap’, which sees skiers plunge down an 85-percent gradient and reach close to 70 mph. It was just a few hundred meters above this extreme section, on the Ehrenbachhöhe, where Marquez pulled off his thrilling MotoGP snow ride.