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10th BMW Motorrad Days celebrates record attendance

09/07/2010
Once a year, thousands of BMW motorcycle enthusiasts from around the world meet in the Bavarian foothills for a party like no other: BMW Motorrad Days. And 2010 was the biggest yet – with a record 35,000 attending. Visitors came from as far as Scandinavia, Russian, Israel, the USA and Dubai.

The festival was lucky enough to enjoy sunshine throughout the weekend – which meant the visitors could enjoy the beautiful local roads, watch the bands and party long into the late summer evenings. Four-time World Stunt Riding Champion Christian Pfeiffer took to the tarmac on both his F 800 R streetbike and his new S 1000 RR sportsbike to wow the crowds and test the laws of physics with displays of heart-in-mouth stunts.

But BMW Motorrad Days isn’t just about watching, it’s about taking part. This year over 950 people took a road test ride on a new BMW motorcycle, 700 rode on the enduro circuit and 300 had a go on a BMW G 450 X or Husqvarna model on the motocross track. But, perhaps most importantly, 90 people took their initial step into motorcycling and tried riding for the first time using a BMW bike.

The 2010 festival’s central theme was another anniversary – 30 Years of the GS.  At the heart of the event were the range of special-edition models of the F 650 GS, F 800 GS, R 1200 GS and Adventure. 

Among the special guests were Laszlo Peres, a development engineer on the original G/S, Hubert Auriol, who won the Paris-Dakar in 1981 and 1983 on a GS and Karl Gerlinger, Managing Director of BMW Motorrad during the birth of the R 80 G/S, plus adventurer-filmmaker Charley Boorman who rode an R 1150 GS around the world.

The special guests attended a press conference on Saturday and each brought a bike which they’d worked with to be displayed alongside other iconic GS models to the public at the festival – the first ever gathering of its kind.

A competition to find the oldest, best modified and furthest-ridden GS bikes was held at the festival and judged by a panel of experts including Auriol and Boorman. The prize for oldest went to the 431th R 80 G/S off the production lines, the furthest travelled was another R 80 G/S which had covered a huge 525,174 kilometres and – the hardest to judge – best modified went to a beautifully modified one-off GS built by Ulrich Beppler

As well as being about BMW motorcycles, the festival was also a chance for riders to let their hair down and relax. The hungry and thirsty attendees drank more than 15,000 litres of lager and ate 4,000 grilled chickens; 1.3 tons of roasted pork knuckle garnished with 1.3 tons of potato salad and polished off 8,500 small pretzels and 1,600 large ones!