If today’s world of extreme sports tells us anything, it’s that motorcyclists will do anything for publicity, including riding their motorcycles across open bodies of water. Last year, Australian stuntman Robbie Maddison rode a heavily modified dirt bike into the waves of Tahiti’s coastline. But, as fate would have it, motorcyclists riding out into the ocean is not particularly anything new.
Back in 1952, French motorcycle racing champion Georges Monneret dared such a dream nearly 65 years before Maddison, but did so slightly different. Monneret left from Paris, France for Calais, on Vespa motor scooter, where he was met with a crew who installed a pair of custom pontoons to scooter. From there, Monneret went about crossing the famed English Channel aboard the waterborne scooter, even stopping to pose with the scooter at legendary cliffs of Dover, where Monneret brought the scooter out on beach at Dover, Kent before a reception committee.
Of course, crossing the Channel was only one of Monneret’s many feats, as the French motorcycle racer won 499 wins and 183 world records during his career, including winning the Circuit of Orleans in 1935, the Motorcycle Grand Prix of France in 1936, and placing second of the 1939 24 Hours of Le Mans.
