Profiling the physical load on riders of top-level motorcycle circuit racing

Manoeuvring a motorcycle at high-speed in official competition has been shown to expose riders to substantial and complex physiological and psychological demands, however few studies have analysed the physical load experienced by professional racers. This study aimed to quantify the physical stress experienced by riders and explore relationships between performance related variables (i.e. crashes). Performance and braking data were collected from official race reports from 2013 to 2015 of the top class of the FIM Road Racing Grand Prix World Championship. Top-level riders are exposed to a considerable volume (175 ± 42 brakes and 372 ± 48 leans to corner per race) of high intensity actions (>40% of brakes initiated at speeds higher than 260 km.h^-1, and 13.2% over 300 km.h^-1), where 1 out of every 4 braking actions generated inertial stresses greater than 10 m.s^-2. Furthermore, the mean speed across competitions increased over the years (from 161.7 ± 6 km.h^-1 to 164.5 ± 6 km.h^-1), however no clear relationships between the amount of crashes and competition-related factors were found. Given the findings it would seem that riders could benefit from strength training specifically designed to prepare the body to counteract the repetitive inertial stresses of racing.