Meet the GoldRiver riders….. Mr Neil Barbisan

Neil Barbisan - GoldRiver XXV third place

VIME: Neil Barbisan, thank you for agreeing to contribute your rider profile for the GoldRiver Rally website. You did rather well in this year’s event, have you been involved with motorcycle motorsport in the past?

NB: I was riding dirt bikes as a teenager and did some local races in the north- east of Italy (where a grew up), but that was more that 20 years ago

VIME: MX races I presume? Have you done any rallies before the GR XXV?

NB: Yes I was doing MX.

Never done Rallies before, been following Dakar since I was young and still dreaming of doing something like that one day (maybe a smaller version of it like the Rallies in Eastern Europe or so)

GR XXV has been a perfect icebreaker to try riding with roadbooks!!

I’m passionate of maps and cartography and as a child I was doing “Orienteering” with the school’s team, maybe that helped a bit!!

VIME: Having made the move into “navigation motorsports”, are there any words of advice or encouragement you would give to someone contemplating a backcountry “regularity raid” type event?

NB: I would say just go for it! Regularity Raid like GR XXV is the best approach to roadbook navigation because you’re not trying to go as fast as possible, so you can focus on the navigation!

And is super fun!

VIME: And finally, for potential first timers, unsure of the degree of difficulty they might encounter, how difficult would you say the riding is and the level of expertise needed to “get round the course”?

NB: I would say that overall the riding is not difficult, mostly well travelled FSRs, and some spicy bits that are still easily doable “with 2 wheels on the ground” like Jonathan said!!

VIME: Neil, thank you very much! I hope to see you at further events and perhaps read about you riding in the Dakar one day…….