The world of motorcycling has dark moments like today. Days when you find out that a racing great in the eighties, such as Ralf Saura, has left us forever. But above all that, a good guy. Someone who, for many of his friends and track partners, represented a series of values that made him even greater than he was physically.
Ralf Saura, “the giant of circuits”
Yesterday the Motorcycle Racing colleagues were the first to echo the news in a complete article about the sporting life of Ralf Saura. In it, which we invite you to read carefully by clicking on this link, they not only detail what this giant of circuits was like. Because Saura, in addition to being a driver hungry for victory, was a phenomenal guy above anything else.
Professional colleagues like Toñejo Rodríguez They describe it as “a thunderclap. A giant. A phenomenon. And, above all, my friend. Our friend. An extraordinary pilot who has left us too soon, leaving a silence that weighs like a stone on the chest”. And he is right because Ralf Saura was always a friend of his friends with “a heart as enormous as his presence on the court,” as Rodríguez reminds us in his article.
In terms of motorcycling, he began his career at the controls of a Cappra in the vicinity of Monte del Pardo in Madrid. He soon became interested in speed, despite not having body proportions suitable for such performance. His almost 1.90 cm height and great physical size did not help this. Even so, Ralf Saura trained in the Motorcycle Series, achieving runner-up status at just 19 years old riding an OSSA F3 Cup in 1984.
This was just the starting signal for a career full of successes at the national level. Saura would compete in F-1 with a Yamaha FJ 1100 and in the National SBK in 1987 at the controls of an FZ 750. In 1989 he competed in the Yamaha RD350 Cup, where he would finally win the champion title. A year earlier he would win his first SBK race riding an OW01, although his greatest sporting feats would come on the FZR 600.
With it he would win the runner-up position in 1989, and would lift the champion title at the end of the 1990 season. Other competitions where he was present were, for example, his participation in the American Daytona riding a Kawasaki GPX750R and he even debuted in the new World Superbike Championship in 1991, where he was able to compete in two races without achieving good results.
Later, he set up his own workshop, Giant Bikeswhere he achieved well-deserved recognition from clients and friends. Unfortunately, a domestic accident has taken him away forever at just 63 years of age. From SMN we can only send our deepest condolences to his family and thank him for the drive and love he always showed for this two-wheeled thing.
