Riders for Health’s COTA Day of Stars

Riders for Health is an international non-profit and social enterprise whose focus is the transportation and delivery of life-saving health services to rural communities in Africa. They do this by managing motorcycle fleets, educating health workers on how to ride those motorcycles safely, providing health workers with proper protective gear, and educating and equipping mechanics to maintain the bikes for their full usable life-span. To date,  Riders for Health programs have improved access to health care for 12 million people in 8 countries across Africa.

Riders for Health was born from motorcycling. Former Grand Prix motorcycle racer Randy Mamola co-founded Riders for Health after traveling to Africa and seeing relatively new vehicles, intended to be used for transporting medicines and food, broken down and abandoned because no one had the parts, tools, and training to maintain them. Randy recognized that simple, reliable, and relatively inexpensive motorcycles, properly maintained, could overcome the challenges to delivering health care to rural Africa.

The motorcycling community across the world has been very supportive and generous to Riders for Health over the years. Today, they are the official charity of MotoGP and the FIM. Riders for Health is excited to announce their upcoming event, the Day of Stars at Circuit of the Americas on Thursday, April 10. This is an exclusive opportunity for fans of MotoGP to get a behind the scenes look at the men and machines of grand prix motorcycle racing. The event is limited to only 100 people and will include brunch at Circuit of the Americas, a guided tour through the MotoGP paddock and pits, and the opportunity to take your bike out on the racing circuit. Day of Stars concludes with a charity auction, open to the public, that will feature today’s top MotoGP riders auctioning off unique signed memorabilia to raise funds for Riders for Health. Further event and ticket information can be found at www.riders.org/day-of-stars.

If you not heard of Randy Mamola before, then get out from underneath your rock. Randy was an extremely talented 500 GP rider during the 80’s and 90’s (and he is still pretty fast). Here is Randy during the 1985 San Marino 500 GP making one of the most incredible high-side recoveries ever captured on film.