Video: Marc Marquez rides a Honda MotoGP bike up an Alpine downhill ski course

OK, anyone out there who skis and has been down or even just checked out a downhill ski course knows how steep and treacherous they can be. Going down is enough to get your heart rate going...but have you ever imagined trying to ride a motorcycle up the course—with snow and ice on it? No? That makes two of us. But leave it to the crazies at Red Bull to cook up an imaginative stunt where three-time MotoGP World Champion Marc Marquez rides a Honda RC213V MotoGP bike equipped with tires studded with two-inch-long ice spikes up a fabled Alpine downhill ski course. The Hahnenkammrennen course on the Hahnenkamm peak near the ski resort of Kitzbühel in Austria is known as one of the toughest on the World Cup skiing circuit, and Red Bull had Austrian ice speedway legend Franky Zorn install ice racing spikes on some sport tires that would fit the actual RC213V MotoGP machine (it may have been an S version with the race kit, and some of soundtrack has an engine that sounds like a CBR, probably from practice runs) that Marquez was slated to ride up the course.

Granted, Marquez didn't ride up the whole course (including its steepest portions that have a near-vertical 85% gradient), and the section he did ride was wiped clear of snow so that the ice spikes could get traction. But when you watch the video and how the rear was spinning and getting pretty loose in spots, plus the big wheelies Marquez was getting over many of the rises, you can tell this was no easy walk-in-the-park demonstration stunt. Click on the video below and check out the craziness...