Motorcycle Sport & Leisure

They say that you should never meet your heroes. But what if those heroes – the people who you admire, who inspire you, and who give you your drive to deal with your daily grind – are actually already people that you know? What if they’re your mates? You can’t help but meet those heroes can you? And those of us who have been around motorcycles for pretty much the entirety of our adult life, or longer, will probably admit to the fact that the great majority of our friends are also fellow motorcyclists. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of my mates who don’t ride a bike (and, before you say it, yes, I do have more than four friends), with pretty much everyone…

2026 Ducati DesertX It’s been a while coming, but this is the final part of the V-twin jigsaw for Ducati: the upgrade of its sweet DesertX rally bike to the latest generation of engine and frame package. The Bologna firm has been replacing the old Testastretta and Superquadro V-twin motors in the Hypermotard, Multistrada, Streetfighter, Panigale and Monster over the past 18 months, so this completes the set, giving its upper-middleweight dirt tool the new motor and monocoque main frame design. You should all know the score on that powerplant by now: the Euro5+ compliant 890cc unit dumps the desmodromic valve operation in favour of a lighter, more compact motor, with much longer maintenance intervals (28,000 miles for a valve check) and cam timing by chain. It’s produced in various…

Is there a more famous or enduring name in motorcycling than ‘Bonneville’? After all, it takes 0ome doing for a machine that originated from the British Midlands to become better known than the vast salt flats in Utah after which it was named. The salt flats were, for much of the 20th century, a mecca for thrill seekers and manufacturers alike; a proving ground for performance machines and the venue for countless land-speed record attempts. When Triumph Engineering, a regular on the flats, launched its new high-performance 650cc twin in 1959, Bonneville seemed the ideal name. And the rest, as they say, is history. In its heyday, the Bonneville T120 was the obvious choice for many an aspiring speed addict. It was also the bike of choice for the likes…

While the duo of Yamaha ‘s Tracer 9GT and GT+ aren’t new models for 2026, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the fact that they are very current and, in the context of other brands’ offerings, are actually equipped such as to fit rather neatly into the MSL brief of both ‘sport’ and ‘leisure’ given their sports tourer designation. Now, historically, bikes that have been labelled as sports tourers have essentially been a sports bike that has been softened a little -given improved comfort and increased weather protection, but still retaining that original sports DNA, and that can perhaps take a little away from the touring aspect. But Yamaha’s CP3+ powerplant was never designed with a pure sports focus in mind (despite it being finagled into a sportier product in terms…

Oxford 4480 Lumen auxiliary lights £329.99 www.oxfordproducts.com While additional lights have certainly become ‘a thing’ in the motorcycle world right now, especially amongst the adventure bike set, not every manufacturer offers them as either a standard fitment or factory option, and many of those OE lights are very much of a style that make the bike itself brighter rather than adding to the rider’s ability to see what lies ahead on a dark and dreary night. These aluminium-bodied lights from Oxford, however, are designed to add to the light that’s shed from a bike’s main beam, giving an impressive 2240 lumens per pod, all controlled by a very clever 5-stage adjustable main beam switch that can be activated either by a handlebar-mounted switch or activated by wiring it into the…

The midrange adventure bike market is clearly getting more competitive with each and every model that enters the market, and the variety and choice on offer within the 650-900cc capacities is far greater than that for the range of machines that are over a litre in capacity. And, while it could be argued that many of those models are more of an off-road style, rather than having any true dirt capability, the 800 Rally version of Voge’s DSX range is quite obviously a little more prepared for a dirty weekend than other more street-focussed bikes. Compare the DS 800X Rally to the brand’s earlier DS 900X and, aside from wondering about the discrepancy between capacities, you’ll immediately see that the Rally is sleeker, less bulky, and with a greater likeness…