SCOOTER enthusiast Julio Languiller has passed his toughest test yet.
Last weekend he added a third world record title to his name after successfully riding from Melbourne to Sydney and back on a 250cc fourstroke Honda scooter.
Mr Languiller took 24 hours to complete the journey, covering a distance of 1768km on 68 litres of fuel.
“It was tough. It was the toughest thing I have ever done in my whole life,” Mr Languiller said.
“I have pains in my body. My right hand is swollen,” he said.
Mr Languiller holds world records for riding a 125cc fourstroke scooter for 24 hours, and a 50cc fourstroke scooter for the same length of time.
He started his ride at the Sunshine police station at 5.25am, on Saturday, and finally arrived in Sydney at 3pm.
He took two hours to travel to Bondi and then on to Brookvale, where one of his sponsors, Scooter Central, is based.
“The traffic in Sydney cost me a lot of time,” Mr Languiller said.
And on the return leg to Melbourne, he battled awful weather on the NSW side of the border, which threatened to derail his record attempt.
“It was dangerous because it was raining, so I had to reduce the speed, and it was only many years of experience that got me through,” he said.
“I was thinking to myself, what am I doing?”
Stopping for one of his 10 refuelling and pit stops, a service station owner asked him why he would bother riding a scooter in the rain.
He told Mr Languiller there would not be a single person in the whole of Australia at that time riding in that weather on two wheels and that he was already was a winner.
Mr Languiller was happy to complete the trip but not so pleased with the distance he covered.
“I wanted 2000 kilometres. I wanted to complete a lot more laps of the Western Ring Road. But that didn’t happen, and I lost 250 kilometres,” he said.
“But, regardless of the weather, the machine was beautiful. There were no problems,” he said.
He paid tribute to his Melbournebased friend Neil Ralph, who provided help and encouragement over a mobile phone.
Mr Languiller will repeat the ride next year to achieve the benchmarks he set himself, and he may even take a trip to Italy.
“I want to show the Italians how to do it. They make a lot of bikes but we do things here they can’t,” he said.
Content he has once again proved he can push himself to succeed, Mr Languiller was philosophical about his achievement.
“It shows that the heart is strong but the head is stronger.
“You can be 49 years old and still do a lot of things,” he said.
