Don’t watch this video if you have a soft spot for seagulls…being hit by a rider’s helmet on a speeding racing motorcycle. The incident you see here happened during last weekend’s Australian Moto GP and no, the bird didn’t make it.
Apparently, the riders were already close to 100 mph / 160 km/h at the time of impact. The rider that actually hit the seagull is Andrea Iannone, the Italian riding for Ducati.
He spots the bird just in time and kneels his head forward for a moment so that it doesn’t impact his visor. It still causes some damage to his bike, but he continues and finishes the race in third position.
It’s definitely the rider’s reaction here that makes this the kind of video you play more than once, and you may also want to slow it down to better observe the action…