A total of 25 bikes and 100 riders circumnavigated the banked track at the velodrome for eight consecutive hours on their Riga mopeds, a vehicle used by collective farm workers during the Soviet occupation of Estonia.

Several models of bikes were manufactured in the Latvian capital, hence the name, from the mid 1960s-to the early 1990s, and while their top speeds may be somewhat slower than modern day motorbikes of an equivalent engine capacity, the noise produced is at least as loud.

Race organizer Tambet Parm told AK: "The Riga mopeds on the track come from the Soviet era, and are racing in three categories: Retro, original and free classes, each with different rules."

"In the free class, almost anything is permissible, just that the engine has to be original. In the retro class, the bikes are those that have been taken out of the shed and have been put to use," he added.

The real goal was to attempt to bust they myth of the mopeds being unreliable.

Each bike was ridden a four-person team, with riders changing through the race, given it was eight hours long.

It was down to mechanics to fine tune and to try different solutions in order both to go faster and to last out the entire race, Parm noted.

One competitor, Alar Ubar, told AK he had two Rig mopeds, one of which he used to use for traveling to work.

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