Carlin Dunne: Four-time Pikes Peak winner’s mom remembers her son on fifth anniversary of his death

Romie Gallardo always knew the risks her son Carlin Dunne faced when he raced motorbikes. As a youngster he’d asked his mother if she wanted him to stop racing, but she never considered that as an option.

They had a longstanding agreement that she’d follow his races from his home, keeping things running and looking after his Australian cattle dog, Sonny. It was comforting for Dunne to know that his mom would look after his pup if anything went wrong.

In 2019, Dunne was in his element, charging up the iconic Pikes Peak in Colorado, powering his Ducati Streetfighter up to 14,000 feet, towards the clouds, towards what appeared to be a fifth victory out of five attempts and yet another record time.

He had rounded the 156th and final turn, and he was within sight of the finish line when disaster struck; he lost control and crashed.

Australian rider Rennie Scaysbrook had been the penultimate rider that day and was being interviewed by a television crew at the top when he began to wonder why Dunne hadn’t pulled up alongside him.

“There was just something about Carlin and that mountain,” Scaysbrook told CNN. “Whatever it was, they just worked so well together. He was designed to ride that place.”

According to his mother, Dunne was born with speed in his blood. “His father was a motorcycle racer,” she explained to CNN, “so it was a given that when I produced a son that he was going to be on two wheels. I mean, his very first motorcycle was a little Suzuki RM50, and we had that before I brought him home from the hospital.”

Having learned on the Suzuki, he graduated to a Honda 75, and by the time he was around 12, he was racing an Ascot 500 at Willow Springs near Los Angeles.

His mother could see how much he enjoyed it, but she also knew that he was only going to get faster.

“We had several talks over the years, and he’d ask me, ‘Do you want me to quit racing?’ And I said, ‘No, because it’s what you do. It’s your passion; you love it. You happen to be really good at it. I’m not in charge of your happiness and if you’re doing something that makes you happy then that’s all I can really ask for.’”

Jason Chinnock signed Dunne to the Ducati team in 2012 and the company’s North American CEO told CNN that his family background played a crucial role in his development as a racer.

“His father was a professional racer,” Chinnock explained, “and on the other side, a mother who was incredibly loving and supportive. There’s nature and nurture, and he had a nice combination of both.

“Some riders are boisterous and loud; they’re a little too confident, as if they’re trying to make up for a lack of talent,” added Chinnock. “He [Dunne] was exactly the opposite; he had this cool, calm demeanor. Those are the guys you have to watch out for, the guys who don’t have to use their mouth.”

Dunne was magnetically attracted to anything with two wheels: BMX, mountain bikes, dirt bikes and street bikes, and he built a community of friends through their shared love of the lifestyle.

The three-time Dutch Mountain Bike champion Anneke Beerten told CNN that Dunne was her “adventure buddy.” She says they once spent Christmas Eve in the hospital because he’d broken his foot riding dirt bikes, “and he was still in a good mood!” Beerten says she felt “alive” whenever she was around him.

Marcus Boyle met Dunne when he was working at his Ducati shop in Santa Barbara, and they subsequently became friends.

After a massive mudslide damaged his family’s Montecito property in 2018, Dunne helped turn their wrecked back yard into an off-road adventure park.

“I owe all of my skill and passion to Carlin’s determination to push me to become a better rider,” explained Boyle. “We all admired Carlin’s charisma, and he was always able to seem calm regardless of his own high-pressure circumstances.”

Dunne’s memories of his single mother working three jobs to pay for his leathers and make ends meet compelled him to support the rookies who were coming through without any support or encouragement of their own.

“He was just a great guy to be around,” Scaysbrook enthused. “He’s one of those dudes that was impossible not to like, which really sucked when you were trying to beat him!”

The Australian rider remembers Dunne’s kindness in his rookie year, “He didn’t have to give me all this information. He just did it because he could; he wanted to see me do well.”

According to Chinnock, Dunne gave up a year of riding one year to mentor people that were going to be new to Pikes Peak. “Even those that were going to race against him in the future. I mean, this is how selfless he was.”

Pikes Peak demanded perfection, though, especially on a motorbike. “There’s so many variables on a racecourse like this,” Dunne told CNN in one of his final interviews.

“Everything from animals, weather, this place is a living, breathing organism. You have to take it seriously. It’s very humbling when you get up there.”

Asked to describe just how dangerous it was on a motorbike, Dunne scored it as 10 out of 10. In the years leading up to the 2019 race, the road had been upgraded from a partial dirt track to a fully paved surface and a number of riders had been killed.

Scaysbrook says he was lucky when he crashed over the Armco barrier in 2016 but was able to return to his bike and finish the race. Another rider crashed at the same turn and was fortunate just to survive.

“The guy that ran the motorcycle program would always say, ‘No one crash or get hurt, because if someone gets hurt, this whole thing stops,’” recalled Scaysbrook. “And I’m like yeah, thanks, mate. Like, we need any more motivation not to throw ourselves off a fricking cliff!”

Scaysbrook’s last memory of Dunne was on the start line at Pikes Peak in 2019. Scaysbrook says felt a tap on his shoulder, they shook hands and said they’d see each other at the top.

Dunne almost made it to the finish line; he was so close that the first person to reach him after the crash was the man who would have been waving the checkered flag. Race officials estimated that he was on course to break his own record time.

Dunne’s fateful race was also the last time that anyone raced a motorbike up the mountain; Scaysbrook was the last rider to do it and live. “I’ve got the trophy downstairs, but I’d give it back to finish second and have Carlin still here in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t even be a consideration.”

Everybody that CNN spoke with understood why the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb could no longer stomach such extreme risks, but they all agree that it’s not the legacy Dunne would have wished for.

“I know he would be super bummed that the program was canceled because of what happened to him,” his mom said. “But the reality is that you can’t make it a safe race.”

Gallardo teared up when describing what she misses most about her son. “I miss talking with him versus talking about him. Carlin was gregarious; he had a good sense of humor, almost all of it was self-deprecating. He was very thoughtful and considerate. He made people feel like they were the only people in existence.”

Friends and family are keen to preserve Dunne’s legacy in any way that they can. In 2022, Scaysbrook made his debut at the Isle of Mann TT races, and he put Dunne’s No. 5 on his bike, taking him around a track that he never got to race while he was alive.

“To this day, for those of us who knew him, we have a saying, ‘live like Carlin,’” explained Chinnock. “That’s become our own internal hashtag for doing something that pushes us and challenges us to make us a better person.”

At the age of 36, Dunne was starting to find fulfilment away from his bike. He was using his talents on film in stunt work and dreaming of a long and happy life.

But he told CNN that he would always live life in the fast lane. “Maybe I’ll be at the home for the elderly, getting tickets on my rascal scooter,” he chuckled. “I can’t imagine slowing down; it’s the moment you slow down that you really become old.”

On June 30, 2019, at more than 14,000 feet up on the mountain that he’d conquered so many times, Dunne was travelling at full speed on a prototype Ducati Streetfighter when he died.

Everybody that loved him knew that his story could end that way, but there’s still nothing that can soften the blow and it’s of little consolation to know that he died whilst doing the thing he loved most.

“I always thought that the ‘doing what you love thing’ is B.S.,” said Scaysbrook. “You don’t want to die doing what you love; you want to die as an old person in your bed, surrounded by your loved ones. You don’t want your passion to hurt you like that.”

But his mother, who keeps her son’s Honda 75 in her living room, disagrees. “He asked me again, in one of our final conversations, ‘Do you want me to quit?’ And I said that if it was time for him to go, there would be a certain amount of comfort for me knowing that he was doing what he loved, you know, versus getting hit by a drunk driver or a drive-by shooting.

“If you support somebody in a sport that you could ultimately lose them, you have to support them 100%. I came to that acceptance a long time ago. He passed with his boots on and, just, in his element.”