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Today, Greg Tracy is relaxing in his Belmont Shore home, enjoying the cool temperatures and ocean air after chasing his two kids around at the previous night’s Concert In The Park. Maybe, he’ll take a walk to one of the local coffee shops.

“I’ve been gone long enough,” Tracy said Thursday. “I think I just want to enjoy the Shore for a little while.”

Yup. Greg Tracy is just like the rest of us.

Except that last week, he was suited up head to toe in protective racing gear and preparing to tackle the world’s most challenging motorcycle race. A 12.4-mile slugfest up the side of the Rocky Mountains, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is 156 turns of mayhem. There’s 14,000 feet from start to finish, with enough dropoffs and elevation changes to make a fighter pilot beg for mercy.

At the Start line near the base of the mountain, it was sunny and 70 degrees. At the Finish line, it was snowing.

“It’s such an unpredictable track,” Tracy says. “It’s so mentally taxing, concentration-wise, you don’t have an opportunity to have a hiccup. Especially at the speeds we’re going now, you just can’t make a mistake.”

Nothing new for the seasoned veteran, as he blasted through the course in an astounding time of 11:46.550 to win his third consecutive victory at Pikes Peak. Tracy hit 125 miles per hour on the dirt sections of the track, and 137 on the asphalt portions. His brand new Ducati 1200cc Multistrada digging into the banked corners and spitting him back out onto the straights. Tracy earned his sixth Pikes Peak victory last week, and his third consecutive.

“It worked out great and we couldn’t be happier,” Tracy says. “I was more like a kid in a candy store with the new motorcycle.”

The brilliant red Ducati is a sight to behold and a beast on the mountain, but Tracy and his team are making viral waves for their use of a different kind of technology. They shot a short documentary of his victory using only iPhone 4 cell phones that debuted just last week.  Called 156 Turns, the film has garnered nearly 175,000 views on YouTube.  Tracy and his team strapped iPhones to the bike, his racing suit, and everywhere else they could think of to capture the spirit of Pikes Peak.

“We picked the phones up on Thursday morning and had my wife pick up a few in L.A.,” he says. “We just turned ‘em on and started shooting.”

The result was better than anyone expected, and is bringing Tracy the attention he deserves for his distinguished achievement. Not that he didn't have a few concerns.

“I really didn’t want those things to fall off [the bike],” he says. “Somebody would’ve been pretty happy finding one of those on the track.”

With mission accomplished and the video going viral, Tracy returns to his home of twenty years in Long Beach, where he’ll take some time off before returning to his day job as a stunt driver in movies like Spiderman, Wanted and The Bourne Ultimatum. He hopes to latch on to the new Transformers movie and is scheduled to shoot a new Ben Affleck film called The Town.

Not surprisingly, Tracy finds similarities between driving through explosions and racing up a mountain.

“All of a sudden, the spotlight is on you and you’ve got one chance to get it right,” he says. “Most people don’t have that in their everyday lives, and I have to think that’s an advantage when I’m on the mountain.”

Ya think? Tracy has made a living off performing under pressure, which is why he settled in Long Beach in the first place, to escape the lights and the stress in favor of some beach vibes.

"Dealing with Hollywood and the movie business, it’s really nice to get away from that and back into a small hometown environment,” he says. “That’s what I love about Long Beach and it’s why I love coming home. The place is pretty special to me.”

Not bad for a kid who first decided to enter the Pikes Peak race on a whim in 1996. These days, it’s nearly second nature for a mud-caked Tracy to wamp through the Rocky Mountains, staring down the side of a cliff with every turn.

“Fourteen years later,” Tracy says, “It kind of becomes your signature.”

Yup. Just like the rest of us.


All photos courtesy David Philip

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