Ellen Pfeiffer and the Ellen Pfeiffer Award

Continental Division Captain from 1964 

Ellen was one of the founders of WIMA in Europe in the year 1958.
 She was very active in motorcycle racing and competition. The early WIMA meetings in Germany, therefore, were always held in locations near racing circuits such as the Nürburgring or the Hockenheimring.

Accordingly, the focus of the subsequent annual rallies was about serious competitive racing. Being fast was always Ellen’s intent and what gave her most pleasure.

She competed successfully in endurance and long-distance events on her Horex motorcycles, followed later by a Norton Dominator, a Honda CB450 and then BMWs.

WIMA owes Ellen a great deal for many things, but some say the most outstanding is the early links which she forged with the Iron Curtain countries, enabling women riders from suppressed countries like Czechoslovakia to meet us from the West and begin lifelong friendships.

After 25 years of organising the German WIMA division, Ellen ‘retired’ as an active captain, but kept her dignity like the ‘Queen Mum’. She concentrated on being ‘Ellen’; that meant, riding to almost every WIMA event no matter how far the venue was (she even took part in the well-known WIMA trip to launch WIMA Japan in 1996). She told real motorcycle stories, her experience during the years and about the countries she explored on her motorcycle, salvaging, now and then, some young women’s big bikes from difficult alpine places and, most of the time, being faster than any other woman, in her very charming way.

Her speed became legendary, as did her technical expertise, which was as basic as her 25-year-old BMW. But…it was always enough to be fast. Ellen died at the age of 69 in March 2001.  She was a ‘First-Class Female Biker’, a WIMA-Lady to the last.

Information provided by Claudia Fehrer of WIMA Liechtenstein, Floh Petit of WIMA Germany and Anne Gale of WIMA GB.