Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127592
eU.S. GP PREVIEW eI Kevin Schwantz Interview By Michael Scott Photo by Henny Ray Abrams n the palatial blue-a nd-silver rnotorhome, Kevin Schwantz kicks Cf) back. One eye on CNN news on the 0\ TV up by the driver's seat, meanwhile ~ looking at the pictures in a French ... motorcycle magazine, he reclines ~m the ex) I-c OJ ~ OJ .... 0.OJ u: 34 soft leathe r of the couch, clu tching an ice pack to kill the swe lling on the forearm he banged down after a wild 100 mph ride across the grass and into the gravel trap the day before. He is on automatic pilot as he answers qu estions for the notebook. Leader of the World Championship, as he had been - most u ncharacteris tically - since the fifth race of the year, he wa s once again subject of an interview by a Donington Park w eekend-tripper from the foreign press, regularly imp orted from various far-flung parts of the Lucky Strike empire, on th e topi c of whether he thinks he will at last this year really win the World Championship. The rangy Texan is a bright conversa- tionalist, accomplished at joking around with his all-British team, full of downhom e ranch- styl e wisecracks: you cou ld eas ily see him kicking his spurs on the corral fence before leapi ng on to his ho rse to go round up so me steers. But h is interview technique, this late in the afternoon, is desul tory. When it happens this often, there isn 't mu ch yo u ha ven't a lready said about a th ousand tim es some times it feels like a thousand times a day. "One year Luck y Str ike ar ranged a promo trip to Japan before the seaso n. They locked us (his teammate then was Did ier de Radigues) in a h ot el room, then sent in journalisls two or three at a tim e, from firs t thing in th e m orning until la te a t n igh t. They all as ked the sa me qu est ions : " Wha t is th e b ike condi tion? What is y o u r cond it io n ? What is you r p lan for the season ?' It went on for two days solid." Now he breaks off mid-sentence to draw his mother 's a ttention to an item about gun violence in Texan school s. "Shoot!" he exclaims, firin g off an appropriate epithet from th e hip . Then it' s back to th e litany, a se t response to the se t qu estions. " It's mu ch too soo n to start thin king a bou t th e championship there's still a lot of ra cin g in it , and any thi ng can happen in the space of a n a fte rnoon. My crash toda y proved that. " " I've signe d for Lu ck y S tr ik e Su zuk i for tw o more years. I've go t to s t ar t th ink ing about what hap p en s after racing , and the deal tak es tha t into account." "The number 34 used to b e .m y uncle's AMA number when he raced . I've ha d it ever since." "I never expected to get rich from racing. I've bought some real estate in Texas. It's an investment for the future." "Learning to race on loose surfaces is important for racing a 500 but it's not everything." " obod y likes crashing, bu t th e pain doesn't wo rry me. Mainly you're angry with yo urself for making a mistake." "I guess I've always found it hard not to tr y a nd wi n every time . But three years ago, I decided to race differentl y on ly tr y an d w in when th e bike w as right , an d otherwise to accept whatever result I could get." " I've wo n 23 GPs, but th e number doesn 't matter . Th at's the so rt of thing yo u think abou t when yo u quit racin g: right no w I'm thinking about tomorrow's race, and the next one." And SO on. This man know s his bu siness. He know s a few qu otabl e qu otes are all tha t will emerge once the sto ry's been tran sla ted in to Hungarian / Arabic/Icelandic/whatever, cut down to newspaper length, so that's as much of himself as he's prepared to give away. He's diffe rent again in front of TV cameras, grinning and looking attentive and producing snappy quips to p rovide exac tly th e sou nd bi tes the produ cer need s for fruit ful air time. All ju st part o f being p rof essiona l, while a t the sa me time leaving as mu ch energy as possible for the real business being the world's best motorcycle racer. Schwantz operates from an imp ressive if slightly unusu al close family base: Mom and Dad are a lw ays th er e a nd alwa ys indul g entl y s up por tive; th is weeken d h is gi r lfrie n d Am y is a lso alon g. (Barry Sheene was another champion wh o made it a family affair, and his la te mother Iris' cups of tea were a legend am ong the British con tinge nt. Here it is the smell of Jim 's ba rbec ued hamb ur gers.) Jim is also his ma nager, and drives the bus and attendant trailer with Suz uki Sidekick between meetings; then usually hotelling it to leave the motorhome to Kevin for race weekend. Schwantz arrived at Donington Park as favorite for the World Championship, after a supremely consistent and unusually crash-free season, with a big lead ove r Wayne Rainey, his racing rival virtua lly ever si nce th e tall a nd skinny Te xan w as ta lent-sp o tt ed by Fujio Yosh imura (son of the lege nda ry Pops) and given a factory superbike to race in the AMA series back in 1985. It is a rivalry tha t has matured in to a classic con frontatio n, with for the first time ever the cards stacked in Schwantz's favor. Of course d ear old Dame Fortune has played her usu al crucial role, but in '93 there is so me thing e lse besides: Kevin Schwan tz at 29, with time drawing short to win the crown ap prop riate for such a glittering career, is a mu ch ma tured and cha nged racer, and it is a rigoro us progra m of self-discipline that has brought him to this dominant position. The next day was to prove just how exactly true were his routine comments about "anything could happen," and he was toleave his favorite GP circuit not with the fourth victory he felt certain was on the table, but with his points cushion shrunk from a comforting 23 to a negligible three, and his oft-battered body miraculously saved from yet more injury after an extremely lucky escape. He and teammate Alex Barros were skittied by a lap-one-wayward Michael Doohan, and the TV images of Schwantz getting hurled over the handlebars directly in front of his ground-looping Suzuki, the n fending the bike off with one han d, reveal just how lucky he was to esca pe w ith n ot h in g m ore tha n a bru ising. Th e battl e fo r the h ighes t crown in bike racing had turned into 11 four- race sp r in t. Yet Kevin was s till favo rite to win, because thi s ye ar the sys tem had been well and trul y bu cked . Thr ough out his road racing career, it has been him a nd Rain ey. Kev in h as a lw a ys been th e da z zl e r, Wa yn e the champi ons hip winner . Year a fter yea r, th e Texan's titl e cha nces - both in the U.S. and later on the world s tage - had been battered hopel essl y against the brick wall of Rainey's cons istency, while Kevin acquired an army of fans with his sp ectacu lar w in-or-crash style that saw