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/127838
'INTERVIEW ~ his is the truth. This is Wayne Rainey's life the past few years in his Q.wn words, what he' been through, how he's coping. Being in a wheelchair hasn't slowed him down as much as it should have. He still puts in 17-hour days and most of those hours are devoted to racing. Making his team better, making his riders better, making himself better. It isn't easy being Wayne Rainey; it never was, it never will be. He possesses that defect in his personality known as perfectionism. It must be viewed as a defect only because he lives in an imperfect world that he can no longer control as he did when he was winning three 500cc World Championships in a row, and nearly four. "Riding for me is both a blessing and curse," he believes, and he means it. He asks of others what he asked of himself and cannot understand why you would want to give less. "He's the most amaz- By Henny Ray Abrams Photos by Gold & Goose ing person I've ever met," says his team manager and good friend Tim O'Sullivan, whose previous vocation involved dealing on a regular basis with brain surgeons. 0 one ever beat Wayne Rainey by outworking him and they never will. Every'year brings a new challenge. First it was winning championships as a rider. Next it was winning championships as a team owner. He started slowly, but soon found himself in a very high-stakes rivalry with Kenny Roberts, a friend he considers a brother. Now that Roberts has moved on to his own project, Rainey is the standardbearer for Yamaha and his job is to restore the factory to the glory that he afforded it as a rider. It won't be easy. But for Wayne Rainey, it never is. Let's start with Marlboro. What happened to the sponsorship? There's a few different stories I've heard from each differen t guy, three different Marlboro guys. But the one I think I have to rely on is that there was a budget cut, because that was the most senior guy that told me that. That came on the 20th of January. The 20th was a Monday. They said there was a budget cut on Friday. And they called you up and said... No, r was just making my weekly call. I usually make one on Monday, one on Wednesday, and one on Friday. And that was my Monday call. And it was like 6 0' clock their time in the evening. I guess they weren't even going to tell me that day either. When they called, did they tell you at the time that it was a budget thing? The guy who told me didn't know why. He was just told that there's nothing there for you. And so r called the higher- ups and asked what happened. They said, "Well, we had a budget cut." "You guys just recently had one?" "Yeah, we're sorry." So I didn't have much time to think a bout it. I had a team to put together so I was on an airplane the next day to Japan. What did Yamaha say? They, officially, I don't think have ever been told by Marlboro that there's been a separation. They were pretty upset about it because I had told them all along that Norick (Abe) looks good and there was never any question about that. That budget for orick always came from (Phillip Morris) Lausanne (Switzerland). Because that was my (Tetsuya) Harada budget that was there the year before and that budget didn't change, the numbers on that. The only thing that we were-trying to put together was the second rider. :And r believe that what Marlboro was trying to do was get the econd-rider program sorted out. Kenny (Roberts) and I just didn't