IN THE PADDOCK
BYMICHAEL S O
C TT
he phenomenon of Michael Dooban
has overs ha d o wed an other land ma rk of 1997 - the arrival, finally , of
. se rid ers at th e top level o f the
500<,
ss.
Oh, sure, there hav e been japanese rid 'rs there before. The first to wi n a 500cc
,P was Yamaha-mou nted Hideo Kanaya,
ustria in 1975; the next was Takazumi
. tayama in the Swedish Grand Prix of
82. But it was another 14 years before
o rick Abe did the same thing a t h is
home even t last year, and even then it wa s
another isolated eve nt. There has not been
ano ther Jap an ese win since.
Something rath er more im por tant
has hap pened , however, in 1997. In th e
absence of race w ins so far (an d in spite
. Ab e runnin g into somet hi ng of a
sl u m p) , at th e two-thirds po in t o f th e
season, ja panese rid ers hold two of the
top three cham pio ns hip po sitions , and
four out of the top eigh t. This indicates
strength in de pth rat her than flash in the
pan, and is so me thing altogether more
im pressive.
Tw o rid ers in pa rti cu lar have been
es pecially impressi ve . O ne is Tadayuki
O ka da, whose p revious bes t performance had been to fini sh a very clo se
second to Max Biaggi in the 250cc World
Cha m pions hi p in 1994. Last yea r, he
ha n dso mely o u tra nk ed co u n try man
Sh i n ich i It oh in the d ebut yea r o f
Hond a' s lightweight V-twin 500, qualifying on po le for the first race of the yea r
and finishi ng on the rostrum three times.
But that was on the so rt of bike he knew
ell: a lightweight. .This year, he jumped
straight o nto a V-four - su pposed ly so
hard to ride, it tak es a yea r or more to
get to grips wi th it - and was alm
