Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Catching Up With... SoSe Suzuki's Stephane Roncada Tell me about how you got hooked up with Rainbow Studios to do those games. A long time ago, when I was playing Motocross Madness on PC, I went to E3 with a couple of my friends, and I met the team from Rainbow Stu· dios, who made the game, and I got hooked up with them since then. Then they got bought by THQ, so now I work for THQ. How's the new game, MX Unleashed, coming along? I made about 80 percent of the tracks on the game - supercross, motocross and freestyle - so you know they're going to be really fun to ride on (laughs). I helped a lot with the physics, so the bike drives like a real bike. You can blitz whoops, you can square berms and use the clutch to get going again, you can rail berms - you can ride it any way you want. It's going to be an awesome game. And the racing's going to be just great, because the Artificial Intelligence, the AI guys are getting really, really good. I did some racing with them, and the first five laps we kept passing each other like in real life. So the racing's going to be awesome. You'll be able to race it online with your friends. There's more than 50 tracks in the game, so there's plenty of tracks to have fun on, and it's going to be the best motocross game ever made. By STEVE What do you consider the best-case scenario for you now, if you holeshot? If I get good starts and I have the same speed as the other guys, I can definitely go 35 minutes as long as I don't get arm pump, which has been a little problem for me lately. Cox PHOTO BY STEVE BRUHN S tePhane Roncada is the U.S. Motocross scene's longest-lasting Frenchman, and he's come a long way since his rookie U.S. season of 1997. However, in his last couple of seasons, he's been plagued by the Epstein-Barr virus and injuries, and although he's shown his raw speed on more than one occasion, his results have suffered. When we talked to him at Southwick, he revealed that he's been having a hard time having fun lately, and he's even contemplated retirement. Only a week later, he took an RM250 to second overall at Budds Creek. Things have just started looking up for Roncada, but that doesn't necessarily change his outlook. Are you trying too hard, or what? No, I think it's because I hadn't raced in a long time and I came back to racing right away. I'm doing 35-minute motos and trying to ride 110 percent. So hopefully I can relax and have fun and go fast. If you see me fading, it's because I got arm· pump, not because I got tired. It hasn't been bothering me very much, especially outdoors because it hasn't been very hot yet, so it doesn't bother me when it's not hot. I've been feeling pretty good during my motos - I haven't been getting very tired and stuff. It's feeling pretty good, 'and I'm feeling pretty good. Better than in supercross. What can you tell me about your plans for next year? I don't really know what I'm going to do next year. We'll see. If I can race pretty good and I still have fun and stuff, then I'll do something next year, but I don't know yet. I'm just enjoying what I'm doing right now and having fun with it, so I don't really count on next year. In the supercross series, when you lined up knowing you couldn't go fast for 20 laps, how did that make you feel? Not very good. You know, sometimes you kind of wonder what you're doing there, especially when you know you can win. But I always try to look at the positive side and try to move forward, you know? I think that's what kept me going in supercross. That's why I was starting to get a lot better until I got hurt. How come there are no more new French riders coming over? Because we were all in the same program. We were all in a group that used to race together and stuff, and we had a good program going on, and that's why it helped us to come here, you know? Now, I don't really think there's any guy in the next couple years that's going to come over here ... There's too many Frenchies anyway. How's the Epstein-Barr? 42 .JULY 9,2003 • -c Y c I e n e _ 50 How do you feel about the speed of the 125cc class compared to when you were winning on the Yamahas? I feel like I should be up there with those guys. When I was winning on the Yamaha, I wasn't with those guys; I was even faster, because I used to win motos by 30 seconds sometimes, and I've been there. I know what it feels like, and now I've got to get back up there. It's going to be hard this year because of the virus and the injury and everything - especially because Brown and Hughes are going really fast - but if I can get back to my level, it's going to be really fun. Your English seems to be getting better. Have you been consciously working on that, or is it just because you've been here so long? I've always thought my English is very good; I just speak way too fast. I don't articulate enough, and that's been a problem for a couple years, so now I try to slow down and articulate more, but it's hard. There's a bit of anti-French sentiment going on in the U.S. now. Have you encountered any yourself? Not really. It's just funny the way people change. Girls used to ask me where I was from, and I'd say I'm from France, and they'd say, (in a high-pitched voice) "Oh, really? That's so cute. I want to go to France. That's great!" And now I say I'm from France, it's like, "Oh really!" You can totally feel the tension. It's okay, you know, they have all the right to get mad. There's always conflicts in war, and I can't really do anything about it. What are your goals for the rest of this year and going into next year? The rest of this year I want to enjoy what I'm doing because I haven't really been enjoying racing the last three years, almost, and it's really frustrating to go to a race and you don't want to be there. So like I said, I really don't care about next year, I just want to enjoy what I'm doing this year and have fun with it. That's my goal, really, is to have fun again on the bike.

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