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/128620
E ven if Ha ga got his point s bac k , I' m sti ll 15 a head o f him. The reason Fog arty crashed is be ca use he sa w th e ch am p ion sh ip goin g away in that second ra c e [in Aust ralia] . He only had 16 points going into Au stralia when me and Haga had 45. He already had a 3D-point deficit and I'm not saying that's why he crashed, but he was getting in a hurry to go somewhere and he ended up crashing, and he's out for most of the season. You can say ' what if this' and ' w hat if that: but if [Mick] Doohan was fit last year he might have won the GP championship. But he crashed and he didn't. That's what the championship's about, you've got to keep the thing upright. WOUld yo u rather have all those guys still in the cha mpionship and say ' Hey, I beat them all?' Yeah , I would rather hav e kicked Fogarty 's ass e ve r y ra c e. T h at' s w h at I w o uld h a ve rath er -d one. A s it works out he's o ut , but maybe we' ll get t o do it next y ear. DO you think that Fogarty w ill come back next year? I j ust hear talk that he wants to come back and he's spoken to Duc ati. Persona lly , Fog arty , in m y eyes, is the bes t gu y out th er e. I have to beat him if I want to win the W o rld Ch ampionshi p . I'm lead ing the cha m pionshi p and he has me thinking th at way and eve ry bo dy el se thinking th e same way . T o win th e championshi p you 've go t to beat Carl. So if he goes out now, he goes out on top . He' s had his A Q A Q A And to some extent, he has been greasing the rungs of the ladder he has climbed - by falling in races, not winning despite sig nifi c ant early leads and just simply being beat en for what seemed to be no good reason at all - especially when no one (except his rivals) believed that he should have taken anythi ng but 50 points a weekend. So , for a man with a World Championship arnbition as big and outspoken as his native state of T exas, these are strange days. Leadi ng w ithou t often wi nn ing . Co nq ue ring foes holding b ro k en spears . Fi nding the lions at the coliseum drugged or maimed d uring earlier co ntests. Cycle News Wo rld Supe rbike co ntrib utor Gordon Ritc hie ca ug ht up w ith Edwards o n the eve of wha t turned out to be , in terms of points at least , death by misa dventu re at Misano. On rac e day a mistake cos t hi m and his teammate Aaron Sli ght any chance of good point scores afte r Ed wa rd s simply k nocked Sli gh t off d uring an error of judgment at the beg in . ning of the first race . One thing is for sure , Edwards is making things hard for himself when, o n paper, they should be easy . B ut as Foggy always said , and E d w a rd s admits, it's never easy . Yo u ' re lea din g the ch am p ionsh ip by a good ma r gin , an d yet your ow n year ha s been f ar fr om perfect . H ow ha ve you seen you r perfo rmance so f ar? T here's been too many weekends where we've been fas ter than everybody , but haven't come out of it with two wins. At Do ningt on , I crashed in the second race when I felt that I should have done the do uble. In Mon za, I was just thinking too much and let [Pier -Francesc o] Chili win one of them. If you add it all together, I should have another 30 points. That' s th e way I loo k at it, but I guess that 's wha t the championship's all abo ut. You m ak e these m ist ak es and try to co me back from the m. c y nic s suggest that if Carl Foga rty was fit and Noriyuki Haga hadn 't had point s f ro m South Africa taken away , thing s may be a bit different. What 're your personal feelings about that? Q A Q cu e I EO n EO _ S • JULY 5 , 2000 47